Short Stories Vol 1 by Damon Knight

Author:Damon Knight [Knight, Damon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1930936060
Publisher: Fictionwise Publications
Published: 2000-11-30T21:00:00+00:00

La Ronde

HE FELT that he was gone a long time, and when he came back from wherever it was, he found himself sitting on a stone, gazing at a wrecked automobile that was tilted upside down against a tree. One of the front wheels was lazily turning. The door on the driver’s side hung open; below it the whole top of the car had been crushed flat, and it seemed to him a miracle that anyone had got out alive.

There was a buzzing in his head, but he stood up and went closer to the wreck to see if anyone needed help. The car was empty. What could have become of the driver?

For that matter, what was he himself doing here? Perhaps it would come back to him in a minute, when he was rested. He went all around the car with a kind of dumb obstinacy, through brush that whipped his legs under his coat. No one was there.

Above him there was a broad muddy swath, littered with glass, bits of chrome, and more incongruous things—scattered pieces of white tissue, sunglasses, a pack of cigarettes. He climbed, helping himself up from one sapling to another, until he reached the highway, where he stood looking uncertainly around him. There were long black skid marks on the macadam. The road made a curve here, and on the opposite side the slope resumed, rising another hundred feet against the gray sky. It was very cold.

He peered down the slope again, thinking that from this elevation he might be able to see the body of the driver, but he could barely make out the wreck itself through the screen of branches.

Although he could not think very clearly because of the continuous dull buzzing in his head, he knew that he ought to report the accident, and he trudged out around the curve in the direction the car had been going. The road straightened here for a distance of half a mile or so; it was empty and gray under the sky, with the gloomy forested slope on one side and the ravine on the other. There were no highway signs, no billboards, nothing to tell him where he might be.

The road ran on, empty and cold under the gray sky. The forested hill was behind him now and on either side were bare fields. A few flakes of snow came drifting along; they melted at once on the highway. Then the snow came more thickly and made a white film in which he left a trail of glistening footprints. For some reason this alarmed him, but when he looked back after a few minutes, he saw that the prints were rapidly being covered.

He went on, with the snow whipping into his eyes, until he came to a private road with a chain across it. He ducked under the chain. The road went up steeply, covered with dead leaves and fallen branches. Over the crest of the rise, it ran straight between fields grown up with tall weeds to a white house on a hill.

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