SHORT STORY
Road Kill
He Came Out of Nowhere
I might have seen him earlier, I probably did. I must have. I’m sure I must have noticed him, but I honestly don’t remember. I’ve tried, believe me. But no matter how hard I try, I just can’t remember. Besides, there is a difference between seeing and noticing.
Whether I saw him earlier or not, then, out of absolutely nowhere, there he is, right in front of me, right there in the fast lane. Standing there. Still as a tree and smiling. Dark suit, white shirt, light-blue tie. Funny thing to notice, the color of the tie. I didn’t notice the color of the tie right away, though. None of the details right away. My brain had yet to catch up with what my eyes took in, and my brain took its time about it.
Well, for one, this should not, could not, be happening. That’s what my brain told me. And in no uncertain terms and into an argument with my eyes, who insisted that it was, very much, indeed, happening. And by then it was too late.
There are reasons for this internal conflict, of course, and they have been explained to me, often — since I don’t seem to really get it — and for me not noticing him before, for not registering what was happening.
For one, the pretty doctor with the tortoiseshell glasses says, living and driving in Los Angeles for so many years I had, like everybody else learned to live a full — even rewarding, she kept stressing — life in my car, and too many thoughts and plans and worries and whatnots would have lingered between me and him (obstructing the view as it were) even after my eyes first took him in, and that’s why I didn’t even slow down at first. Not a bit. Well, that’s what she says, anyway. I don’t know what to think. All I know is that even after I saw him, it didn’t reach me, if you know what I mean. Things just didn’t register. Too improbable. Too impossible.
My eyes saw, though. Yes, they definitely did, she says, taking their side in the argument with my brain. Saw, and absorbed and reported the fact back toward wherever I was at the time, dreaming, planning and whatnot. Saw and said:
“There’s someone straddling the center divider. This someone is now crossing the center divider. And now he’s stepping into the fast lane. Into my fast lane. Into precisely where my car is heading.
“Wearing a light-blue tie.”
I’m sure my eyes told me all this in time, but I didn’t hear them. Or did not hear them soon enough, anyway, and that’s why he’s dead now.
When I finally got the message (my brain now overwhelmed by visual evidence) everything turned extremely real. And still. And slow.
Turned to ice down my arms, standing all those little hairs erect, making my fingers tingle and suddenly I was aware of every-thing: of the little smudge on the dashboard (I had noticed it that very morning and was meaning to wash it off); of the Mayflower truck bearing down the westbound portion of the freeway (it was very dirty), of the texture of the music that filled the car (rich and wonderful, it was Schumann’s Second, one of my favorites); and of the full and sickening impact of my car crushing this human being at what was precisely seventy-six miles per hour (I know, I looked and it reminded me of that gas station, with the big ball and the number seventy-six on it).
And I have yet to touch the brakes. It’s like I’ve lost the use of my legs.
I tell the pretty doctor with the tortoiseshell glasses that I am sure I have yet to brake, but she tells me I am not sure, how can I be sure of anything in the midst of a panic, she points out, and so I agree with her that I’m not sure, and she smiles (and forgives); but really, I am sure, very sure, I have yet to touch the brakes.
Another thing I’m desperately sure of: he is smiling. Which is another thing the pretty doctor with the tortoiseshell glasses say I have no business being sure of. But I am: Just before I hit him I see him very clearly in his blue suit and light-blue tie and white shirt and he is smiling, looking for all I could tell, well, happy. As if he’s been waiting for me for a long time, and happy that I’ve finally arrived.
“Of course not,” she says, and I repeat what she says, “of course not,” but I say that just to please her. For I know: He looked happy to see me. At peace to see me. Smiling to see me. When I close my eyes — and even when I don’t — I can see him clearly: Young — well, from where I’m sitting — early thirties at the most, trim and well-dressed in his blue suit and light-blue tie and white shirt. Five ten, I’d say. Shiny shoes. Very shiny shoes. The suit was double breasted. Blue, yes I’ve said that.
Arms straight down his sides, relaxed.
And smiling. Looking at me coming for him, and smiling as finally: There you are, as if I am some sort of gift or a welcome guest.
There’s another thing about his smile (which the pretty doctors says I must have imagined altogether). The smile said: I’m going home.
No, she says. It could not have said that. He could not have smiled. Opposing what I just told her. And she’s the boss, and so I agree with her. That’s how I get out of these interviews.
Sometimes, though, I realize, and with not a little relief, that he wasn’t smiling at all, that he was distraught and desperate and afraid and whatever else she told me he must have been to do a thing like that, and that he was in such a bad way that he simply had to kill himself, for of course, she has told me a thousand times, it was a suicide and no fault of mine, at all. I was just his chosen device — device is the word she uses. And for a moment I see what she wants me to see, and that makes me feel a little better. But not for long — though I never tell her that. I know what I saw, and he was smiling. He was happy to see me. Happy to be going home.
Then reason buts in with its five cents’ worth: how could any-body smile like that when a car comes at you at seventy-six miles an hour — Union 76, that’s what that sign says — and keep smiling.
It was a suicide, yes. I agree with her. It was. He wanted to die. She says he had his reasons for doing what he did, as if she knew precisely what they were but would not trust me with the details, not in the state I’m still in.
But he didn’t look like a troubled man to me, not at all. And the smile, which I apparently didn’t see, was not a smile of relief. It was not an escape smile, he wasn’t escaping anything. No, not at all. He was anticipating — yes, that’s the word, anticipating — not escaping.
To my thinking — reason tossing another nickel into the mix — and I can’t think my way around it, there should have been fear in his face. He should have been afraid of me, of the car coming at him. I would certainly have been in his place. About to die.
And then I hit him.
Nothing happened as it does in the movies. He did not fly up in the air and he did not spin twice like a summersaulting rag doll to land fifty some feet away in a heap. I did not then skid to a halt in a cloud of squealing rubber while barely missing other braking cars. I did not then rush over to him in fruitless hope. None of this happened. The pictures I now look at, one slowly giving way to the next, tell another story:
He simply stands there, still as a tree.
My car struck him just above the knees. Even now, I can actually feel them give way; I can almost hear them give way as his torso jerks towards me in instant whiplash. The smile is suddenly gone, eradicated by surprise at the pain, I assume (didn’t he know it would hurt?). Then he folds backwards and strikes the concrete, his face still clearly visible to me as he falls away one inch at a time at seventy-six miles an hour. Even the surprise is now gone, and there, finally, is the fear I’ve been missing, in eyes facing the irrevocable: suicide no longer theory, graduated to fact.
Then his face is gone and my car is all on top of him. And for the next many seconds it was like driving a bumpy dirt road. One of those where the wheel ruts are so deep from carts and tractors or what have you farm machinery that the bottom of your car touches the ground at every turn and you pray that your exhaust system and drive train will still be with you when you arrive, if you arrive. And all hell to steer.
Then my feet finally get around to hitting the brakes.
I’m braking now — wheels coughing and stuttering, but not locking — and steering this country road (which by now felt more like tracks cross a wild field) and my car is swerving to the right, but slowing fast. Out of my lane, into the next, and the next. There are other cars on the road, I am aware of them, but they are few, it was early afternoon. I remember thinking, though, that I’m lucky, I’m really lucky that I’m not colliding with any of them. And then I’m over at the side of the rightmost lane. And then I’m standing still.
There’s a breeze inside my head.
Ahead of me a car or two slow down and turn for the side, too. Others crawl by but don’t stop. Just looking, a quick face, concerned, accident hungry, then they speed away. I am sweating, I notice that. I look in wonder at my hands, still on the wheel. Holding it. White knuckles. Frozen. I try to let go but my hands are ignorant of my intention. The wheel is real. Is what we hold on to. Is where we stay. I try again, to pry them loose, my will a lever, reluctant fingers refusing to budge.
When I finally succeed I notice that the wheel is damp — no, actually wet — where my hands have just grasped. My heart, oh, my heart, panicked, racing at two hundred or so ticks a minute, at least. Screaming like a drum roll, wanting to be let out, more beating to do than my ribs will stand for.
And then the shaking. Either I had not noticed it before or it just started. My hands were shaking like two pale, scared animals in my lap and I really could keep neither of them still, not for anything. I was fascinated by my hands, this had never happened to me before, and I stared at them, each burrowing into the other for comfort, while my heart, independent of all else, kept racing.
A movement outside the car breaks the spell. I lift my eyes to find this no longer visible movement, but what waits for me in the rear view mirror arrives first. At first I don’t understand what I see. It is beautiful and so out of place on the freeway. I see two long black streaks bordering a path of dark red, pursuing and then catching my car. You know, it really was beautiful. It was so symmetrical, so distinct, and so out of place. And then I remember the bumpy road, and God, I think, he’s still under the car. And then the first person to reach me taps on my window.
He spoke something I could not hear. Spoke that something again. Or something else. Still couldn’t hear him. Then he turned to others, people leaving other cars and running in my direction, gathering, and he spoke something to them, shouted something. I still couldn’t make it out. Have I, I remember wondering, have I gone deaf? It wasn’t really a question; it was just a stab you know, just a second’s whisper: have I lost my hearing? Then this man outside my car tries to open the door and that I can hear and the whisper is gone.
Get Wolfstuff’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
It’s locked. Of course it’s locked. This is Los Angeles.
He talks to me again and although I can hear him now, urgent words, I don’t understand them and my hands, curled up in my lap, keep shaking. People are pointing now to the path behind me, to the black and red of that bumpy road and they look back at me, and they all look at me.
And they all look at me.
And someone bends down to take a look under the car and then he stands up and then he runs down the embankment and is sick. And I notice all this, and they all look at me and then, for the first time, watching that guy over in the embankment heaving, I know that I have killed a human being and my hands can find no comfort anywhere.
That was one year ago now, today. It was the fifth of June and that is what today is. The fifth of June.
Then again, it’s always the fifth of June.
And I have killed.
My killing day.
Another knock on the door. The highway patrol officer is saying something. And again, louder this time. My hearing has returned.
“Are you all right, Sir?”
I don’t answer, so he asks again, “Are you all right?”
He tries the locked door. “Sir. Please open the door.”
And I find my hand, the right one, and it in turn finds the lock release and pulls. The officer opens the door. He squats down and looks at me closely.
“Sir, are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“No,” I say then, or choked rather, for it is true: I’m not hurt.
“Would you step out of the car, please, Sir.”
Now, for some reason that didn’t apply to me. These were just sounds, floated in my direction for some other purpose entirely; one that I couldn’t, or didn’t have to, fathom. I remained in my seat, puzzled, fighting the ebbs and floods of death as it rushed and receded, as it seized and let up, only to seize again.
“Sir, please.” I could sense anger.
It dawned on me that he wanted me to leave my car.
“If you’re unhurt, Sir, please step out of the car.” He moved back in anticipation.
I obliged.
Then, from what I’m told, I fainted. What I know is that I swung one leg out, tried to still my hands, swung the other leg out and began to stand up on the tarmac when again I saw the black and red, the red darker now, almost puce between the black tire marks and the flooding returned to not cease. I fought for breath and then the concrete rose for my face.
The last thing I remember thinking: Should anti-lock brakes leave black marks? Looked locked to me.
Blackness.
It was dark, or nearly so, when I awoke. A lamp to my left cast a soft yellow light on the bed and on my wife. For three or four heart beats everything was normal (except I had no idea where I was). I had slept, I had woken, I was gathering my world to me in sleepy preparation for another day. Then the knowledge returned.
Puce would be black by now, between black pursuers, and he was dead, a human paintbrush mangled beneath my car. I found my hands and held them up close to my face. As if the motion brought them awake too the shaking began all over. I willed them still, but they refused to comply but they found each other and took refuge in their mutual affliction. I placed them on my chest and sank back into my knowledge.
Some time went by. I could breathe, I noticed that. And then I remembered my wife and turned my head in her direction. There she was, sitting upright in her chair now, eyes wide, wordless concern on her face. She drew breath as if to speak but said nothing. It must have been a sigh.
And nothing could ever be the same.
:
We had three children, have three children, I guess, I haven’t seen them for a while. James, or Jim, Bethe and Karen. I never was their hero exactly, but what I am to them now I cannot even guess.
She drew breath again, I heard the prelude clearly, and this time she spoke.
“How do you feel?”
I think I answered, at least I wanted to answer, “Not good,” but I may not have spoken for she asked again.
The question was plain enough, but the answer was not. I decided to consult my hands and again brought them up for scrutiny. Shaking still. And shaking still as I laid them on my face to cover my world and cover my deed and cover my colossal knowledge. And they told me.
I did not speak their reply.
She returned to her silence and I returned to his smile. I noticed her arm jerk a little as if her hand had decided to reach for mine, but then changed its mind.
I closed my eyes.
Then I slept a lot it seems and then she didn’t come very much. She brought Jim once but he looked so scared and it was very painful to see. The girls are a little older than he is and they managed to smile when they came, but not real smiles, just fragile copies of smiles, which said that they, too, despite their brave, beautiful faces, were afraid of me. And then they didn’t come at all.
And here comes the nurse so it must be time for my pills so I won’t be able to think so well for a while.
© Wolfstuff
