d the curve ahead, a car careened wide over the white line. His
mother reached for him, his father fought the wheel to avoid the crash.
Jimmy Holden both heard and felt the sharp _Bang!_ as the right front
tire went. The steering wheel snapped through his father's hands by half
a turn. There was a splintering crash as the car shattered its way
through the retaining fence, then came a fleeting moment of breathless
silence as if the entire universe had stopped still for a heartbeat.

Chaos! His mother's automatic scream, his father's oath, and the rending
crash split the silence at once. The car bucked and flipped, the doors
were slammed open and ripped off against a tree that went down. The car
leaped in a skew turn and began to roll and roll, shedding metal and
humans as it racketed down the ravine.

Jimmy felt himself thrown free in a tumbleturn that ended in a heavy
thud.

* * * * *

When breath and awareness returned, he was lying in a depression filled
with soft rotting leaves.

He was dazed beyond hurt. The initial shock and bewilderment oozed out of
him, leaving him with a feeling of outrage, and a most peculiar sensation
of being a spectator rather than an important part of the violent drama.
It held an air of unreality, like a dream that the near-conscious sleeper
recognizes as a dream and lives through it because he lacks the conscious
will to direct it.

Strangely, it was as if there were three or more of him all thinking
different things at the same time. He wanted his mother badly enough to
cry. Another part of him said that she would certainly be at his side if
she were able. Then a third section of his confused mind pointed out that
if she did not come to him, it was because she herself was hurt deeply
and couldn't.

A more coldly logical portion of his mind was urging him to get up and
_do_ something about it. They had passed a telephone booth on the
highway; lying there whimpering wasn't doing anybody any good. This
logical part of his confused mind did not supply the dime for the
telephone slot nor the means of scaling the heights needed to insert
the dime in the adult-altitude machine.

Whether the dazzle of mental activity was serial or simultaneous isn't
important. The fact is that it was completely disorganized as to plan
or program, it leaped from one subject to another until he heard the
scrabble and scratch of someone climbing down the side of the ravine.