I like to think I’m a good person, as I’m sure you do. But tonight I’m thinking you and I probably have less say so in the matter than we’d like. It has a lot to do with timing, maybe everything to do with it.
All this is to say I was heading home from a play at about 10:30 this evening on the 405, in the middle lane, doing about 65. About 100 feet ahead of me a car in the lane to my right suddenly swerved into the lane to his right, then, wildly, jerked into mine. The second swerve was wobbly, as if he’d completely lost control. Drunk? Some twenty-something hot dog? I hit the breaks, prayed the car behind me wasn’t following too close, and prayed the guy wouldn’t veer into me. I think there were one or two cars between us, but I’m not sure. He hit one of them–that hellish metallic explosion–then bounced into the left lane and hit someone else. These were pinball ricochets, very fast, and after both impacts all the pinballs and their occupants kept bouncing crazily into other lanes, narrowly missing other cars, breaks shrieking, sparks scattering over the road. I bore through this mess at about 50 mph, afraid to stop short, unable to see out my rear window for some reason, trying to stay clear of anyone who might hit me, thinking, as far as it’s possible to think at these moments, that this was out of my hands, that at any moment I was going to be next. On freeways, I keep a generous amount of space between me and the car ahead, and no doubt this bought me some grace.
I emerged untouched, and the car behind me emerged untouched, and I thought briefly of stopping but didn’t. I got my shaking body and my pounding heart the hell out of there, got off at the next exit and drove slowly home. Graham’s booster seat had been thrown behind my head, which was why I couldn’t see out the back. Graham, thank God, was home sleeping.
It really wasn’t possible to stop anyway, I told myself. There were too many cars coming on too fast behind me. By the time the traffic had re-ordered itself, the accident was a half mile behind. I suppose I could have called 911, but I didn’t do that either, figuring that someone else who happened along behind me at a slower pace, after things had come to rest, would. Maybe, I told myself, just maybe, by my careful, alert driving, I had prevented cars behind me from becoming involved. I half believe these things.
Once, many years ago, the timing was different. I stopped on a dark mountain highway at 2:00 a.m. where a young woman drunk from cheap wine had wandered into the road and been struck a couple of minutes before. Her liver had been torn apart, I didn’t know that at the time, and she lay bleeding inside, and dying, and for want of anything better to do I blew air into her mouth for fifteen minutes while another guy pounded on her chest until an ambulance bore her away. I went to the police station the next day to find out what happened to her and read the post mortem. I don’t remember much about her, other than that she was heavy, and about twenty. I probably couldn’t find that forelorn stretch of road again, don’t even remember the car I was driving. But I never forgot the taste of that wine.
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