“We’re gonna die.” I said to the attractive young lady in the passenger seat of my red Nissan Pathfinder. I said it very calmly. It wasn’t so much a phrase spoken in terror as it was a statement of a fact. Looking back, I should have been much more worried about my life. And hers.
It had snowed that afternoon. A blanket of slippery white covered the dirt road I take home from school. There was a wide left turn that led to a bridge that overlooked the toll road. On each side of the bridge was a waist-high concrete barrier that protected one from plummeting to one’s untimely death. The bridge freezes before the road. I know, I know, I’ve read the signs. But, when the bridge started, my car decided it wanted to turn diagonally left and start sliding into the wall.
“We’re gonna die.” I said to Kathryn, who had unfortunately trusted her safety with me. The sentence was punctuated with a slam into the wall. My front right headlight had smashed into the wall and sent my car doing counter-clockwise spins on the icy bridge. My back right hit and did nothing to stop the car from spinning. The front right hit the wall again. The radiator smashed and green fluid flew all over the wall. We spun once more. The tire on the back hit and slid us to the left. The car was placed perpendicularly to the road and was resting in wrong lane. We stopped. I looked over to Kathryn, who was trembling from the experience.
“Are you okay?!?!” I asked in a sincerely worried tone. I was okay. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t very worried while the car was spinning. I kept thinking, “What are you supposed to do when your car is spinning?” mixed with “Damn. The car is spinning.” She said she was okay. That was good to hear. I got out and saw the people behind me run up toward the bridge. They had stopped their cars when they noticed I was twirling like a dreidel on the icy ledge. Kathryn got a ride with Chen and they rode off into the sunset. I stayed with David and Durazo. We waited for a half an hour when a bus came and radioed a tow truck. Half an hour later we decided that sitting in the warmth of Durazo’s jeep would be a better idea. A highway patrolman who had been under the bridge when the accident happened had finally come. He was a young man, slightly tanned, with spikes in his gelled hair. He walked a ways to set up some flares. He picked up a little piece of debris that was on the ground. I saw by his footprints that he wore Nike Shox. I sat in the passenger seat of his cruiser.
“So,” he said in a condescending tone, “I know what the tire marks say, so you’re going to have to tell me the truth.” As I started telling him the truth he reiterated, in the middle of my sentence, that I was going to have to tell the truth. He said that it appeared that I had stopped before the bridge and gunned it across. I assured him, wide-eyed that this is not what had happened. He said, “Well, the tracks match your wheelbase and…”
“I assure you,” I assured him, “that did not happen. I did not stop.” I sounded very guilty. Another cop had come. He was an old, portly man and even through the window I could smell the overwhelming scent of cigars.
“Want me to take this one over?” he said with a slight laugh.
“Yeah,” said the young cop, “I’m actually on highway patrol right now and….” I went with the old cop. He asked what happened. I told him what had happened. He nodded and sketched a little picture on his paper he reserved for this purpose. We started talking about satellite radio that he had installed in his car. He commented that he liked Sirius over XM because it had NFL games. We chatted a bit before I asked to inform my buddies in the jeep that they could leave. I ran to the window of the jeep.
“Hey guys,
you can go if you want. Thanks a lot for staying here with
“No problem,” said Durazo. David was holding what appeared to be a piece of debris. “The cop said he found this under your car.” I examined the package. It was an empty 24 pack of some over-the-counter “herbal energy booster”. Obviously, the first cop had thought I was both high and racing over an icy bridge. I thanked them both again and trotted to the cop’s car.
“So you going to go to college?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I replied.
“Yeah, its real important nowadays. When I first joined the force, almost no one had a degree. Now it’s a requirement!” He called for a tow-truck and we waited. He pulled out a cigar from a leather pouch. He rolled down the window and lit it. He smoked it while we talked.
“Tow trucks sure are busy. Today especially.” He said nonchalantly sucking on his cigar.
“Yeah.” I said as a statement of fact, rather than of terror. We waited.