At six o'clock half the town was on the green under the snow: ghosts in bedsheets over parkas, four Ghostbusters with vacuum cleaners strapped to their backs, a boy dressed as a Rubik's Cube who could not turn his head. The fire department's pumper truck led the way with someone on the roof playing "Thriller" on a boom box, and behind it, walking very carefully in the snow in white high-tops, with an amber light going off-on-off on the roof of her cab and a coat hanger hook swinging behind her, came a tow truck.
The town lost its mind. Georgie walked the whole length of the green with her chin up and her face blazing, and at the end of it she came straight to where Vivienne and Luc were standing under the bandstand roof with the snow coming down past the light, and said, "Did you see? Did you see it flash?" and Luc picked her up, costume and all, and held her up over his head, and the light went off-on-off in the falling snow, and Vivienne thought that if she lived to be a hundred she would not see anything more beautiful.
Then the scanner on Luc's belt went off.
It was a little Radio Shack scanner the size of a paperback, and the voice that came out of it cut through the cheering like a knife. It was Pelkey, the county deputy, out of breath.
"Coldwater base, Coldwater base, any units. I've got a vehicle off the road on the Gap Road, the switchbacks below the turnout. Out-of-state plates. Caller says his wife is in labor. Repeat, woman in labor. I'm tied up on Route 4 at Sherburne with a tractor-trailer jackknifed across both lanes, I can't get through and neither can the Rutland ambulance. Is anybody out there? Luc, you out there?"
Luc set Georgie down. He had the handset of the portable radio off his belt before her feet touched the ground.
"Pelkey, it's Luc, I copy, I'm on the green. I'll take the wrecker up."
"Gap Road's bad, Luc. They said it's greasy as a skillet up there."
"I know what it is."
He looked at Vivienne once, quickly, and she saw on his face something she had not seen before and understood at once. He was twenty-eight years old and it was February and he was on Interstate 89 by the exit for Sharon with the snow coming in sideways. Then it was gone, and he was running, across the green and up the road to the garage with his boots slipping, and a minute later they heard the big Ford diesel turn over and roar, and saw the wrecker's lights swing out of the lot and go north up Route 100 toward the Gap, amber and red in the snow, until the snow swallowed them.
Vivienne and Georgie went to the garage and turned on the base station CB in the office, and Georgie took off the tow truck and sat in the swivel chair with her hands in her lap, and they listened.
For twenty minutes there was nothing but static and the chatter of the deputy on Route 4. Then the CB said, "Base, this is Big Tow."
Georgie had the handset before Vivienne could move. "Big Tow, this is base, go ahead."