Learn English From Short Stories (John Hearon’s Long Walk)
Learn English From Short
Stories (John Hearon’s Long Walk )
It was shortly after midnight on
February 4, 1956, when 38-year-old John Hearon drove his bus out of
the station in Tucumcari, New Mexico. He was starting his regular 226-mile trip
to Amarillo, Texas, and back.
Snow was falling heavily, but Hearon
had made the trip 208 times before without difficulty, and he guessed it would
stop soon. That part of the country seldom had bad storms. The wind was piling
the snow into drifts on the road, however, and Hearon didn’t arrive
in Amarillo until four o’clock in the morning. This was later than usual, but
in plenty of time for the return trip.
He had coffee, checked his passengers
were called to begin the trip to Tucumcari. Nine men and four women, one
carrying a 21-month-old baby, came a board. At 5:30 Hearon was passing
through the deserted, snow-covered city streets. By the time he reached
Highway 66, most of the passengers had begun to doze a little.
The snow and wind were getting
stronger, and the bus moved along at 20 miles an hour, sometimes less, until
nine o’clock. “Then,” Hearon says, “I started to ease the bus through a drift
that was deeper than I thought – actually, it was four feet deep. I tried to
back out, but the wheels skidded and the rear end of the bus slipped
off the road. We were stuck. The men got out and tried to push, but the bus
wouldn’t budge.”
Highway 66
Neither Hearon nor the passengers were
immediately worried. Highway 66, the main east-west road through the Southwest,
received more care and attention than any other road in the whole area. Help
would come, perhaps within minutes.
Hearon and his passengers could not
know that a blizzard had hit Highway 66 and was making snow-clearing machinery
useless. The lives of 300 persons would be lost before the storm was over.
Hearon turned on the motor from time to
time to generate warm air through the bus, and everyone accepted the
delay with good nature. One man said, “I imagine they’re talking about us on
the radio.” He was right: the local radio was soon reporting a stranded
bus, condition of the passengers unknown.
As they waited, Hearon began to feel
uneasy. By two o’clock in the afternoon he realized that help might not come in
time to prevent grief.
The snow was still falling, and outside
the temperature was somewhere between 10 and 20 degrees. About one quarter of
his gasoline remained; when that was gone the bus would become an icy tomb.
The little food still remaining was saved for the baby.
The best source of food and gas,
Hearon decided, was Glenrio, a tiny town on the Texas-New Mexico border, about
nine miles to the west. Hearon a husky man, thought he could get
there in three or four hours.
Hearon’s Plan
“I’m going up the road,” he announced
to the passengers, “to see if we can get some gas and food sent to us. The men
can start the motor whenever it gets too cold here; the heater will keep you
warm.”
Wearing only his regular uniform,
street shoes and gloves, Hearon stepped out into the snow and wind. He
hadn’t gone more than 200 yards when he forced back to the bus: the wind was
giving him a terrible pain in his right ear. He wound a piece of cloth around
his head to cover his ears and neck.
Starting again, he held the top of his jacket with
one hand while he breathed inside it. He kept the other hand in a pocket. When
the unprotected hand became icy cold, he put it in a pocket and took hold of
his jacket top with the other hand.
Deep Snow
The unbroken whiteness of the snow made
him squint. Sometimes the drifts covered long stretches of the road. He
could find his way only by the telephone poles beside the road. He often
slipped, fell and hurt his knees.
Near dusk he came to a stranded car. A
couple and their child inside asked him to come in and rest. Hearon sat down
and lighted a cigarette with shaking hands. He was exhausted; his eyes ached.
The couple urged him to remain in the
safety of the car, but Hearon said his passengers, especially the baby, needed
help; he had to try to get it. After five minutes he went on.
While Hearon struggled through the deep
snow, the officials at the bus station in Amarillo, telephoning stations along
the route, discovered where the bus was stuck, but travel on the roads was
impossible. A helicopter was ordered to the scene, but weather
conditions forced it back to the airfield.
By seven the wind was blowing colder
and sharper, and Hearon – after fighting through the storm for five hours –
wanted to stop. But he knew that he couldn’t; he would die from the cold.
With darkness, he had more trouble
staying on the road. “Sometimes I’d wander off the road and run into a bush or
a fence. Then I'd move back. The only thing on my mind was Glenrio – I kept
thinking about hot coffee.
“Then about nine o’clock my eyes felt
strange. There was a beacon north of Glenrio I’d been using as a
guide, but suddenly I stopped seeing it. I couldn’t understand why until I
turned my head and saw it with my left eye. Then I knew my right eye had gone
blind. I put my hand to it, and it felt like a piece of ice.”
Shortly after that Hearon fell
suddenly, for no obvious reason. He pushed himself up. The sight of
his left eye was growing less clear. He fell again. He wanted to lie there, but
once more he struggled to his feet. Realizing he might fall asleep, he began to slap his
face hard. The blows on his face made him feel better.
Lights Ahead
A little after ten his left eye saw
tiny spots of light which he knew were in Glenrio. He hadn’t eaten in more than
24 hours, and all he could think of was hot coffee. He forced himself forward.
At last he reached the first building, a gas station.
“All I could see was a terrible white glare that
hurl my eye,” Hearon says. “But I knew it was a gas station, and it didn’t have
coffee.”
He remembered that the next building,
about 200 yards up the road, was a diner. Coffee. Turning from the safety
to the gas station, he pushed on toward the next lights.
A final Effort
Halfway there he fell sank into the
deep snow. He raised into the deep snow. He raised himself a little, then
dropped back again. He got to his knees for a few seconds, pushed up and fell.
His falls packed the snow in a small circle around him. With his last strength
he stood up straight and forced his legs to support him. But they were unable
to carry him any farther.
He knew he couldn’t stand many more
seconds. When he dropped again, it might be his last fall. He tried to call for
help, but his voice wouldn’t rise to a shout. Searching his mind for a means of
getting aid, he took a deep breath and whistled – through his teeth. He waited,
no longer feeling pain or cold. There was no answer. Taking another breath, he
managed to whistle two more times.
A young man sitting in the diner heard
the final whistle, opened the door and peered into the snow. He could
see nothing, but he called into the darkness: “Do you need help?”
“Yes,” Hearon said, but only a little
above a whisper. “I can’t talk.”
“Keep talking and I’ll find you,” the
voice answered.
Hearon collapsed as the
rescuer arrived. The young man shouted, and two other men ran to help him drag
Hearon into Joe Brownlee’s gasoline station. “He looked nearly dead,” says
Brownlee. “His face was blue, his eyes closed, his lips swollen. I’ve
never seen anyone one look like that.”
A Long Battle
It was 11:15; Hearon had fought through
the storm for almost nine hours. The distance from the bus to Glenrio was
nearly 12 miles.
Suffering from cold, shock and weariness,
Hearon was trembling so much at first he couldn’t say a word. “But when he was
able to talk,” recalls one of those present, “he told us about the
passengers and the baby. Even in shock his mind was clear about bus. He
described exactly where it was, how many passengers were in it, how long they
had been without food, how much gas there was when he left.”
Leaving Hearon in the care of his
helpers. Brownlee put chains on the wheels of his truck, loaded in food,
blackest and gas, and began forcing his way through the snow on Highway 66. He
reached the stranded passengers waiting on the bus at two o’clock in the
morning.
The motor of the bus was still running,
and the passengers were warm and in good spirits. A doctor who examined the
passengers later found no ill effects from the long wait. Instead of a disaster,
there was nothing more than a long, uncomfortable delay because of Hearon’s
courage and determined efforts.
Hearon recovered fast. After four days
in the hospital and six days’ rest at home, he resumed his nightly
Tucumcari-Amarillo trip. As he climbed aboard his bus one night, a friend asked
if he would prefer another kind of work after bad experience in the big
snowstorm.
Hearon looked surprised. “Why no,” he
said quickly. “Bus-driving is my job.”
Vocabulary
Bus, a large motor vehicle for carrying
passengers
Drifts, snow lying in deep piles. Wind
blows the snow to form the drifts.
Aboard, on or into a vehicle
Deserted, without the people who are
sometime there
Doze, sleep lightly
Skidded, slipped to one side
Budge, move
Generate, produce; bring into existence
Radio, a means of receiving sound sent
through the air
Grief, deep sorrow or suffering
Tomb, a grave or place for the dead
Gas, short form of gasoline (used to
make buses and other vehicles run)
Husky, big and strong
Gloves, covering for the hands
Jacket, a short coat
Squint, look through partly closed eyes
Exhausted, very tired
Ached, were in continuous pain
Helicopter, a kind of flying machine
Beacon, a strong light used for guiding
or warning
Obvious, easily seen or understood
Slap, strike with the open hand
Glare, very bright light
Diner, a small restaurant
Peered, looked closely
Collapsed, fell down; lost all strength
and could not go on
Swollen, increased in size; much larger
than usual
Weariness, tiredness
Recalls, remembers
Truck, a motor vehicle for carrying
heavy loads
Disaster, sudden event that causes
great trouble or suffering
Resumed, began again
Comments
Post a Comment