Diana Hartwell's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Diana Hartwell had been stuck twenty minutes when she admitted the Lincoln would not rock itself out. The rear tires spun clean holes in the ice. The ditch held the car at a tilt, nose down, the hood already wearing a white cap. Snow came sideways across the windshield in a solid rush. She could not see a fence, a tree line, a mailbox — nothing to walk toward. She had told no one she was driving today. The man she was driving toward, the one who had asked her to marry him three times and gotten yes three times, was expecting her by dark on a road she had left an hour ago, for a smaller road, and a smaller road after that. She shifted into park and climbed out. The wind took the door and slammed it for her. She waded to the trunk. She wanted anything with an edge or a face — a board, a floor mat from the dealer, a bag of sand. The trunk was empty except for the spare and a jack still wired to its bracket. New car. Nothing lived in it yet. She stood in the snow and made herself think. The glove box pamphlet had said chains. She had no chains. It had said a shovel. She had no shovel. It had said carry traction aids. She had carried a purse and a thermos. She got back in and dug through the cabin. Registration. Owner's manual. The unopened pamphlet. Then her knee knocked the driver's floor mat and she looked down. The mat was heavy black rubber, thick, ribbed across the whole face in raised bars. Dealer-issued. Built to hold a boot. She pried it up. The passenger mat came next. She carried both to the rear tires and knelt in the drift piled against the wheel well. Her stockings soaked through at once. She scraped loose snow away with her gloved hands until she reached the glassy ice under the tread. She jammed the driver's mat hard against the back of the right rear tire, ribs up, pressed until it bit. She did the same on the left with the passenger mat. She got behind the wheel. Her hands shook on the column shift. She eased into drive. She did not stomp. She fed the gas the way she fed sugar into coffee, a little, a little more. The tires caught. The rubber gripped the ribs. The Lincoln lurched, climbed an inch, climbed another, and dragged itself up out of the ditch onto the buried road. She braked. She was breathing hard. She was back on the surface, pointed at a wall of white that could have been any direction. Behind her, in the ditch, both floor mats lay chewed and half-buried, already disappearing under new snow. She could not go back for them. She put the car in drive and eased forward into a road she could not see.