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The Mountains Of Nebraska by Troy C Johnson Want to use your Kindle 2? Shop by title or by author in Kindle format. Project BookRead and Father Robert Aloysius Peter Darin have been given authorization to distribute and/or publish this by the author as listed in the first two lines of this text. This work may *NOT* be used for sale and/or redistrubition in any form/nature known or unknown at this time or in the furture without consent of the author. Project BookRead's authorization for this text does *NOT* extend to anyone person and/or company outside its bounds. This text may be shared as long as it is in its original unaltered form as listed in Project BookRead's stack. This text is solely copyrighten to the original author as listed above. The day that changed how I looked at life started out like any other day. I had got up went to class. I had one test in my Criminal Procedure class and spent some time in the student center. In the afternoon I went to work at the library. Work went poorly. For the fifth time that week I got into an argument with my supervisor. I left work at 4:30 feeling tense and unhappy. When I got home I decided that I would go for a jog to burn up the bad chemicals in my blood. No matter how tense I ever am a good run just takes all the tension out of my body. I pulled on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and donned my running shoes. I was feeling better already. Putting on lighter and cooler clothes seemed to take away some of the tension right away. As I stepped out of the house onto the front porch a quick look around reminded me what a beautiful day it was. It was late summer in Nebraska and the temperature was just right. Just warm enough to let you wear shorts comfortably and just cool enough to make a light jog pleasant. The sun was starting to get lower on the horizon. In about three hours night would be upon us. I started running slowly trying to find a comfortable pace. My body was really ready for a run. My legs seemed to pull me along as my feet pounded down the suburb drive. I was headed out of the housing development into the corn fields that surrounded it. We lived on the outskirts of the city. In Nebraska where the city stops the corn begins. As I left the housing development running away from the city the road went from pavement to gravel. My feet made a rhythmic crunching sound as they hit the gravel under my feet. Small swirls of dust were kicked up from the dry road as I ran down it. I was running into the wind which was a light breeze that day. It felt cool and comfortable going around my running body. About five feet back from the road on each side was a rickety barb wire fence. Sections of the fence had not seen repair in a long time. Behind the fence began the rows of corn which were about six feet tall and bright green during this time of the year. On the road side of the fence was a wide strip of prairie grass. The grass was light brown in color and stood about knee high. The breeze slowly moved the grass and corn around like a wave. The rhythmic pounding of my feet on the dusty road and the beauty of the day put me into an almost hypnotic state. It was taking no work to run and it felt like I could keep running forever. My bad thoughts and problems of the day had drifted away and were replaced by the open Nebraska plains that stretched out in front of me. I was running up a section of the road with a slight incline. The road rose and fell about ten feet from it's highest to lowest points. The topography of the plains would not allow any knoll to peak it's head up too high. I did not know that at the top of this knoll I would see the object that would change my life forever. As I crested the hill I looked down the road. At the bottom of the hill was a sign that showed a bent arrow, warning drivers of the sharp curve. And then I saw it. There was a car sitting in the corn field. The tall corn arched over the car like a canopy. Behind the car were the remnants of a barb wire fence and torn up grass. The fence had slowed the car up but a small ditch behind the fence had brought the car to a complete halt. The hood was buckled up and the bumper on one side was crushed in. The sun glinted off a spider web pattern in the windshield. When I saw that my heart raced. Who ever crashed the car had not had their seat belt on or they wouldn't have hit the windshield. Any crash can be fatal over ten miles an hour when you aren't buckled in. I ran down the hill and up to the car. As I neared the car I could see a shape huddled over the steering wheel. I raced up to the driver's door and tried to pull it open. The door opened about one foot and then got stuck in the mud. The car had sunk down into the soft ground. Hunched over the steering wheel was a twenty two or twenty three year old woman. There was a gash above her right eye where she hit the windshield. Blood poured freely out of the gash and covered her face. I carefully lifted her up and turned her body so she would fit through the partially open door. I strained under her weight. She couldn't have weighed much more than 110 or 120 but dead weight is always hard to lift. As I pulled her out of the car some college text books that had ended up on the floor had been pulled out of the car by her feet. The books made a squish sound as they fell into the soft mud. I carried her out of the ditch and past the barb wire fence. I laid her down in the grass on what looked like a comfortable spot. I knew I had to stop the bleeding from her head. I ran back the car and tore open the back door. Lying on the seat was a gym bag that I had noticed when I pulled her out of the car. I unzipped it quickly to check that it contained the clothes that I thought it would contain. Sure enough, there were clothes in the bag, a neatly folded blue T-shirt, a pair of black spandex running shorts, some white socks, and a pair of very nice running shoes. The clothes smelled of laundry detergent so I knew they were still clean. I ran back to where she lay and dropped the bag beside her. I knelt down and pulled the blue t-shirt out of the bag. I crumpled it up into a ball and used it to wipe the blood off her face. The cut in her head did not look to bad. It was about two inches long but did not look overly deep. I took one of her clean socks out of the bag and laid it across the gash. I then took the spandex shorts out of the bag. I took one of the legs of the shorts and pulled it over her forehead. The leg of the spandex shorts were smaller than her head so the flexible material gripped her head like a scuba hood. The spandex held the sock in place and applied pressure to the wound. As far as I could tell the pressure from the spandex had stopped or seriously slowed the bleeding. She was still unconscious and her skin looked kind of pasty. In the places where her long brown hair stuck out from under her make shift cap it stuck to her bloodied face. I knew that she needed more medical attention than I was able to provide. I glanced down the road and could see the sub division off in the distance. It was about a ten minute run to the nearest farmhouse. I knew I had to go for help but I was uncomfortable about leaving her lying there alone. I knew that I had no choice but to go for help so I got up and started running in the direction of the nearest farmhouse. I was still filled with adrenaline and my legs flew like those of a madman. I was running at a speed that before today I would not have thought possible. Before I arrived at the accident I had passed a farmhouse about a mile back. Normally it took me around ten minutes to cover that mile but today I covered it in just about six minutes. I tore into the front yard of the farmhouse. I was yelling and waving my arms. "There's been a car wreck and I need to get an ambulance." A farmer of about forty stepped out onto the porch and gave me a bemused look. "Hurry, Hurry, I yelled, call an ambulance there's been a car accident and a woman is hurt." I wildly pointed down the road to where the accident had occurred. The farmer responded by tossing a set of keys at me. "Here take my pickup truck over there and go back and watch over her. I'll call an ambulance." He turned to go into the house to make the call. "Thanks" I yelled, as I turned and ran over to the truck. I started it up, let out the clutch, and tore out of the driveway. It was a rough ride back. Not only was I worried about the woman lying beside the road but I was not used to a stick shift and the truck lurched unhappily every time I shifted. At the speed I was going it only took about two minutes to get back to the scene of the accident. I crested the hill where I had first seen the car and quickly pulled over. I hopped out of the truck and ran over to where she lay in the grass. She still seemed to be unconscious. I was happy to note that it looked like she had not lost any more blood out of her head. I knelt down beside her and cradled her crudely bandaged head in my arms. The touch of another person seemed to bring her around. With a low groan and a good amount of effort she blinkingly opened her eyes. You could tell from her eyes that she was confused and disoriented. "Your going to be okay." I said, hopefully convincingly. "What happened?" ,she asked in a low groan. "Your car went off the road and you banged your head on the windshield. You have a small gash on your forehead but I think you are going to be okay." "I'm scared, her voice strained out, I feel cold and weak. I feel like I'm going to die." "SShhhh, I said, your going to be just fine. Just rest and an ambulance is going to be here any minute." She closed her eyes as if to rest. Then about ten seconds later her eyes sprung open. She paused as if to say something, then did. "Do you believe in God?", she asked weakly. I didn't know how to answer. I didn't really know what I believed in at that point but I didn't think this was a time to bring up the grim concept of atheism. "Umm....... Yes." "So do I but I'm scared I am going to die and not go to heaven because I don't have enough faith." Her voice was sounding scared and seemed to be getting weaker and weaker. "I believe and I don't believe. I worried that I don't have faith. And worrying about faith even makes me more worried. Because if I had faith I wouldn't have to worry about faith." Her sentence was jumbled and complex but seemed to make a certain amount of sense. "Don't worry, I said, you are going to be just fine and I am sure you have plenty of faith." My words didn't seem to reassure her very much. With a look of concern still on her face she asked, "How would I know if I have faith?" Butterflies kicked around in my stomach. Here was a dying woman lying in my arms. That was hard enough to deal with but now she was asking me tough questions I didn't think I could answer. My mind hunted for an answer and I said, "I don't think that I can answer that. That is a question that I think only God could answer." This didn't seem to satisfy her, it seemed like she wanted an answer from me, as if I would know. To change the subject I asked her, "What's your name? I have been holding you in my arms here and I don't even know your name." That comment brought a light smile to her face and she said, "Susan." Then almost as an after thought she said, "Susan..... Susan McMadlin." After she spoke she coughed, a raspy cough that seemed to rack her whole body. She coughed again. This time it was more of a wheeze. A small trickle of blood came out of the corner of her mouth. I froze, fear tore threw me. I had seen enough TV to know that blood coming out of someone's mouth usually meant the end. If I remembered right it was a sign for internal bleeding. Her tongue came out and she licked away the blood at the corner of her mouth. "Now I am really scared." she said. Her voice was very weak and you could hear the pain in it. I could see in her eyes that she was scared and I had a gut feeling that she was going to start asking hard questions again. "What's God say?" she asked. "What's God say?" I echoed. "Yeah, you know, what's God say about faith in the bible. You said only God could answer that. And the bible is supposed to be God's word." Oh my gosh I thought. What does she think I am some kind of preacher or something. I didn't want to tell her that I hadn't read more than ten pages bible in my whole entire life. I didn't know if I should but I paraphrased part of the ten pages I did read. "Doesn't it say something like if you had the faith the size of a mustard seed you could say, "move" to a mountain and it would move." After I spoke I realized that was probably the last thing I should have said to a dying woman. I knew that she would say to me. "I can't move mountains so I must not have enough faith." But she didn't speak. She lay in my arms growing limper by the moment with a look of deep thought in her eyes. Suddenly her eyes brightened and she was looking past me. I thought the ambulance must have arrived and she was looking over my shoulder at it. I turned my head to see what she was looking at and I saw the sight of my life. There towering out the flat horizon less plains was a mountain thrusting itself twenty to thirty thousand feet into the air. It was snowcapped and so large that it seemed to consume the whole horizon. I gasped in air with shock and mumbled "Oh my gosh!" several times. I looked at Susan. She was still staring past me at the mountain a look of total peace in her eyes. "You did that?" I asked and then felt silly for asking. "Obviously you have faith." I stuttered in amazement of the person who was dying in my arms. Then being the self centered person I am I started thinking only of myself. "How can I have faith now? "I asked. "I know there must be a God because there is a mountain in Nebraska that wasn't there one minute ago. How can I have faith when I have proof there is a God? Is faith possible when you know that there must be a God?" Susan smiled lightly and gripped my hand with all the strength she had. "Don't worry." she whispered "You have your own mountains to move." With that statement she breathed a quiet sigh that I knew was the life leaving her. She died in my arms, her body going limp. I took my hand and carefully closed her eyes that were still staring with wonder at the mountain." I turned to look at the mountain again myself. As I looked it began to slowly fade. In a matter of seconds the mountain had faded away and was no longer there. As the last glimmering image of the mountain faded away the ambulance came over the hill. The paramedics hopped out of the ambulance and ran over to me. I looked up at them and said quietly, "She's dead." They took her out of my arms and but her onto a stretcher. I got up stiffly and looked around. My mind was numb with everything that had just happened. I slowly turned and started to walk towards the setting sun. One of the paramedics yelled out to me. "Hey, where you going? We can give you a ride back." I looked back at him and said the only thing that would come to mind. "I'm going to find the mountains I have to move." With that I turned and slowly headed down the road into the sunset my feet kicking up small swirls of dust. 
Top tags: car, faith, road, running, feet, eyes, god, head, arms, fence
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