"Oh, no," Beth said aloud as she pulled the car over to the shoulder of the gravel road. It was getting dark and beginning to rain -- and now there was something seriously wrong with the car. "Probably a flat," she guessed, as she opened the door. Beth got out to look at the tires, getting wet in the process. It was the back right tire -- torn to shreds. There would be no way to make it home in time. Johnny hadn't wanted her to go to her sisters, but this time she begged because her sister was very ill. He had let her go - but only if she promised to be home by nine. And now there was no way. He would be mad, but he'd have to understand, wouldn't he?
If only she had a cell phone she could call him, but she didn't. Beth looked up the road as far as she could and then the other way. Nothing. It was a ten-mile walk back to her sister's house and four miles to town to the nearest phone. Soon it would be so dark that she wouldn't be able to see anything - no time to try to learn how to change a tire. She probably couldn't do it anyway. She wasn't very bright. Johnny had told her often enough. "Too stupid to get out of the rain," is the way he always put it. And there she was standing outside getting soaked to prove it.
Beth got back in the car and brooded. If only she hadn't taken the little detour. Only the locals used the old Parker Road, but it had been so many years since she stood on South Bridge and looked into Miller's Creek. It only added fifteen minutes to the trip and it was barely sprinkling. Johnny would never take her there, and she almost never went anywhere without Johnny. Sometimes it seemed like he didn't want her to have a family or friends or even memories - nothing of which he wasn't the center.
Oh, but it had been nice looking over the rail into that timeless creek again. The mist on her cheeks had taken her back to the innocent days, the hopeful days when she played in the creek with her sister and cousins. Before life got so serious -- before Johnny, before the humiliations, before the beatings.
Beth heard a clap of thunder. She reached over to lock the car doors. Fear was catching up with her. She wasn't sure, though, of what she was more afraid -- being alone out there on the road, or what Johnny would do when she finally made it home. It would be her fault, she was sure of that. And Johnny would be mad after so many hours of not knowing where she was.
There was nothing to do but wait -- she could see that. Surely someone would come by on the way to work in the morning to help her. It would be foolish to go walking alone at night in the rain along a country road. Beth shivered and held her arms tight against her body and thought about her sister. Poor Jean had been more concerned about Beth than herself. She had never told Jean before how Johnny treated her - she never told anyone. She was too ashamed even now, but somehow Jean guessed, because she gave Beth a number to call for "when you finally have enough." She said it was a shelter for "battered women." Beth had protested, denying that Johnny ever beat her. Jean had seen the truth, though. Jean always saw through her.
Beth tried to explain to her sister why Johnny was the way he was -- how he couldn't help it when he got angry, and how sorry he always was afterwards.
When Jean had asked how she could stay with a man who hits her, Beth had said that she loved Johnny and he was trying to change. "He loves me, too," she added.
Beth knew in her heart that they weren't good enough reasons to stay with Johnny, but they were all she had. How could she tell her sister the truth: that she was afraid to leave?
"You deserve better," Jean had said. She had read the fear in Beth's eyes. "You're not helpless, but you have to take action. Keep the number - just in case. Promise?"
Beth had slipped it behind a picture in her wallet. It wouldn't do for Johnny to find it. He was probably worried right now that she had left him. It was her fault, though. She had threatened to go several times -- before she learned that it always meant a beating. There had been nowhere to go though. Her sister had her hands full with her illness and the twins. Their mother was dead and their dad was somewhere in Alaska. It had been three years since anyone got a letter from him. A woman's shelter wouldn't keep her indefinitely, and there was no one else to take her in. Beth couldn't make it on her own. She was too dumb to make a living. She didn't know anything about computers or running a cash register or being a secretary. All she knew how to do was keep house and cook meals the way Johnny liked them.
Beth spent the long night that way, mulling over the way Johnny treated her and the reasons she stayed. She thought about what Johnny would do when she got home. She prayed as she often had for God to change Johnny - to somehow take her troubles away. Beth was stuck in the marriage as surely as she was stuck out there on the road - and there would be hell to pay when she got home.
When the first pink appeared through the trees in the east, hope began to rise. Beth got out of the car and stretched her legs and peered down the road anxious to see a vehicle - anyone to take her to a phone or change the tire. No one appeared, though. Seven, eight, and then nine o'clock came and went and still no one passed by. Didn't anyone use the old Parker Road to go to town any more? Was she going to be stuck out there forever?
Beth got back into the car and thought about walking to town. It was a long way, but at least she would be doing something. She could wait days out here for help. If only she wasn't so helplessly stupid she could change the tire herself.
Her sister's words came back to her, "You're not helpless - but you have to take action." Beth opened the glove compartment. She remembered seeing a manual for the car in there. It wouldn't hurt to see if there were directions in it. Maybe if she studied it carefully, she could figure it out.
The manual was under a stack of maps and receipts, and Beth found the pages that explained in detail how to change a tire. She might as well give it a try. She studied the diagram giving the location of the spare and how to remove it.
Beth found the tools required, and proceeded to follow the directions carefully. Her clothes were muddy and probably ruined by the time she had the wheel jacked up and was loosening the lug nuts as directed, but she was feeling pretty good about herself. She could do this! It took all the strength she had to get the job done, but she did. By noon, she was driving toward town.
Johnny would never believe that she was able to change the tire herself, she thought. She wanted him to be proud of her. That wouldn't be the way it played out, though. He would be sure to say she should have done this or that -- anything but what she did. He'll find a way to make her feel stupid again. She would be lucky if he didn't hit her.
Beth pulled into a 7-11 when she got to the outskirts of town and walked to the public telephone. She pulled a slip of paper out of her wallet and dialed the number her sister had given her. She wasn't helpless. She was taking action.
THE END