Chapter Twenty #2
Edging farther out of the window, that one foot still in the water, both hopeful and horrified that someone would grasp her leg again as a lifeline, Auralia’s next battle was to get the air-filled plastic bag, which would serve as her flotation device, out the window.
She had done an okay job of guessing how much inflation would work.
But still, it was too much when she was taking up space in the opening as well.
Not wanting to take the time to unknot and start again, Auralia pressed the air to one side of the bag and held it there with a tight fist. After feeding the limp side of the bag through the window until it reached the bulge, she then reversed the effort, pushing the air to the side of the bag outside the window.
It worked like a charm.
Now, Auralia realized that as she was presently configured, there was no room for her to wiggle and bend and snake herself out of the window.
Yoga was helpful because it kept her flexible, but Auralia was reminiscing about her youth when she would climb along the bald cypress knees and swing upside down amidst the Spanish moss.
She got her torso out the window and shoved her air bag under one armpit, then the other. It was stupidly cumbersome. Still, if she slipped into the water, it could be lifesaving. “Please, be lifesaving.”
She flipped over onto her butt. The few inches of window that never receded, and Auralia had to assume as some safety feature, stabbed her in the ass as she reached up over the hood, splaying her fingers wide, trying to get a grip—in every sense of the word.
Pressing into her feet, she hoisted her hips into the air, and here she could feel the immense pressure of the water behind the car, pushing, pushing, pushing against the frame.
She thought her car was safe as long as the SUV below her held.
She stepped a foot out of the window, then fished it over toward the trunk.
Fear clawed at her heart, snagging it with its sharp talon.
Her toes found the frame, then wiggled forward until they were on the box.
Auralia jumped her hand to the trunk lid and curled her fingers tight like she was climbing the rock wall at her gym.
She had a vague idea of how to shift her weight over; she also had an image of getting stuck, neither in nor out of the car, neither in nor out of the trunk, and losing the capacity to move either way.
In her mind’s eye, Auralia could see the image of two women underneath her, mouths held like little fish bubbles, craning their necks to suck the last of the oxygen from a pocket of air.
Don’t rush, your falling in means you can’t get them out.
Auralia closed her eyes and took a breath before sliding her foot along the box toward the back of the car, bringing her hips lower in an ice skater squat. Leaning her chest against the vehicle, she lowered her hand to the lip of the trunk, which felt like a better grip.
Ducking low under the trunk lid, she pulled hard and was able to jump her second hand over, edging them one at a time until her weight was entirely on the trunk.
Her right hand caught between the boxes, followed by her left.
Now one foot in the car, ass in the air, hands gripping the boxes at the center of the trunk, her air bag like two puffy black wings at her back, Auralia lowered her right knee to the box, gritted her teeth and made the same guttural rage noise that the power lifters made at the gym as she dragged her left foot toward her chest.
There in a bear crawl, Auralia paused to make sure that her jostling around hadn’t shifted the car, and she wasn’t about to slide into the current.
The slow part of the show was over.
Auralia wanted her feet on the shore.
Sitting on the back of the trunk, she opened the box containing her hiking supplies and put her clothes bag in before sealing it against the water. Then, she lifted it to the back lip of the trunk, spreading her thighs wide to balance it there.
She turned and failed at lifting the second box with a twisted spine.
Auralia wrapped her left hand around the handle of the hiking box. If she fell in, at least she had this. Facing away from the bridge, clenching her abs, Auralia jerked the second box to get the bottom onto the edge, and that was going to be about it.
She was stuck.
The little bird on her right shoulder said the hiking box was enough.
The little bird on her left said that the camping box could save lives, and she knew there was probably a rope inside. Auralia would listen to the bird on her left.
But she was out of ideas, and frankly, almost out of steam.
Adrenaline, she’d learned in her life as a reporter, ebbed and flowed. When it was on like a spigot, it often turned off without so much as a trickle.
Even a trickle would be helpful right about then.
She decided to pull a Morrison.
Releasing both boxes and being careful not to prick her airbag, Auralia twisted and squirmed, grabbing here then grabbing there, until her feet were on the bumper and she was facing downriver.
She wrapped a hand tightly around a tote handle on either side of her. Then, pretending she was back at the gym, she pressed into her heels like the squat machine and arched her head backward.
What happened next was total body chaos.
Water rushed into her nostrils.
Her wrists were wrenched this way and that until the totes figured out how to align with the current. Her airbag was airbagging to its best ability, though it had squirmed out from under her pits and was now a belt under her stomach.
Auralia was kicking hard because that’s what her body knew to do from growing up on the water.
Still, it was a confusing, scary ride until one of the totes scraped against the river bottom, dragging along behind as Auralia’s arms were pulled wide, and she was able to get her knees under her.
Twelve inches is all the muddy water necessary to sweep a car away.
Six inches was what it took to drag a human off their feet.
The eddy calmed the waters a bit. And the tree trunk just a few yards away would act as a stopper.
Still holding on to her resources as if her life depended on them—because it did - Auralia came to her knees, then got a foot under her.
The thick clay squished up between her toes. And there she stopped. Winded. Just a moment of rest.
She remembered Papa Jacques taking her along with his family when they went to a friend’s house to go out on the pontoon.
The pond where he kept the boat was at dangerously low levels, and the group had to wade out about twenty feet in the low water to reach the boat.
The guy simply kept tying a longer and longer rope to keep the pontoon afloat.
That was all fine and good on the way out.
But on the way back in, that was a whole other story.
The kids hadn’t been allowed to swim in the pond because the man said they had an infestation of cottonmouths, also known as water moccasins. They were a type of pit viper that could be lethal. The smaller you were, the deadlier.
At the end of a day out on the water, each of the big boys worked to get the coolers and other paraphernalia that had made their day so nice off the boat and onto the shore, and as asked, Auralia had sat out of the way.
Now that they were all on shore, they called for her to follow.
She jumped off the boat and sank ankle deep into the silky silt. One foot was flat, the other foot curved over a solid form that slid out from under one foot and over the other.
In her mind, the only thing she could think of was that it was a water moccasin and that at any moment it could pull itself far enough out from under her foot, that it would turn and strike, taking retribution for the thing that had attacked it. And when it bit her, she would die.
Auralia remembered that at the moment those images came together in her imagination, it was as if a great hand came down and snatched her out of the water.
Somehow, to this day, she couldn’t conceptualize how she leaped from waist deep in water and ankle deep in the mud back up onto the pontoon with a shriek that spun the entire group in her direction.
“What’s she doing out there like that?” Papa Jacques had asked Jean Marie. Before they attempted to answer, Papa Jacques cupped his palms around his mouth and called out, “Cherie, what gives?”
She had no words.
She didn’t, in fact, know what happened.
She was yanked out of the water by an unseen hand. That was even more shocking than the possibility of death by snake bite.
Auralia erupted in laughter and tears, trembling from head to foot.
Eight, maybe nine, still a girl but not a small girl, is what Auralia remembered.
Honoré and Jean Marie were both in the water, coming out to her, racing each other to see who would get there first.
Auralia was crying and shaking her head, wishing that words would come to her so she could tell the boys, “No, don’t come out here! I angered the snake!”
But there they were standing under her, their arms outstretched.
The only way she could think to protect them was to get down to them fast, and then everyone could get out of the water.
The boys turned their backs on her and put their arms around each other’s waists.
Jean Marie held up his free hand, “Come on, Lia, hold my hand and climb on our shoulders. You don’t have to get in the water.”
This was a practiced move, she’d realized. They must have saved others this way in the past.
Auralia clambered on and was carried like a swamp princess out of the water to the shore, where Papa Jacques lifted her for the dismount. “What happened?”
She didn’t answer because she didn’t know, and Auralia had already decided that when she grew up, she was going to be a reporter. So, when she reported on something that happened, she had to be neutral and honest. And she was neither, so she stayed silent.
Blading a hand over her brows, Auralia lifted her chin to scan the bridge, expecting to see either Creed or at least Gator standing there looking down and trying to figure out how to help.
But to her surprise, the bridge remained empty.
They hadn’t come.
Creed hadn’t heard her call as she’d gone over the edge.
Unfathomable.
Not Gator, not even Rougarou the swamp beast, who seemed in her ultra cutie-snooty doe-eyed way to sense where someone was rather than sniff them out.
What happened that Auralia was within the same catastrophe, but her tribe didn’t pick up on her distress and find her?
That squeezed her heart with what wanted to be self-pity.
No, it was different than that. From a lifetime of Creed and Gator showing up if it was at all in their power, in places and at times when they wouldn’t know she was in need, Auralia had a deep conviction that she was loved and cared for, and she could depend on the psychic thread that seemed to bind them.
Then she reminded herself that the air was opaque with grief and pain.
The people with damaged bodies and, possibly, alas, probably new and disoriented souls, all would attempt to get attention on every plane of existence.
It would overwhelm anyone with a sixth sense.
Her little whimper of need was selfish.
“Brush it off, girlfriend, and let’s get to work.”
There were probably two women trapped in a car, thinking they’d never again see the light of day.
Auralia needed to refocus.
This was on her.