Free Twenty Grand by Rebecca Curtis Page B

halfway down the mountain she’d been thrown from her sled. She thought she’d hit something. I nodded, though I couldn’t think what she might have hit. Her face was oozing the tiniest pricks of blood, as if from a cheese grater, and it made me nervous so I took her hand. “Don’t worry,” I said. “It usually disappears.” But when we reached the EMT shack the EMT took one look and called an ambulance.
    Jacques held a meeting. Most likely, he said, the accident had been caused by a rock in the track. This was an unforeseeable and bizarre circumstance. He was doing everything in his power to help the woman, he said. She was in the best hospital. She was comfortable. In a day she’d be able to go back to her job. There was no problem. However, to prevent future bizarre events, we would now wipe the track down twice in the morning, instead of once, and twice again in the afternoon.
    Jacques said all this, but he didn’t sound sure of it. He looked as though he hadn’t slept.
    He cleared his throat. The potential complication, he said, was a lawsuit. But he had visited the woman in the hospital, he had promised to pay for the surgery she’d need once her face healed, and she had said that she wouldn’t sue. And he believed her. Did we know why?
    Someone suggested that it was his charm.
    â€œCome on,” Jacques said. “I’m not that charming. Look at my face. See this face?” He gestured. His face was sweaty and red. “It’s an ugly face,” he said.
    Someone said, “It’s not like she was a movie star.”
    The guy who’d said it was a tall, sarcastic redhead who’d once, as a joke, asked me when I was going to go out with him. I’d treasured the question even though he’d walked off before I could answer. Now Jacques stared at him. The guy stared back. “I don’t care,” Jacques said. “And I don’t want to hear anyone say that again.”
    â€œIt’s no one’s fault,” someone said. “It was an act of God.”
    Jacques spat on the floor. “It wasn’t an act of God.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    He stared at us incredulously. “Because it was a rock. In the track.”
    No one said anything else.
    He sighed. Then he put on his baseball cap. “This woman works at the Kmart,” he said. “She lives in a trailer, she doesn’t have a washer and dryer, and she’s not going to sue because she’s from New Hampshire. She’s a local.” He wiped his forehead. “Locals don’t sue,” he said. “It’s those bastards from Massachusetts that sue.”
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    T WO NIGHTS LATER , the woman was on TV. Except for holes for her eyes and mouth, her face was a swath of white cloth. She was sitting on a brown couch with her hands in her lap. The deflated folds of her stomach slumped over her jeans. She told the interviewer that her life would never be the same. The interviewer asked her if she was planning to sue. At first, she didn’t answer. She just sniffed a lot. Then she said, “What do you think?” Then she said some things about how her children would look at her, then she started bawling and they cut the tape.
    My father shook his head. He said that it was a shame. He said that he’d always been impressed with Jacques’s initiative, he’d always liked the park, and it was a shame that a woman would destroy a good business with a lawsuit.
    As soon as my parents were asleep that night, I climbed out my window. I wanted to warn Jacques Michaud. The woman was suing, and I thought if he knew he could do something, like pay her off. I felt sure that he’d want to do that. I put on sneakers, a turquoise-blue tank top that I thought I looked pretty in, and shorts for maneuverability. I swung from my window onto the sunroof, crawled down its steep shingles, and dropped ten feet onto the grass. Then I walked in the