The Senator calls Ray Annick after the accident

The Senator calls Ray Annick after the accident in a state of physical panic and political terror, seeking help after escaping the submerged Toyota and leaving Kelly Kelleher behind. The call is at once a request for rescue and an attempt to control the first telling of the crash: before the facts have been established, he blames Kelly and imagines the charge and public disgrace that may follow.

The Road to the Call

The crisis begins as The Senator drives Kelly from a party at 17 Derry Road toward the ferry. They have about twenty-five minutes to reach it, enough time if he drives fast and takes the correct route. At a turn, he brakes sharply and enters Old Ferry Road, a rutted sandy track no longer maintained by Grayling Township. The road has no sign, and the newer paved Ferry Road has made the old route obsolete. The turn is described as understandable at dusk, but the disuse and lack of warning help establish the hazardous setting in which the accident occurs.

The Senator has been drinking, though the narrative stresses that a driver need not be under alcohol’s influence to mistake the turn. On the dunes earlier, Kelly had felt the encounter between them gathering force; in the car, their journey carries the momentum of a choice neither can easily undo. As the Toyota skids on a hairpin curve, its speed is later estimated at roughly forty-five miles per hour from the skid marks and the damage. The narration also speculates that, without losing control there, the car might have struck the railing of a narrow bridge farther ahead and fallen into the water anyway. That alternative is explicitly conjectural, not a settled account of what would have happened.

Escape from the Submerged Car

The Toyota breaks through the guardrail and plunges into Indian Creek. Inside the submerged vehicle, Kelly is trapped by the buckled passenger door and roof, with her leg pinned and the black water rising through cracks. The Senator, terrified and gasping, struggles over and against her as he tries to get free. Kelly understands that in his panic he kicks her while escaping; the account presents this as blind terror, not as a deliberate decision to injure her. He gets out, swims desperately to shore, and vomits the filthy water. He does not return to the car, which he cannot bring himself to enter again.

His escape leaves Kelly still trapped. In the sinking car she tries to reason through the dwindling air and water, imagining that rescue may come if she can remain patient. The gap between their situations is stark: The Senator’s immediate objective becomes survival on land and then concealment from discovery, while Kelly’s capacity to move and breathe continues to narrow. The call to Ray is made against this unspoken emergency; the Senator reports Kelly dead, but the passage does not establish that he has confirmed her death.

Flight and the Telephone Call

The Senator makes his way on foot through the marsh, limping with one shoe on and one off. He is covered in black muck, bruised, and afraid a passing motorist will see or recognize him. After about two miles he reaches the highway and waits in the rushes for traffic to clear before crossing to the outdoor telephone booth in the Post Beer & Wine parking lot. Rockets burst over a nearby municipal park as he crouches and pants; their red, white, and blue display makes the public celebration an unsettling backdrop to his private panic.

At the booth, the Rolex on his wrist reads 9:55 p.m. He has kept his wallet and money, and, though dry-mouthed and numb, can speak calmly enough to request assistance. He calls the residence on Derry Road, asks for Ray Annick, and gives the name Gerald Ferguson, a legal associate, before revealing himself. The misdirection buys him a way onto the line while party voices and laughter sound in the background. Ray recognizes that a call at this hour from Ferguson must mean trouble.

When The Senator says, “Ray, it isn't Ferguson, it's me,” Ray asks what accident he means. The Senator answers that he is in serious trouble and says, “that girl— she's dead,” striking his already bruised forehead against the booth’s filthy Plexiglas. Ray’s shocked response is followed at once by an instruction not to explain over the phone: he wants The Senator’s location and says he will come get him. The Senator complies. The exchange establishes Ray as the person he turns to in the crisis, but it does not show Ray learning the full circumstances of the crash on that call.

Blame, Power, and the Reversed Timeline

Before Ray can arrive, The Senator’s first explanation assigns blame to Kelly: he says she was drunk, became emotional, grabbed the wheel, and caused the car to swerve. He leaps from that accusation to the prospect of manslaughter charges, speaking as though prosecution and political consequences are already closing in. This is his distressed account, not an independently established finding about the accident. The narration has already supplied a different set of relevant circumstances: the obsolete, unmaintained road, the sharp turn, the car’s speed, and his own driving. His attempt to frame the crash therefore exposes the distance between what he tells Ray and what the surrounding account lets the reader know.

The sequence also links physical escape to the preservation of public identity. The Senator fears being recognized or photographed in his muddy, disheveled state and imagines losing his party’s nomination and the presidency. He vows to remain sober if God will favor him, turning the immediate aftermath into a bargain over his future as well as his survival. Yet the call cannot settle what has happened to Kelly or erase his choice not to return to her.

The narrative then reverses the apparent chronology. After presenting the escape and telephone call, it returns to Kelly’s earlier perspective: the Toyota is only just turning from the highway onto Old Ferry Road beneath the moon. She senses that taking the road is probably a mistake, while also understanding that being lost is part of their intention. The call thus arrives for the reader ahead of the drive that produces it. This delayed ordering makes the Senator’s declaration of Kelly’s death collide with the image of her still living in the car, struggling to survive, and leaves the reader to distinguish his panic-driven claim from the unresolved outcome.