It could have been worse. Thank God there was a good wide shoulder right there. The only thing was, he seemed to be stuck in the mud.
Mickey Groff wasn't much of a waiter. There wasn't a showdog's chance of a car stopping to help him, of course—even if one came by, they'd hardly be able to see him. Anyway, Sam's Grocery couldn't be more than a quarter of a mile back along the road, and from there he could phone for a wrecker—or at worst, if the wreckers had their own problems on a night like this, for a cab to get him into Hebertown. Once the rain stopped, it wouldn't be much of a problem to get pulled out of the mud.
He almost changed his mind when he stepped out into the rain, but by the time he had locked the car door behind him it was too late—it was hard to imagine how he could get any wetter than he was. Mickey Groff had heard of rain coming down in sheets, but he had never experienced it before. This was something beyond all expectations; in ten seconds he was wet to the skin, in a minute he was drenched as a Channel swimmer. There was wind with the rain, too; part of the time it came swiping at him from the side, stinging into his eyes, infiltrating his ears, slipping up the cuffs of his sodden sleeves. By the time he got around the curve in the road he was shaking with chill.
After ten minutes of staggering through the storm he wondered why he couldn't see the lights of the store. Then he saw why, and it was like a fist under the heart; the lights were out. There was the store just ahead, but the neon was black, the windows were black, there was only the faintest suggestion of a glimmer at the edges of the glass.
He went stumbling across a little gravel parking lot with water sloshing around his shoes and banged on the door. Then he saw that there was a light in the back of the store; it was a candle. He tried the door handle and it opened.
Inside, the noise of the rain changed and dulled; instead of a slashing at his ears it was a drumming overhead. A man came out of a storeroom at the back, carrying a gasoline lantern, and the whole store brightened and began to look more normal.
"Oh," said Mickey Groff. "Your power's out. I thought maybe you were closing up."
The man said sourly, "I might as well be. Jesus, did you ever see weather like this in your life? I been here—"
"Have you got a phone?" Groff interrupted.