One Mississippi by Mark Childress Page B

against the edge of the sidewalk. She looked up at the dark sky.
    “Oh God,” Tim said, “oh my God.” He tromped the gas, throwing me back in my seat. We flew away faster than the speed of light.

4
    “W HAT ARE YOU DOING? She’s hurt! Turn around and go back!”
    Tim tromped the accelerator. “Shit shit
shit!
”
    “Tim! We gotta go back and help her!”
    “We can’t do that,” he said in a strangled voice.
    “Well you can’t just leave her there, are you crazy? She’s hurt!” The big Buick flew over the railroad tracks — I swear all four wheels left the ground. “Tim, I mean it, we have to go back!”
    He turned, his eyes cold and gleaming — the eyes of somebody I didn’t recognize. “Would you shut your damn mouth?”
    “All right — stop the car. Let me out!”
    “We’re going to get help, okay?” he yelled. “We’re gonna get her some help. I’m
thinking!
Would you shut up and let me think?”
    “It was an accident, an
accident!
It is not our fault, please turn around and go back.”
    “You jerked the wheel!” he cried. “Why the hell did you do that?”
    “Stop the car. Stop it now!”
    After everything that happened, “Nights in White Satin” was
still
playing on the radio — or was it playing again? The guy was reciting the portentous spoken-word part, “breathe deep the colors of the night” or whatever it was. I kept seeing Arnita with the dress wrapped around her. Her head resting against the concrete edge. The rear wheel of the bicycle lazily spinning.
    Tim said, “Okay. We’ll find a phone and call somebody.”
    “Good. Good idea. Where’s a phone?” We zoomed past Buddy’s Bait and the Gibson’s Discount. I pointed to a phone booth glowing at the edge of the road by the Pic-N-Pay. “Who do we call, the police, the hospital, what?”
    The Buick’s tires crunched on gravel. “Nights in White Satin” was rising to its pounding conclusion. He switched off the engine.
    “I’ll do it,” he said. “You’re hysterical. Stay in the car.”
    “Would you
hurry!
” I cried.
    He walked around the back of his father’s car and squatted by the bumper to check for damage.
    I ran to the phone booth, picked up the receiver, and dialed 0. It rang twice. I heard Tim running behind me and then he was on me, wrestling the phone away. “Yes operator, hello?” he said. “I, uhm, listen, we’re here in Minor, we need to report an accident. A black girl’s been hurt. She fell off her bike. An accident, yeah, can you send an ambulance — Sorry? Uhm, sure — Barnett Street, like three blocks to the, to the west of Minor High School. What’s that?” He paused. “Uhm, I don’t know.” He hung up.
    His eyes came around to me. “Think they can trace that call?”
    “How should I know?”
    “Get back in the car.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “I’ll take you home, and then I’m going home. We have to forget this ever happened.”
    “Tim. We have to go back. Or it looks like we did something really wrong.”
    “We left the scene,” he said, checking the rearview.
    “Look, we go back right now,” I proposed, “we tell the truth. She ran into us, she fell off her bike, you freaked out and drove off, we called an ambulance and came back. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
    “What do you mean
I
freaked out? You’re the one who grabbed the damn wheel.”
    Terrible, what fear can do to a boy. Fear can take a perfectly good boy like my best friend Tim Cousins and turn him into this shaky pale guy, unnerved but weirdly composed, his eyes spinning.
    I was scared too. Oh yes. I knew I should march back to that pay phone, call the police, and tell them the truth. I thought about doing that, but instead I got back in the car.
    Tim started the engine. “There’s not a scratch on that bumper,” he said. “Now listen to me. I can’t explain it right now, but I can
not
get involved with the police, okay? Don’t ask why. Just trust me.” He started the engine. “We