It Was a Car Accident

It was a car accident. It was a motorcycle accident. He crashed in the crosswalk while riding his bicycle. Some thought he intentionally stepped out in front of the car. The truck. His twisted body rested limply on the sidewalk begging to be outlined in chalk. I couldn’t see blood but the couple standing at the barricade tape swore that they could.

“Who is this guy?”

“Did you know him?”

“Where did he come from? The driver didn’t see him.”

“Why would someone do such a terrible thing?”

“He’s not from this neighborhood. I would have seen him before.”

“I think he’s from out of town.”

It wasn’t the biggest city in the world, not even in the biggest in the United States, but it was big enough for the body to be just some body to most passersby. And some weren’t passersby at all but ambulance chasers who would further reduce the body to anonymity, to just a number on an ever-growing list of numbers.

He was No. Sixty-Four to someone. And No. Twenty-Two to another someone. To most, though, I was just one body in a city of eight hundred thousand of them. The body was just some body.

One of the greatest tragedies of death is how faultless the reduction of the body is. No one at the scene truly cared for the guy, even if—for whatever reason—they could empathize with his finality. There are simply too many people in the world. That and people subconsciously live as if they’re going to live forever. This guy had been no different.

But then there’s the matter of who—or what—this body had become. Which is the real tragedy, if you ask me. Alive, his faults were forgivable, manageable, and even positioned within his promises to be taken care of. But like this, very un-alive, any faults not addressed were permanent. Or worse: his faults would be the only details of his life that some would remember.

But, being human, he also had moments of true compassion. None consequential enough to change the world but effective in their own, small ways. Like a pebble’s momentary ripple when dropped into a moving stream.

(Following through with this particular metaphor, he had now become the pebble weighted at the bottom of the riverbed: lifeless and drowned.)

These are what would be brought up at his funeral. By a select few. By my mother, most certainly. And maybe by my sisters. My brother would probably remain respectfully quiet.

Whatever agency the person who occupied the body had was now gone. His existence had been handed over to everybody else. Its importance quickly diminishing until it’s yet another number to a sexton.

I’ve tried not to think about it too much but lately, it’s been in the front of my mind more and more: Death is grim in ways that are both obvious and not. What a thought to be having while standing over this body in the middle of the road. In the crosswalk. In the middle of the sidewalk. Inside of the ambulance.

I thought I was going to live forever.

***

“Did you hear the news?” my mother asked as she handed the coffee mug to me before sitting down on the sofa. “This country’s goin’ to Hell. People actin’ like they’re more important than the rest.”

My mother always talked politics in the vaguest of ways (whether it was strategic or not, I couldn’t decipher). I didn’t actually know where she stood and I never asked. I was sure we disagreed on many things but I kept my own views to myself despite being reminded over and over that I should talk about these things with family. Especially with family.

Later in the evening, she’d buckle in the hospital lobby and wonder out loud what she did—or what I did—to deserve such a thing. But, in this moment, she seemed happy to have me sitting across from her instead of listening to my voice through the phone.

She had a point this time: This country was going to hell.

But what pissed me off the most was that no individual could indulge themselves in their own personal disappointment anymore; the collective pain was too big, too real to shift focus on the tiny tragedies of one body. And anyway, any show of sadness would be written off as a sign of the times.

I had been hurting for some time. Secrets are a fact of life but I had one too many, and frankly, it was enough to cast doubt over my ability to swim. I had one too many pebbles in my overcoat pockets. I kept all of that to myself.

“What are you thinkin’?” It was as if she caught the static from my thoughts: she could hear that I was thinking but couldn’t make out what I was thinking. “Have you been doin’ okay?”

It had been difficult to lie at first. I hadn’t gotten caught up in the morality of lying, it was more that I was still solidifying the details. It needed a specificity that doubled as a dismissal. And most of all, it needed to be something I could make sound believable.

This approach, however, would not work on my mother. I’d have to lean into the dismissal.

“I’m okay. Just a lot going on right now.”

I wanted to tell her everything because I wanted (even more) for her to tell me it would be okay. But I sat quietly and took a sip of my coffee.

“What roast is this?”

It was, truthfully, a small comfort being with her.

***

He had traces of drugs in his system—mostly marijuana—and people would blame his death on that. At least partly. A few would even take to his history and exploit some of the less-flattering details. They never knew me that well but they’d become experts on my shortcomings. For a week or two, he’d finally get some of the fame he’d be aiming for with his art.

His family would look through his paintings for clues and convince themselves that they should have seen it coming. That they could have done something. Anything. More.

It was a car accident. It was a stress-related heart attack and he just dropped while walking across the road. Who cares about the details? The end result is the same.

He was dead.

I had been thinking about it for a while.

***

I think I had mistaken the metaphor and life isn’t a stream at all. It’s the goddamn rapids. And I was being thrown around beneath the surface, taking hit after hit from the river’s rocks.

The process of living was becoming disorienting.

After all, there are two sides of the coin: the great potential people always knew you had and the inevitable downfall that people would forever use to justify their own ignorance. Neither of the sides really mattered.

I was drowning. I had drowned.

A penny sinks with both of its sides intact.

But, while parked outside of the supermarket, I sat in front of the wheel and pondered which side my life had landed on. I could have told you who I had been before but wasn’t at all certain about who I had become—or who I was becoming.

I had either hit someone with my car or I had been hit by a car.

I was either behind the yellow tape or within in it.

The body in the middle of the parking lot looked a lot like my own body and it sent me into a new spiral. I thought that I would live forever.

***

There was something delicate about the way the body was positioned, with one leg out below in the most natural of ways and the other one bent backward—almost behind him—like he was suspended in an effortless ballet jump.

His eyes were closed and his face, relaxed. After all of the years he spent burying his anxieties, the quietness that flushed his face was a relief. And even with the blood that, until now, I couldn’t see and the one shoeless foot, he looked peaceful.

It was as if this, of all things, was what everyone alive was working so tirelessly toward. It was as if this was the actual answer to life’s big question.

The headlights of the car reflected off of the wetness of the city street, bringing attention to the blues and yellows and reds that weren’t as recognizable before. The same headlights hit one side of the body, like a spotlight, and threw the other side into shadow.

It was a study in highlights and lowlights. In tints and hues. In unabashed brightness and unapologetic darkness. Most people wouldn’t dare calling death beautiful but I stood in the crowd, looking to the lifeless body, and admired the aesthetics.

***

I had spent the evening at a friend’s place, drinking cheap wine and burning through a joint or two. I had promised to quit both drinking and smoking but, considering the circumstance, had given up on giving anything up. Both of these vices—along with the many others—relaxed my mind, if only a little.

The rain had stopped and I had seen it as a small courtesy from the universe, maybe even as an acknowledgment that I was dealing with enough already. The roads were still slick though, especially when beneath my bicycle’s two tires.

I had been trying to pay extra attention to the roads, knowing that any sudden stops would send me skidding across the pavement but a sad song had come through my headphones and I knew enough not to listen to it on my ride home. I was shuffling through a playlist, trying to find a positive yet still relevant song that I could sing to in the streets. Into the darkness.

Just as the right song started to play, I saw the body in the middle of the road. The incident hadn’t happened yet but I could already see that it would. So, in a way, it had already happened, I just hadn’t yet caught up with time.

Did a car hit him? Was he on a motorcycle? My mother always warned me about the dangers of motorcycles. Was he riding a bicycle when it happened? His bicycle looked a lot like my own. Was he in the crosswalk and the driver didn’t see him? Or did he step out into the middle of the road without looking? I saw one of his shoes untied on the other side of the road. Was it the pickup truck?

I rode by the body, mosaic-like among the pieces of broken glass, and thought I recognized it. Did I know him when he was alive? He too, had been visiting his mother. He too, had been collecting stones in his pockets. He too, carried one too many stones. How could I have known this? Did I know him?

This was the obvious conclusion. He had become too heavy to be propelled forward in the stream.

I had been riding by him for what felt like an hour when I finally turned my head away to look into an expanding white light. It started small until it filled the entire plane of vision.

It was a car accident.