Ray's breathing seems louder; he notices this while trying to tune Rush out. It comes in heavy, clogged gasps, as though he were breathing through a tube filled with oatmeal. It comes slowly no matter how hard he tries, and he begins to think that he is going to die.
Ray does not know exactly where he is, but he knows where he is not: on the road, where he was a short time ago. He knows that something has gone terribly wrong, and his mind tries to give him clues, but it does not seem to be working correctly any more.
The sky stays blue for awhile, and then, when Ray begins to feel cold, the sky seems to mirror his feelings and becomes a depressing slate color, and the clouds are no longer immobile but are racing to erase all trace of color from the atmosphere. And they gather there, and they begin to rain, and Ray begins to cry for the first time.
###
"To love and to cherish," Ray's wife says, her bright green eyes staring up into his own, and the minister goes on: "To have and to hold," and Charity repeats this, too. And then it is Ray's turn, and Ray follows the minister's words like a game of follow the bouncing ball on the song lyrics, and they are married and fleeing the church and clambering into a limo, where they roll up the shadow glass and make love for the first time while the driver drives on, aimlessly circling the airport until they are done and can catch their flight.
Ray remembers this.
###
The battery dies like a man starving: slowly. The lights that are playing across the field fade until the field is as dark as the sky. All slowly, with the radio withering and sputtering, and Paul Harvey's voice cracking and dying.
Ray believes that he can still hear the tires spinning, though he knows, somehow, that they can't be spinning still, that it's been hours and hours since the--
The what?
The crash, his mind says, and Ray remembers everything that happened, and then he thinks about everybody waiting at the church for him and feels terrible that he is late.
In the back of the van wedding cake is splattered in gooey white and yellow globs on the walls: Ray can see this in the rear view mirror. The plastic bride and groom are lying on the back seat, lodged in a pile of angel food.
"You've gotta take care of her," Ray answered when the boy asked Ray's permission to marry Cindy. "You've got to take care of a woman better than you would take care of yourself. You know that, right?"
The boy, who was Frank, nodded, of course, and Ray was content that he'd said his piece.
Ray remembers this, and begins to cry again.
###
Ray watches the sun rise quietly across the meadow, which is drowned beneath an inch of water, and feels better than he has felt in hours, though somewhat dizzy.
He thinks that perhaps dying alone is not so bad. The world is more beautiful when seen alone.
Then Ray closes his eyes and when he opens them, everything is different.
