..........Andy Rooney
One Saturday morning when I was
ten, I awoke to my Mother screaming and running through my room, her hands knotting the front of
her flowered house coat exclaiming, “Oh my God, oh my God!” Having never seen
her frantic and so out of control before, it frightened me. She was, if nothing
else a measured person. Running from window to window on the front side of our
house, rattling and shaking the Venetian blinds she looked out across the front
yard into the street where there had been a terrible accident at the
intersection in front of our house. On this early, already steamy morning in
small town south Alabama an ancient and fully loaded Pepsi Cola truck was
passing under the green light just in front of our residence. A young woman in
an old green Pontiac with her infant child on the front seat speeding from the
other direction raced through the red light and smashed into the side of truck! The
resulting crash was enough to wake the dead or so I was told. I slept through
the worst accident that had ever happened in front of our house and there had
been a number of them. This intersection clearly visible from the front windows
of our home had been such a problem site that it caused the city to install a
traffic light earlier in the summer. After several more accidents they put in a
four way stop, later another traffic light replaced the stop signs. It went
back and forth over the years as city managers searcher for a solution while
the dangerous intersection continued to claim lives and cause horrible
accidents. Eventually large speed bumps were installed which helped slow the
speeders more than anything else that had been tried. The last time I went
through the intersection (fifty eight years after my story) it was a traffic
light again and the speed bumps were still there.
Getting out of bed I ran to the window and looked out. There in the middle of the intersection was the body of an obviously dead woman with her print dress thrown up around her waist. There was also a piece of the woman’s head about four feet from her body, blood everywhere. At first I could not make out what it was I was seeing. The woman was very still and looked as though she had been carelessly thrown aside, like a rag doll tossed in the corner by a child, like she had suddenly fallen asleep. Mother continued frantically scurrying through the house making small whimpering noises. There was an unbelievable amount of blood splattered across the pavement under the red light. People were already beginning to gather from the neighborhood homes. The cross town traffic slowed and stopped as the intersection was impassable. They gaped at the horror of the accident and stared at the carnage. Blood mixed with Pepsi Cola! Hundreds of bottles were scattered randomly across the scene, some broken, some whole. This surrealistic scene just beyond our tall Magnolia trees in the front yard left me breathless and yet I continued to peer out the front window, either unable or unwilling to stop. It was gruesome and repellent and yet I could not look away. The woman’s baby was in the front yard across the street having been thrown from the car, still wrapped in its blanket. It had survived the crash and was crying, as I was. The grey haired man who had been driving the Pepsi Cola truck walked among the wreckage in the street rubbing his knobby red hands together as though he was trying to remove the skin from them. He would stop every few steps and pick up the unbroken bottles and put them into the pockets of his worn Pepsi labeled coveralls. Later when I walked out to the scene, after the body had been removed, a policeman standing near the curb said, “This is the worst God damned thing I have ever seen in my life.” Even though I was embarrassed by his language (remember, I was ten at the time) I thought he was right. Someone said later that one of the neighborhood dogs had carried a piece of the woman's head back to its yard. I never knew if this was true or not but for a long time I was very careful when I walked in the area.
Later that same day after the wreckage had been removed, the street sprayed down with water from a fire truck and most of the debris cleared away I saw Jimmy, the boy who lived across the street on the other side of the road from us and spoke to him to see if he had seen the accident. “Did you see all the blood in the street before they cleaned it up?” I questioned. “Yeah I saw it” he said, “what’s it to you?” I wanted to appear grown up and knowing something that I really should not have known, maybe to impress him. “Nothing “I said. “Go home, “he insisted. Jimmy was sixteen but seemed much older, very tall for a boy his age and handsome with black hair and very straight white teeth. I always admired him, mainly because he had the ability to throw a football further than anyone else in our neighborhood. He ultimately became the captain of the High School football team and a star scholar. Years later when Jimmy was a senior in High School he was riding home after school on his red Eagle motorcycle and was hit by a drunk driver at the same intersection directly in front of his house where the woman in the old Pontiac hit the Pepsi Cola truck. They said that when Jimmy was knocked from his scooter his head hit the cement curb, his skull crushed. I saw Jimmy’s body and heard his mother screaming. They raced him to the hospital where, after many desperate hours and many desperate acts he was pronounced dead around midnight that same evening.
Later that week I walked out to the street where the accident had occurred and there was nothing there to indicate anything had ever happened. It seemed strange that something so horrible and disastrous had not left a mark of some kind, a tear in the landscape of the scene, something. Fragments of broken glass scattered about glistened in the summer sun but they could have been there forever, not necessarily from this most recent accident.
There was a large silent black crow sitting high in an adjacent pecan tree, otherwise nothing.
Getting out of bed I ran to the window and looked out. There in the middle of the intersection was the body of an obviously dead woman with her print dress thrown up around her waist. There was also a piece of the woman’s head about four feet from her body, blood everywhere. At first I could not make out what it was I was seeing. The woman was very still and looked as though she had been carelessly thrown aside, like a rag doll tossed in the corner by a child, like she had suddenly fallen asleep. Mother continued frantically scurrying through the house making small whimpering noises. There was an unbelievable amount of blood splattered across the pavement under the red light. People were already beginning to gather from the neighborhood homes. The cross town traffic slowed and stopped as the intersection was impassable. They gaped at the horror of the accident and stared at the carnage. Blood mixed with Pepsi Cola! Hundreds of bottles were scattered randomly across the scene, some broken, some whole. This surrealistic scene just beyond our tall Magnolia trees in the front yard left me breathless and yet I continued to peer out the front window, either unable or unwilling to stop. It was gruesome and repellent and yet I could not look away. The woman’s baby was in the front yard across the street having been thrown from the car, still wrapped in its blanket. It had survived the crash and was crying, as I was. The grey haired man who had been driving the Pepsi Cola truck walked among the wreckage in the street rubbing his knobby red hands together as though he was trying to remove the skin from them. He would stop every few steps and pick up the unbroken bottles and put them into the pockets of his worn Pepsi labeled coveralls. Later when I walked out to the scene, after the body had been removed, a policeman standing near the curb said, “This is the worst God damned thing I have ever seen in my life.” Even though I was embarrassed by his language (remember, I was ten at the time) I thought he was right. Someone said later that one of the neighborhood dogs had carried a piece of the woman's head back to its yard. I never knew if this was true or not but for a long time I was very careful when I walked in the area.
Later that same day after the wreckage had been removed, the street sprayed down with water from a fire truck and most of the debris cleared away I saw Jimmy, the boy who lived across the street on the other side of the road from us and spoke to him to see if he had seen the accident. “Did you see all the blood in the street before they cleaned it up?” I questioned. “Yeah I saw it” he said, “what’s it to you?” I wanted to appear grown up and knowing something that I really should not have known, maybe to impress him. “Nothing “I said. “Go home, “he insisted. Jimmy was sixteen but seemed much older, very tall for a boy his age and handsome with black hair and very straight white teeth. I always admired him, mainly because he had the ability to throw a football further than anyone else in our neighborhood. He ultimately became the captain of the High School football team and a star scholar. Years later when Jimmy was a senior in High School he was riding home after school on his red Eagle motorcycle and was hit by a drunk driver at the same intersection directly in front of his house where the woman in the old Pontiac hit the Pepsi Cola truck. They said that when Jimmy was knocked from his scooter his head hit the cement curb, his skull crushed. I saw Jimmy’s body and heard his mother screaming. They raced him to the hospital where, after many desperate hours and many desperate acts he was pronounced dead around midnight that same evening.
Later that week I walked out to the street where the accident had occurred and there was nothing there to indicate anything had ever happened. It seemed strange that something so horrible and disastrous had not left a mark of some kind, a tear in the landscape of the scene, something. Fragments of broken glass scattered about glistened in the summer sun but they could have been there forever, not necessarily from this most recent accident.
There was a large silent black crow sitting high in an adjacent pecan tree, otherwise nothing.
End
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