Daisy could feel the grip of her SUV letting go as the snowdrift lifted her undercarriage higher than her tires could reach. It came to a halt with a jerk, spilling her coffee everywhere. The whole vehicle smelled like French Vanilla, it gave the scene an oddly comforting feel. She put her SUV in reverse and gave it some gas. The tires were all spinning, but the snow drift wouldn't let them touch the ground.
This was all her fault, the main road was almost at a standstill and she had to see if she could make better time on a side road. After all, she had a four-wheel drive SUV. What's a little snow to a vehicle like that? But it wasn't just a little snow, with every minute the snow got heavier and she got farther from the highway. Now she was out in the country without a house for miles. Her poor SUV had been struggling and now was useless. With no cell signal, there was a good chance she might die out here.
It was one thing to leave the main road, but Daisy had decided to push her luck even more. The map showed an L-shaped travel route, Daisy was going for the diagonal straight across it. It could have saved her over an hour and gotten her out of the weather that much faster. But all that didn't matter as she tried rocking her car from forward to reverse, the tires still couldn't get any traction. She was sure if she could just get past this snow drift she would be ok.
Daisy really began to worry, looking at her phone she realized she had been stuck without a single soul in sight for over an hour. In another hour she wouldn't be able to see where the road was even if she could get her SUV free. Here she was stuck on the side of a road whose name she didn't know watching as her quarter of a tank of gas slowly headed toward empty.
Why was it that she could never follow the conventional logic, the normal path? Why couldn't she have just stayed on the main road and waited like everyone else in bumper-to-bumper traffic? This was one of her ex-husband's complaints, he would say, "Daisy, she's always jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire." She had to stop thinking about him. The last thing she wanted to do was die in the cold with thoughts of her ex running through her mind.
It was with a sputter that her SUV picked that moment to run out of gas, she would really pay for her impatience and short-sightedness if she lived that long. There was a smell of sulfur she recognized from the last time she ran out of gas, something about a catalytic converter. That smell confirmed she was in deep crap now. Didn't they remove legs in cases like this? Didn't they cut off fingers for extreme frostbite? She had to get her mind off these thoughts. Daisy tried to think of how beautiful the countryside looked all covered with snow. How the trees looked Christmasy with a white coating on their limbs. Her eyes watched the dancing snowflakes as they twirled around in the sky, they were slowly getting fuzzy.
She had drifted off to a cold-induced sleep by the time the boys spotted her fancy van-like car from their corn field, she was lucky their truck sat up high or they might have missed her. Buck and Bo were out looking for deer and knew the snow in the upper field was less than three feet deep. There hadn't been any deer out in the regular spots, so the brothers decided to check the fence line before the weather got any worse. They still had cattle heading back to the barn, they didn't need to lose any to a blizzard.
That's when they saw this fancy car/van thing stuck on the gravel road. Buck saw the driver passed out in her seat and being the oldest of the two brothers sorta put him in charge. Walking in waist-deep snow he yelled. "Hey Miss, you ok in there?" He didn't see her move. He pounded on the window. "You alright?" Nothing. The door was locked, but that was nothing for a couple of country boys. They popped the lock and carried her back to their truck. It was a big four-door four-wheel drive and the heat was on high.
Buck was rubbing warmth into her cold hands when she woke with a start. She pulled her hands away as she looked out the windshield at her SUV fifty feet away covered in snow. Her eyes were filled with terror and her head was aching. "Who are you? Where am I? How did I get here? What's happening?" This guy looked straight out of a murder movie with his overalls and his extra-large boots. Daisy panicked and grabbed the door handle to escape. She leaped from the tall Four-by-four and fell straight into a snow drift. Landing on her back she was covered in snow blinding her eyes. She swung her arms like she was swimming, slowly digging her way to the bottom of the snow mound. The freezing snow was biting at the skin on her face and she was breathing in the fluffy flakes with every gasp.
Buck had made his way around the truck in time to reach out and pull her from the snow like she was a child. Daisy was amazed at how he lifted her full figure back into the truck like she weighed nothing. "Christ almighty Missy, are you trying to freeze to death?" He kept lifting until she was back in her seat, her clothes coated with snow.
Bo was in the backseat and when he said, "Lady lady, that was some fall you took!" Daisy about jumped out the door again, she didn't know anybody was back there. Buck had returned to the driver's seat and he had about as much as he could take from someone he felt should be grateful. "If you want out, get out. If you want to warm up, warm up. But if you drag any more snow into my truck your butt is getting a whooping."
He let out a heavy breath and tried to hold his temper in check, but it was clear she had pissed him off. "How about we start with this, What can we do to help you?" His parents had raised them with some manors before they passed away. They had been hit walking along this very road. Killed by some city slickers speeding down the county roads like rules didn't matter this far in the sticks. He had no patience for fools that came this far out in this kind of weather without being prepared for the snow they could see before they left home.
Daisy calmed but kept one hand on the door handle. "If you could just give me a push off this snow drift I'll be fine." Buck heard her say it, he just couldn't believe she believed it. "Sure, lady." Bo cut in saying. "But Buck, we can't. She can't." But Buck just shushed him. "We are going to do what the lady says and she says she wants our help getting off that snow drift." They knew this was a waste of time, the snow was deeper than when she got stuck. Anyway, they were a couple of big strong farming boys and this would be nothing for them. Just a little wasted time and effort.
Daisy jumped out of the truck and found herself waist-deep in the snow. She tried to walk, but the snow was too heavy. Buck just walked over and lifted her like a basket, carrying her to her vehicle. Once behind the wheel the motor moaned and groaned. But what could it do, it was out of gas. Daisy's head hung down, they had to think she was some kind of idiot. "I think it's out of gas." With hand motions, Buck directed Bo toward the truck where he retrieved a five-gallon gas can. With a few minutes to empty fuel into the tank, the engine sprang to life with a sputter.