The Darcy & Flora Boxed Set by Blanche Day Manos

Author:Blanche Day Manos [Manos, Blanche Day]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pen-L Publishing
Published: 2015-12-11T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

My mother dropped to her knees. “Oh my Lord, Darcy.” She grabbed my arm with fingers that felt like steel bands. “There’s a man under there. Our chimney fell on somebody. Who is it? What was he doing here? We’ve got to get him out from under that thing and to the hospital.”

Surely Mom and I were caught in some sort of a dream from which we’d soon awaken. The downed tree, the toppled chimney, and now the partially hidden man under a pile of bricks seemed like last night’s nightmares merging with reality. I knelt beside my mother.

“Yes, we need to get him out and we’ll have to have some help to do that, but I really don’t think there’s anything a doctor could do for him.”

The upper half of the body lay hidden under the broken chimney. There was no way two women could lift that pile of bricks.

Surprisingly, the cell phone in my pocket worked and my numb fingers punched in 911. Even more surprisingly, after only two rings, a gravelly voice answered. Roy Peel, Mom’s neighbor who owned all kinds of farm equipment, was manning the phone.

“Roy, we’ve got an emergency here. Our chimney fell on somebody; I don’t know who, and we can’t move the bricks and stuff off him. We need an ambulance and probably we need Grant, too. Hurry, please.”

“Right. Help is on the way, Darcy, but it may take a while for the sheriff to get there. That quake might have downed some trees across the road.”

Mom looked up at me as I ended the phone conversation. “Darcy, go check in the house. I’ll stay here beside this poor soul. I couldn’t make it inside anyway; my legs are too shaky.”

My legs weren’t in the best working order either and my hand, as I patted her shoulder, shook like the oak leaves above us. “I’ll hurry, Mom.”

I dreaded what I might find inside. Another dead body? Had the house been damaged to the point that it would topple over on us? Astonishingly, except for minor damage, everything in the house seemed to be okay and no one else, alive or dead, was in sight. Some small glasses in the china cabinet lay in shards on the floor and the big Monet print of spring violets that had hung in the dining room for years lay face down on the table. The quake had tumbled cans of food onto the floor but these things were the only visible damages. Possible structural harm to the interior walls, plumbing, and heating, would have to wait for a more experienced eye than mine.

I ran back to the yard. Mom still sat beside the pile of bricks and mortar. My nerves were jumping so that I could not sit still so I began picking up and tossing broken bricks and glass out of the path leading to the front gate.

“I hear them coming,” Mom said. A distant wail grew closer. The ambulance stopped in front of the gate, its siren moaning into silence.

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