It had cut a destructive path through at least thirty yards of corn before the front end crumpled against the harder-packed earth. The hood was buckled upward, steam hissing from the ruined engine, and as Marcus watched in horror, he saw the first flicker of flame underneath the chassis. Inside the car, visible through the spiderwebbed windshield, was a man slumped over the steering wheel. Blood ran down the side of his face from a gash near his temple.
Marcus didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think about the corn getting crushed or the lawsuit that might follow or any of the hundred practical concerns that would have been reasonable to consider. He just ran toward the burning car. The driver’s side door was jammed. Marcus yanked on it twice before giving up and looking around wildly for something, anything.
He spotted a rock the size of his fist half-buried in the dirt, grabbed it, and slammed it into the driver’s side window. The glass shattered on the second hit, and Marcus reached through, ignoring the cuts opening on his forearm, fumbling for the door release. The door groaned open. The man inside was young, maybe thirty, wearing jeans and a button-down shirt, breathing but unconscious.
Marcus unclipped the seatbelt and hauled the man out, draping him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The man was heavier than he looked, dead weight, and Marcus’s legs burned as he stumbled backward, away from the car. He made it maybe twenty yards before the gas tank exploded.
The blast wave hit Marcus from behind, hot and violent, and he threw himself forward over the unconscious man, shielding him with his own body as burning debris rained down around them. A piece of flaming metal landed in the corn three feet away, and within seconds the dry stalks caught fire. Marcus watched, his heart sinking into his boots, as flames raced through his field.
The corn was tinder dry from weeks of heat, and the fire spread with terrifying speed, jumping from row to row, consuming everything. He could already see that he was going to lose at least a third of the field, maybe more, and with it any hope of making the mortgage payment or sending Alicia to college in the fall. But the man on the ground beside him was breathing. That was something.
Marcus felt his chest tighten, felt something that might have been tears or might have been just sweat burning in his eyes, and he made himself look away from the burning field. He bent down, hoisted the stranger onto his shoulders again, and started walking toward the house. Behind him, everything he’d worked for turned to ash and smoke, but his hands stayed steady and his steps stayed sure because saving a life, he told himself, saving a life was more important than corn. It had to be.
By the time Marcus got the stranger back to the house and laid him on the living room couch, the man was starting to stir. Marcus called the local doctor, old Dr. Patterson, who delivered Alicia seventeen years ago, and the doctor arrived twenty minutes later in his pickup truck, black bag in hand. Patterson examined the stranger carefully, checking his pupils, testing his reflexes, cleaning and bandaging the head wound.