thirty-one years ago I wrecked my first car. you might be envisioning a fender bender or a run-in with a ditch. but this was spectacular. it's the kind of wreck that makes you wonder how you're still here. it's the all-out disaster that has you praising seat belts. And it's the little bit of pain in my back right now that makes me wonder if I really did walk away injury free. my sister was in the car, too. she's not an afterthought by any means, but that'll make sense here in a minute.
twenty-five miles. that's the distance from our childhood home to school. the little tiny spot on the road, Gould, to a bigger blip on the map: Walden. we drove that pretty much event free for years. there was the coyote that flipped over the hood of my brother's truck. and the bull elk that had plenty of time to get across the road but slipped and fell and left us screaming in a helpless ice capades slide towards the animal. we stopped just in time. heart rates and adrenaline and something we couldn't translate but am pretty sure was gratitude. the elk got its legs and looked at us with the silent, macho understanding that no one was to talk about it. "beautiful creature" I whispered despite the clear warning to be quiet.
my dad had a run-in or two with some objects and my brother would do some destruction with various vehicles. he did have one wreck more amazing than mine. but it wasn't on our regular commute. highway 14 is mine. that's where I careened for hundreds of feet on level ground. didn't even need a hill to project me into that herd of cattle. just Mariah Carey and some Handi-snacks. you remember that processed cheese and cracker treat?
well we were running late and going faster than the speed limit. not crazy fast. it was a 1984 Subaru GL wagon so 65 in a 55 is about as daring as it would get. so, 70. and these rural highways don't come with shoulders. or at least broad shoulders. this particular stretch just above Huston Hill was country boy straight with miles of grassland on either side. this was not a dangerous portion of road at all, with the exception of the tiny asphalt cliffs on either side of the white line. and that's where my wheel went.
I'll explain. Carey's 1990 hit Emotions eked its way from nearest pop station in Laramie and did just enough to make us feel like other teens. Turned up, she shrieked us into a comfortable driving stupor. hungry, I went for my handi-snacks. The first three went fine, but there's that last one for which I'd saved most of the cheese-like product. with the little red rectangle that comes standard with low standards, I sliced around the border of the remaining paste. cutting this away from the tray would make for the perfect final cracker; a testament to easy snacking and good living. "you got me feeling emotions" Carey harmonized with backup and I looked away from my creation to maintain course. I was veering. the tiny wagon wheels fell off the edge of the road. no big deal. just gently steer them backup, my grandpa would later say in a touching letter clearly triggered by mortality smeared across our photo albums.
all involved circa 1990
but 1991 Jared did not have this wisdom. He jerked the wheel. it's funny, the device you use to turn the wheels is called a wheel. but not this day. on this early Friday morning wheels were wheels baby and they worked according to plan. the knee-jerk (apt here by a boy who had been driving with his knee) wheel communicated clearly with the road wheels to make a whiplash response.
there is a lot that has not been answered about time and atmosphere and all the atoms around us, in us, and throughout the worms and sparkles in space. but anyone in an accident has opened part of that brain where for a moment you glimpse dimensions heretofore unseen by those who haven't been thrown aloft to their death. I made the too-quick move with the little wheels onto the asphalt geology and then everything paused and played at the same time. a cassette tape unwinding and binding. "why is my life being painted in serene individual scenes" my brain had time to ask. The first portrait: sideways. The next: ditchbound.
and before the third installation (exploding glass) I glimpsed the ditch. "Oh" said I, the shiny knob of inexperience. "I'll just back out of this and be on my way." And then somewhere someone let go of pause and let it play out. The windshield exploded outward. like an exclamation point on the front of a sentence. the rest of our lives on the other side.
quiet. Laura and I looked at each other as if we were wondering exactly what part of the program this was supposed to be. unwittingly we'd been following an act-by-act guide to completion of one thing or another when suddenly we were soaring off script and into a meadow. metaphorically I could go on about exploring new spaces, but cold hard reality was about to hit. the situation was cows. and from their point of view shit was dire. on a grand scale, a Subaru is a pretty tiny projectile, but on a humdrum dewy morning where the job is to eat and make babies, crashing into their world was my sister, me, and my first car--without windshield and setting months of clutter free from gravity. halloween costumes, candy, Mountain Dew bottles, textbooks, football cleats and a once innocuous plastic tray with cheese mortar still only partially discharged spun out of the glassless cavity of literal death metal.
I don't know how, but we didn't hit any of them. it doesn't shock me that a cow would be ready for the worst, but they were, and it was not their time.
linear time and expanding space would unwind their grip around our moment and move on. we were left with silence. one bovine looking through the windshield hole and investigated the scene. even the noise was quiet. a muffled splashing sound didn't quite register. I crawled out of the car and gauged the surroundings. the group of cows not having any of it. "Jesus, they're stupid," seemed to be the collective voice of their hustle. Two stayed within twenty yards as if they were waiting for me to figure out what had happened. "wait for it..." said the glowering animal.
"oh shit." I didn't know what to be mad about so focused on the splattering. it was my full tank of gas. a hefty $1.89 a gallon during the first Gulf War. and that's where I started to piece together that, for gas to be pouring out of my car, it had to be upside down and, for it to be upside down, I would have had to wreck. further realizations, like the danger of being on an oasis of spilled fuel, dry grass and exposed mechanical failure, would come later. but at this time I dealt with the unpause of everything playing right out from under me. "oh shit!" the extent of my vocabulary.
"Oh my god. holy shit. what the --HELP!" I shouted and ran to the highway. "Oh my god. Oh my god." the phrase helping me deal with the extraordinary distance from the highway to our car. I yelled about how it was impossible that no one could be around, but it was quite possible not to see a car for a while on this stretch of 14. and in that questionable introspection I heard something. a noise. a human. let's say it one more time: "oh shit." my sister.
I ran back to the car. the gas. the cows.
"I don't know if I'm stuck I can't get down." she was suspended in air by the seatbelt. a width of fabric and a clicking sound. my lord what a savior. I'm not religious I just cuss that way.
It was another befuddling site. the entirety of a 7th grader floating as if the car were still flying. in the thoughtlessness of the moment I pushed the button and she crashed to the roof of the car. Our only visible injury would be the glass cutting her hand.
Another person. therapy. "I fucking wrecked, Laura." she exploded with tears and I was so happy I wasn't alone.
we should have laid in the grass and smiled at the sky and inhaled all the air from the Never Summers to the Rawahs. but I was a tool for progress.
"Do you have your books?" we dug around the car while trying not to cut us or set us on fire. I grabbed Humpty Dumpty, a hand sewn gift from my aunt and, ironically, not a victim of the crash.
We made it to the highway and started walking the remaining 10 miles when a top-of-the-line, wood-paneled minivan came around the bend. he straightened at the Three Rivers Ranch sign and embarked on the same stretch we'd departed. The landscape he'd scanned countless times before lurched with aberrations. Kids hitchhiking? Tire marks? Glass?
In a strange twist, the gentle man who'd slow down and offer us a ride was the town's district attorney, the very person who'd be obligated by the investigating state trooper to press charges against me. Luckily, we had the slow ride to school to discuss the likelihood of violations and my steps to help alleviate them. Small towns have advantages.
The word had already gotten around the school that we'd wrecked. Kids had only heard "Huston hill" and taking off from there would be certain death...or, who knows? What we'd just done seemed destined for demise. The total distance of time/space defiance jotted down in the police report: 105 feet skids. leaving road/flipping over fence. landing on hood. flipping before coming to stop on Shawver property 100 feet from hwy. car = totaled. livestock? uninjured. passengers alive but slightly shaken.