Leni glanced worriedly outside, half expecting him to materialize.
Mr. Walker grabbed a striped red and yellow and white wool blanket from the back of the sofa and wrapped it around Leni.
“Her arm is broken. She’s bleeding.”
Mr. Walker nodded. Taking Leni’s gloved hand in his own, he pulled her out of the warm house and back out into the frigid cold.
In the garage, his big truck started right up. The heat came on, blanketing the cab, making Leni shiver harder. She couldn’t stop shaking as they drove down the driveway and turned out onto the main road, where wind beat at the windshield and whistled through every crevice in the metal frame.
Tom eased up on the gas; the truck slowed, grumbled, and whined.
“There!” she said, pointing to where they’d gone off the road. As Mr. Walker pulled over to the side, headlights appeared in front of them.
Leni recognized Large Marge’s truck.
“You stay in the truck,” Mr. Walker said.
“No!”
“Stay here.” He grabbed his mesh bag and left the truck, slamming the door behind him.
In the glow of headlights, Leni saw Mr. Walker meet Large Marge in the middle of the road. He dropped his bag, took out some coiled-up rope.
Leni pressed herself to the window, her breath clouding the view. Impatiently she wiped it away.
Mr. Walker tied one end of the rope around a tree and the other end around his own waist in an old-school belay.
With a wave to Large Marge, he lowered himself over the embankment and disappeared.
Leni wrenched the door open and fought the wind, blinded by snow, to cross the road.
Large Marge stood at the edge of the embankment.
Leni peered over the edge, saw broken trees and the bus’s shadowy bulk. She shined her flashlight down but it wasn’t enough light. She heard metal creaking, a thump, and a woman’s scream.
And then … Mr. Walker reappeared in the feeble beam of light, with Mama bound to his side, tied to him.
Large Marge grabbed the rope in her gloved hands, pulled them up, hand over hand, until Mr. Walker stumbled back up onto the road, Mama slumped at his side, unconscious, held up by Mr. Walker’s grip. “She’s in bad shape,” Mr. Walker yelled into the wind. “I’ll take her by boat to the hospital in Homer.”
“What about me?” Leni screamed. They seemed to have forgotten she was there.
Mr. Walker gave Leni one of those you-poor-kid looks Leni knew so well. “You come with me.”
* * *
THE SMALL HOSPITAL waiting room was quiet.
Tom Walker sat beside Leni, his parka puffed up in his lap. First they had driven to Walker Cove, where Mr. Walker had carried Mama down to the dock and placed her gently on the bench seat in his aluminum boat. They had sped around the craggy shoreline to Homer.
At the hospital, Mr. Walker carried Mama up to the front desk. Leni ran along beside, touching Mama’s ankle, her wrist, whatever she could reach.
A Native woman with two long braids sat at the desk, clacking away on a typewriter.
Within moments, a pair of nurses came to take Mama away.
“Now what?” Leni asked.
“Now we wait.”