Worst thing I've ever seen?
Not something I brought home from jungles halfway across the world. Not a body dead ten days of a long hot summer, not a black man hanging from the streetlamp of a strip mall in the New South. Or a gentle old blind man waiting to be strapped to a table in the name of justice and injected with poisons that will stop his lungs and heart.
I got the call one Friday night a year or so back, 11 p.m. or so. We'd had three or four quiet days, just the way we liked them. Traffic accident out on the highway, troopers would meet me there. I chalked code and destination on the board on my way out.
Four teenagers had taken a Buick for a joyride. Doug Glazer, the high-school principal's son; his girlfriend Jennie; local bad boy Dan Taylor; and multi-pierced Patricia Pope. They'd left a high school football game and seen the Buick there, keys in the slot, motor running. Why not. Drove it through town a couple of times, then out onto the interstate where they ran up under a semi at eighty-plus mph. I seen them comin', the driver said, I just couldn't get out of their way fast enough, I just couldn't get out of the way, not fast enough.
Most of Jennie's head was on the dashboard, mouth still smiling, lipstick bright. Dan Taylor and Pat Pope were a jumble of blood and body parts out of which one silver-studded ear protruded to catch light from the patrol car's bubble light. Glazer, the driver, had been thrown clear, not a mark on him. He looked quite peaceful.
We never know, do we? The hammer's hanging there as we go on about all the small things we do, paying bills, scouring sinks, restringing banjos, neglecting yet again to tell the one beside us how much he or she is loved.
Troopers had beat me to the site. The younger of them was throwing up at roadside. The senior one approached me.
"You'd be the sheriff."
"Deputy." We exchanged names, shook hands.
"Just a bunch of kids. Don't make any sense at all… Yo, Roy! you done over there?" Then to me: "Boy's first week on the job."
Since it was the interstate, they'd do the paperwork. I'd be left to notify the families.
"Gonna be a long hard night," Trooper Stanton said.
"Looks like."
"That yours?" he said, nodding towards the fire truck that had just pulled up. Benny waved from within. All we had was a volunteer department. Benny in real life worked at the auto parts store just down from city hall. He'd been through EMT training up at the capital.
"Sure is."
Took us better than two hours to clear the scene. Almost 3 a.m. when I knocked on Principal Glazer's door. I was there just under a half hour, then passed on to Jennie's parents, to Dan Taylor's father, Pat Pope's mother.
Sheila Pope lived in a trailer park outside town. She came to the screen door in a threadbare chenille robe, wearing one of those mesh sleep bonnets. It was pink. When I told her, there was no response, no reaction.
"You do understand-right, Mrs. Pope? Patricia's dead."
"Well… She was never a good girl, you know. I think I'll miss her, though."
That night I got back to the office not long before Don Lee showed up to take day shift. I made coffee, filled him in on the MVA, and headed home. In the rearview mirror I saw June pull into the spot I left.
A lazy, roiling fog lay on the water as I came around it to the cabin. One of the sisal-bound kitchen chairs on the porch had finally come apart. I suspected that the possum sitting close by may have had something to do with that. Maybe as a trained officer I should check for traces of twine in its teeth. I went in, poured milk into a bowl, and set it out on the porch.
She was never a good girl, you know. I think I'll miss her, though.
That's what a life came to.
Years ago, back when I had such arrogance as to think I could help anyone, I had as a patient a young woman who'd been raped and severely beaten while jogging. It happened near a reservoir. Every time she lifted a glass of water to drink, she said, it was there again. Of the attack she remembered nothing at all. What she remembered was being in ER just after, hearing caretakers above her talking about brain damage, saying: She'll only come back so far. I'd help her up from the chair at session's end. A well-mannered young man, her fiance Terry, always waited for her in the outer room.
Restless, turning as on a spit, I sensed a shadow fall across me and opened my eyes to see a possum crouched in the window. Possums are wild, they are resolutely not pets. But this one wanted in. I opened the window. The possum came in, sniffed its way down the bed, eventually fell asleep beside me. Not long after, I fell asleep myself.
J think Til miss her, though.