The Story to Tell

Though it was spring, there was a chance of freezing rain, and storms. I knew I would have to drive the not-quite-two-hours from Oklahoma City to Ada that afternoon through the weather, half of it across open land on sweeping thin roads with too-high speed limits, no doubt a white pickup with blasting brights on my tail. I dreaded the drive.

All morning I had individual conferences with my freshmen about their research essays. The conference process is mentally exhausting, and also necessary: the only way to teach essay writing well, I have become convinced, is to create moments of open and enthusiastic conversation about a draft between the writer and the reader. In practical terms, this means not only reading every essay for clarity and correctness but also trying to put myself in the shoes of the writer, to imagine that the essay under discussion was mine. What do I want to know? What do I want to say?

I often propose that it is important to live with questions, with uncertainty; I am also always too attentive to the weather forecast, because I want to believe I know what is going to happen; I go online to watch loops of stormclouds develop in the future.

After the last conference, I stopped home to walk the dog before the weather hit, then put her back in her crate. I left stuffed animal tableaus for my daughters who were in school, who I would not see until the next day: a purple alien atop a dragon, a plastic sea-otter nestled in the hair of an old doll with eyes that could blink.

On the way to the highway, I stopped at the circle K to get an energy drink. I knew it would taste like Mountain Dew mixed with mouthwash and gasoline, but I needed chemical alertness for the drive. There was a long line for the cashier, obviously a longer wait than the can of Sugarfree Rockstar was worth. If I hadn’t made the decision to stand in that line, I wouldn’t have this story to tell, though what happened would have happened whether or not I was there.

I was on 235 on my way out of the city. My phone was plugged into power and the stereo, playing chugging rock music I loved but wasn’t listening to. I had a headache. It was already drizzling, gray twilight at 2 in the afternoon, storm light. Traffic was steady; I knew I had to get left to take 35 South past Norman.

There was a plain highway-orange sign that read “Congestion Ahead” and I saw what it predicted, traffic bottlenecking, the highway narrowing into a bridge up over a network of interchanges just south and east of downtown where several cross-country highways knot — here you can begin a journey toward California, Minnesota, Texas, North Carolina, anywhere, though it is also true that any road is eventually connected to every other road. Anything is possible. Directly ahead of me was an oversized SUV, beige-silver, with black windows.

I slowed down.

The SUV does not slow down and in the instant I see it’s moving too fast its brakes slam on and it jerks to the left and it will of course be fine because cars always stay on the road but it doesn’t stop and it’s off one wheel and then, impossibly it tips, and rolls, and smashes onto its back. It’s so heavy I can feel how heavy and helpless a body is.

Then I’m past it and I should just keep going because it doesn’t make sense and what can I do? But I pull over.

Just in front of me another car has pulled over and a woman my age and a girl my daughter’s age get out. I wonder why the mother isn’t telling the girl to stay in the car and I see the girl’s at least wearing a windbreaker against the drizzle and the cold that’s coming. I have my phone out and I see the mother has her phone out too and I say “Are you going to call?” and she sort of nods and doesn’t look at me. Her daughter looks at me. We are moving toward the overturned SUV.

I’m the first to the SUV. It’s on its back. Its face is bent in.

Scattered on the pavement are bits of glass, shards of metal and plastic.

I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what I’m doing. People in the SUV could be hurt or worse. The windows are black — I can’t see in.

I’m not connected to my own hands but I yank on the driver’s door as hard as I can and it’s like trying to pull open a mountain.

I hear sourceless glassy crunching, like I’m standing on ice and there’s someone underneath, punching up, and there’s something pressing against the back passenger-side window, a hand, and it smashes through and I kneel on the wet road in the black glass and I see a woman’s face rising up out of the dark water, and she’s choking and moaning and she clears black glass from the hole with her hand and then she is holding out to me a baby, a child, a boy, and I take him, the child, from the hole in black window, and I lift him up and hold him.

He’s not crying. His eyes are open and he’s looking at the world: the traffic, the wrecked SUV, the freezing rain, the storm light, Oklahoma City. I settle him in one arm against my side. He is warm and weighs what a child weighs.

There are more people around us and the car. There’s another man bending in to talk to the woman through the hole, asking, is there anyone else in the car? And she says no, and she’s pulling herself out, and another man is laying his jacket over the glass, and she’s saying where’s my grandson, and we say, here, he’s right here. And a man says, ma’am, you need to stay where you are, and she’s climbing out through the smashed window.

Another woman with a tiny gold cross dangling from her necklace comes to me and she’s someone I’d pass in the grocery store and she says do you want to give him to me, and I don’t exactly want to give her the child but I give her the child and his eyes are open and he’s quiet.

The ground I’m standing on shivers. I realize we’re on the bridge, well above the earth.

A short woman in a buttoned-up winter coat asks me if I have flares or traffic cones and I say no. Why is she asking me? I think. I ask the woman who called 911 if she has flares and she says no. Her daughter looks at me.

The drive of the wrecked SUV, the child’s grandmother, is saying oh my god, oh my god. She’s pacing in fragments of circles. She’s not wearing shoes. She has beautiful long braided black hair. Where’s my grandson, she says. He’s right here someone says. Do you want to use my phone? I say to her. My phone’s in there, she says. Oh God. Do you want to use my phone? I say. She pauses and looks at me. I’m amazed by how quickly I’m able to enter the password, pull up the key pad, and I hand the phone to her. She looks at the phone. I don’t know the number, she says. I understand, I say in a weak joking way, as if I understand. I take the phone back. I touch her shoulder. I don’t know exactly what I say but I say something.

I have a habit of touching the shoulder of someone I am not intimately connected to who I happen to be near while they are going through a terrible emotion. It is an awkward gesture, both selfish and meaning to be helpful, a way of saying I am here to the other person, and to myself.

Two younger women appear, just a year or two older than my students, the leader in a sweatshirt and white patterned leggings, hair worn neatly pulled back, like one of my dance major students, and she asks if anyone is still inside, and says we’re EMTs. Was he in a car seat? Was he restrained? You know what I’m going to check on him.

The woman holding the child kneels with him and the EMT looks in his face, touches his ribs. She says, does anyone have a flashlight on their phone? She is speaking calmly to the child, who is looking at the world: the traffic, the wrecked SUV, the freezing rain, the storm light, Oklahoma City.

One lane of traffic is going by now, slowly, a few men hanging out of windows with their phones asking me if we called. We called, I say.

Finally there is a siren, a sound that has never before for me meant relief. Soon we can see the fire engine in the distance, looping up a ramp toward us. We follow its slow progress as it noses through stopped traffic. I remember hearing a fireman friend say that you just put on the siren and lights and go and they’ll move, the sheep.

The child’s grandmother is pacing in fragments of circles, still barefoot. Someone asks her if she wants her shoes and she doesn’t respond. I watch her. I worry she’ll tip herself accidentally or on purpose over the side of the bridge. I don’t know what’s below us.

Then the fire truck is parked and the firemen are approaching with deliberate urgency, turtles in their shells. Their coats look heavy. One carries a notebook. He asks is everyone out. The EMT explains to him what she knows and I don’t hear her words but I hear the professional rhythm; what happened is being put into order. The fireman speaks numbers into the radio on his shoulder I did not know was there. I feel an odd releasing, an opening of a hand.

The story is no longer happening; it happened.

The woman in the buttoned-up winter coat embraces the grandmother. I don’t hear what she says.

Another fireman asks me if I saw the crash. Yes, I say. He directs me to sit in my car with my seatbelt on to wait. I make my way back to my car. I see I’ve left the door open, the headlights on. I’m normally obsessive about turning off headlights. I often double back in parking lots to check. I’ve even charged my older daughter with reminding me. Who was it who left the door open and the headlights on? Who was it who pulled over instead of driving away?

I get back into my car, contemplate calling my wife, do not. I discover my face is wet with rain. A minute or ten passes. The fireman is at my window again saying sir, we’re gonna let you go. Something about it’s a one car accident, something about no damage to the bridge, something about how it’s not safe. I say, so I can just go? It seems impossible; I will never be able to leave. But he doesn’t respond, is moving on to tell the mother and daughter waiting in the parked car ahead of me. I see the daughter is sitting in the front passenger seat. But she’s too young, I think, because my own daughter is too young, for one more year.

I’m surprised to find I’ve left the keys in the ignition. I start the car. A few seconds later the mother and her daughter pull away into traffic, and then I do, too, because that is the next thing to do.

The practical task of the moment is to merge from the left into the stream of traffic that is picking its way past the crash so I’m checking my blindspot and getting up to speed and I can’t believe I’m driving again and then I’m around a curve and don’t think to look back at the wreck in the rearview until it’s too late.

What I want to say is the story I told. I want to say how it seemed impossible as it was happening but it was not. I want to say there was no reason why it happened to me; therefore, it could have happened to you.

And I want to say how a story is evidence of how much it is possible to know and tell and also evidence of how much world exists outside of what is possible to know and tell. A story is a question to live with. I’ll never see any of those people again. I’ll never know if the child has some sort of injury or if he will carry the fear of the crash with him forever or if he will even remember what happened. I’ll never know his name, the child who was passed to me up out of darkness into the safety of cold and rain on the bridge above Oklahoma City.