The beeper sounded and was loud, disturbing them both; however, it was Zach who reacted first. Quickening his pace, he gave several hard thrusts that shook the bed, and came between the woman's legs. Quickly rolling over the woman beneath him and off the bed, Zach managed to snag a slight bit of her breast between his elbow and the mattress. "Jee-ssus," the woman hissed, slapping the back of Zach's head as he reached for his sagging denim pants and wrestled the plastic beeper free from the worn belt. The woman mumbled incoherently, waiting for the sharpness of pain to subside, and reached for her cigarettes as Zach walked through the darkness of the doublewide trailer naked, the illuminating screen of his beeper guiding a path down the hall. From the kitchen, Zach waited for the other end of the phoneline to be answered while wiping his thighs clean with the woman's tea towel. The other end answered. "What the fuck we got now, Brian?" After several dry "eh's" of acknowledgement, Zach hung up the phone and got dressed, bracing himself against the cold lying beyond the cheap fiber glass door of the woman's trailer. He left without saying goodbye, leaving the woman smoking in bed, a small purple blister forming on the outside part of her breast. * * * * It was unseasonably cold for early October and Shannon moved about her porch. She left the distinct smell of moth ball behind her as she drifted, having removed a thick woolen sweater from storage early, not having time to air out the acridness, not expecting this sort of cold. But, despite the bitter chill and scouring winds that swept through on-coming evening, her cheeks had become the color of cooked lobster for other reasons: Shannon had been crying for most of the afternoon. From pain mostly, and hurt. Earlier as Shannon drove home, she stopped her car abruptly, closed her eyes and softly said, "Please." She waited four minute before looking again, then drove on. Still in the car and driving, the pain and hurt began to build increasingly and Shannon said, "Please" once more, although infinitely more desperate so that the last sounds of the word were drawn out and finally lost in bubbling saliva as Shannon began to sob. Most of her tears had dried by now, whisked away by the wind, leaving only the cracked outer shell of her face. She still moved, though, bending often to rummage through her plastic pharmacy bags gathering the decorations she had earlier purchased, a religious and joyous ritual-purchase made low and sick when Zach emerged from the woman's trailer as she passed homebound. Shannon had seen him. Zach had been busily buttoning his thick woolen shirt, containing the same moth ball smell her sweater gave off; both sweater and shirt had come from the same storage box earlier that morning. Shannon moved. She had pulled a long string of lights from one of the bags, each light capitalized by a cheap orange plastic pumpkin head grinning a black toothless grin. After stringing the heads round the outer rim of her porch, she plugged in the male end and basked in a strange orange that made the surrounding darkness strong and unfamiliar. Turning towards her work of specifically placed cobwebs and cardboard monsters, Shannon stood uneasily pleased. The hurt still lived in some ever-present and vital organ but receded, somewhat, into a dull and background thing. The pleasure came from holiday. Shannon strictly clocked the passage of time through the pharmacy's display of up-coming holiday decorations. The arrival of each display seemed to soften Shannon's life, making it a bit more joyous, a bit more specific. Turkeys, then decorated trees with lights would soon and always replace pumpkins and ghouls. So every time the hurt resurged, Shannon thought of holiday and forgiveness was just that easy. She sat in a patio chair, the night fully settled, and palm-rubbed her eyes with a sharp intake of breath. "We won't say we saw," she was exhaling to the night. "We won't say at all." She reached into the heap of empty plastic bags and found her last remaining purchase, a flimsy octagonal yellow sign with four suction-cups cheaply fastened. In the orangeness, she read the car sign's message: "Baby On Board." "He'll be happy," she said. "We'll make him happy," and smiled at the thought; for Shannon, all of her life, had learned to celebrate things unseasonably early. * * * * Brian had the tow-truck running and warmed when Zach arrived at the garage, and Zach was glad for it as they drove to the wreckage site through the cold evening. Both men smoked and said little. "Christ, who would've thought this shit, this cold, you know," Zach managed after a while of driving. "Poor fucking farmers. Forget a late harvest. Shit'll be dead now." Brian agreed with a nod. "What'd the troopers say about it?" "No one's alive," replied Brian. "Christ. Well they better have got the damn generators going, cause I ain't doing this shit in the dark, and I told them that before too. Christ," Zach said again and flicked his cigarette out the window in a final gesture. The truck's headlights separated the darkness now as Zach idled into a lower gear beginning the winding climb up the mountain pass. It was a slow climb and the truck rattled, keeping faster traffic at bay behind them. Silence again. After a time, Brian took up a long continued conversation. "I was talking to Dickie today up in Inwood." "That shit," Zach interjected. "Well," continued Brian, "he's always saying he got them parts you've been after." "Fuck em," said Zach, "and fuck him." Zach's dead end talk always pissed Brian off, making him lose control as a response. "Well then get the goddamn, christ-forsaken car outa my garage then. If it means that little!" It was an old conversation, so only when the anger that suddenly swelled through the cab of the truck began to seep out of the cracked windows did Brian continue: "I know you hate the bastard. Christ, I'm not saying to be father to his kids. I'm just saying talk. That's all. Cause that ain't a new car you got holed up at my place. It's fucking old. So shit's hard to find for it and you should know cause you been looking." Zach responded by turning on the radio. The two men listened to ancient bluegrass, a truce, as they topped the mountain and grinded down the other side, all the way down to the wreckage site. * * * * The first sign of emotion or life that crept across Zach's face since Brian's scolding was a smile; generators pumped blinding light into the woods which began immediately from the right side of the two lane road. "See, I told em before," Zach smiled as an explanation. Brian only grunted. Parking the truck behind the line of trooper cars, Brian and Zach walked down into the woods, into the wall of light made to display the wreck. It was a complicated matter and Zach studied it: a car wedged between two locusts, and lessened about a foot in width, almost comical looking. Zach sat on his haunches and concluded that the towing would have to be done in a series of angles. He vaguely heard Brian standing above him as he studied, talking to a trooper. "Christ, a mother and child," passed the trooper; and "Fucking senseless," returned Brian. Zach knew exactly what had to be done as the trooper left to direct traffic. After Brian backed the truck to the roadside edge with Zach's guidance, the two met beside the flatbed and Zach explained. "You just stay beside the rollback and pull when I tell ya. And I'll need a hell of a slack." Brian did what he was told; for, Zach was better at these things and Brian knew it as he worked the levers, giving Zach plenty of slack to walk to the rear end of the wedged car, hook in hand. On his belly, Zach placed the hook around the left side of the rear axle. "All right," he shouted back to Brian, "pull it, and wait till I get to the front. I gotta watch close!" Brian nodded, and Zach worked through thickets towards the front of the wreckage. The left side of the car began to pierce the night with the unnatural screech metal against tree creates. The car jostled and shimmied from the left side only and the two trees floundered against the worsening angle, against the left side tow. Zach moved faster towards the front, cursing Brian for pulling too soon. He stepped past the side, over thickets and saw the bodies. Mother and child. Mother hiding behind long black hair, made into a curtain with her head lolled forward. Child and car seat scrunched and elevated against the dash. Mother lacerated with glass, bleeding through her clothes, one particularly large shard etched into the side of her neck. Child seemingly unharmed, only sleeping with a soft blood line at the corner of its mouth, bundled snugly against the early cold. Both bodies shook and jiggled against the towing. As Zach watched, the car seat and infant vibrated loose of the dash, fell through the shattered windshield and tumbled over the hood onto the ground, one helplessly clinging to the other. Instantly Zach turned away and bent into a near thicket. He was still retching when the first angle of towing was complete. All substance had left his stomach but Zach still retched, rejecting even the night air he breathed. Soon Brian's shouts brought Zach back to towing. Horribly he stood and spat, awkwardly returning into the flood of light and people, which caused the waves in his stomach to resurface. Zach breathed and dropped to his knees. He unhooked the left side to rehook the right, then walked slowly to the embankment of road and Brian. Brian merely watched Zach's approach and stood silent when he mumbled, "The kid fell out." Zach kept walking, though, and retreated to the cab of the truck, leaving Brian to finish the tow. After another half-hour, the right side pull set the car free for the medics to move in and officially declare the scene tragic. And from the passenger side of the cab, Zach breathed, "Thank Christ," as he watched a towing service from the victims' home county pull up; Zach and Brian were now relieved from the hour long round trip it would have taken to return the tragedy. They were done to leave and Zach, above all other things, needed to drink. * * * * In Pete's Tavern, Zach glanced at Brian, who was fetching another round at the bar, before refocusing on the table in front of him. The ebb and flow of crowd noise that pulsed and attacked round the room made focusing a somewhat dodgy goal, but the retrying of it kept Zach safe from participating in it. Of a sudden, the swell flowed into a particularly loud burst and Zach cringed against it; for he heard a voice above the rest. He swallowed a mixture of long-ago vomit and beer, keeping the rising distaste down, and looked up at Dickie, from Inwood, who was now sitting directly across the table. "Aww kee-riist, I heard about yer all's night and fuck me," Dickie was screeching above the squall of general noise. He leaned across the table for emphasis, gave Zach a knowing glance with raised eyebrows, then peeled into a laugh. Zach, despite his unfocused disposition and serious anger managed a smile for Dickie. "No shit," he responded. Then he paused for a moment while his pride and desperation struggled to dictate his future. After the latter prevailed, Zach inquired, "So Brian says you got something for me. For my car." "Gawd-daem," drawled Dickie. "Never thought you'd ask though. Been telling Brian about it only for fucking ever." He laughed in a screech once more, then, "Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah I got em. I'll tell you where from too…" But Zach lost Dickie's voice and, instead, watched his thin lips form exaggerated words that mixed in the crowd talk, in the swell of beer and chatter. Zach watched the lips go feverishly because they moved like pistons, changing from raisins to grapes in the worst kind of talk. He watched the lips, heard the bar squall and thought: "I'll get the parts from this bitch. I will. I'll fix it. And I'll drive straight the fuck away. Directly out until I'm not angry anymore." * * * * The heater of the old car clanked continually and Zach used the radio to ignore it as he drove past the snow-covered fields of early December. He swung the old car into the parking lot of Pete's Tavern, mostly empty now in the early afternoon, and parked beside the phone booth. Leaving the car running, Zach called Shannon on his way out. However, along her street where most houses glowed with some foreshadow of upcoming holiday, where most houses exhibited some specific joys, Shannon's home stood plain, isolated, and undecorated. Inside, the call went unanswered. "Fuck it," said Zach, slamming the phone back in its cradle. He jumped into the clanking car and peeled off, up the mountain pass. The car moved well; it took the incline without fault and braked smoothly along the advancing decline. Zach felt tremendous relief as the car passed each trial and even smiled against the continual clank of the heater, a minor adjustment, easily corrected. Zach's newness, his rebirth with the old car made breathing regular and succinct with driving. Zach breathed away with the car. He rounded the bottom of the decline smoothly and passed the two locusts, still strong, that wedged the tragedy of mother and child a few months earlier. Only then, when he recognized the trees, did Zach remember his unanswered call and the things that he left unsaid.