Watching from the sidelines...
Just as memories start to lose some color, just as the bad dreams become the exception instead of the norm, just when a few days pass without thinking about the past, life sends me another reminder to bring the past screaming back to the present.
Last Thursday, just like before, I headed out of town early in the morning on the way to an auction. My dad was tagging along because he always enjoyed the auctions. After a hour on the road he closed his eyes as I settled into another three hours of driving, and thinking. I hate these drives but there is no avoiding them. With a cup of coffee in my hand, resting on my leg, I'm cruising at 75 mph. I pass a Cadillac that looks like the one I'm driving and just like the one I drove a few years ago. A few miles later the night goes from clear to puffs of fog. Thick then clear, then thick. Half a mile in I'm slowing down because visibility is getting worse. But, this isn't fog, it's smoke. I see the tail lights of a truck about a mile ahead. As long as I can see that far I'm good. Then another puff of thick smoke. It takes less than a second to pass through it but when I do the truck is right in font of me, stopped in the middle of the highway. "Oh my God!" I can hear myself yelling and I slam on the brakes. I swerve and slide sideways into the emergency lane. We just miss the back of the tanker trailer the truck is pulling. Looking in my mirror I see the other Cadillac coming. I pull into the grass to give him room to squeeze between us. But it doesn't... it never turns or brakes. I have a front row seat as it runs into the back of the trailer, 10 feet from me, at about 60 to 70 mph. It hits it so straight that the car recoils backwards and up 6 to 10 feet in the air and lands on the highway. All is quiet.
I wait a second to make sure the traffic coming up behind us knows we are stopped. Then I run to what is left of the car. Two people inside. Both dead. No noise, no movement. I look around for the truck driver but he is still in his truck. His truck is unharmed. I call 911. I check the car again. No movement, no sound... still no driver of the truck. FUCK! Why isn't he back here yet? I run past the trailer up to the truck. It's been 5 to 10 minutes and he's just getting out of the truck. He stumbles. He mumbles something. He looks like he just woke up or something. He does not go to check on the car that hit him. Instead he gets on his cell phone. "I'm okay, someone ran into the back of me", he casually says. Does he not get it? Your truck is parked in the middle of a major highway. They are dead. Dead.
I walk back to the side of the road and watch as the state patrol casually walk around. The paramedics make a few attempts to check the driver. Then they hang the white sheets over the car. The smoke gets thicker. My 72 year old father walks up to me, as I look at the crushed car, that use to be identical to ours. "That could have been us" he says. I start shaking because I don't know why it isn't us. Later I learn the fire department had to use thermal imaging to find us in the smoke.
As the hours passed everything felt horribly familiar, except this time I was watching from the sidelines. I tried to muster-up some sympathy for the driver of the truck, as I know what lays ahead of him, but I couldn't. I tried not to judge him but I did. From my view point, the second the car hit his trailer he started the process of protecting himself and his company. I know that's part of it but could he not check on the people in the car? How could he not?
Before we were allowed to go I already noticed inconstancies in his story. I had already talked to his company's lawyer on his cell phone. People were covering their asses and the bodies were still warm, still wedged in the car. I gave the police my statement. Keeping only to the facts and leaving my opinions out of it. That's fair, right? Right? But what about the dead people? I know things. I saw things that don't add up. The law suits will start to fly soon. I'm all to familiar with that part of it too.
So the story will go. A man, and his father, got up early March 17, 2011 to travel out of town. At 5:30 am they ran into smoke covering the road. Because of this smoke, a truck had stopped in the middle of the road. They never saw the truck and slammed their Cadillac into the back of the trailer. They were killed on impact.
What won't be told is the phone call to their loved ones that will forever change their lives. What won't be mentioned is the what the driver of the truck will go through to come to terms with his role in what happened. What may never come to light is what really happened that morning. What will never be known is why it wasn't me.
