Accidents Happen

There was an unexpected thump before we went airborne.  Celia screamed blue murder while I hung onto the wheel and gritted my teeth, having no idea where the ride would take us.  Uncle Baptiste was in the slammer on a drunk driving charge so he didn’t know I had taken his truck.  There would have been hell to pay if he found out, but now it looked like he might not have a truck to worry about.  Celia had insisted on stopping at the bootleggers to buy a six-pack for the drive-in, so we were late for the show.  I don’t know what we hit, probably t-boned a driveway, but we were airborne before we knew it.   

I’d heard that your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die, but I was only seventeen so there wasn’t much to remember.  Everything that had happened so far seemed like yesterday.  As we soared toward the darkening sky to the music of Celia’s desperate wail, another accident came to mind.  

My sister was a year ahead of me in school, and I had a brother a year behind me. The other little ones were too young for school.  Ma said there were so many of us because we were Catholic.  I figured that Mary must have told Catholics to have as many kids as they could.  She looked happy enough but then she only had Jesus while there were five of us. When we were old enough we went to Queen Victoria Elementary, which was two blocks from home.  St. Bridget’s Academy was eight blocks and part of it was uphill.  Pa said he didn’t want nuns raising us kids like they did him, and on top of that the Catholic school wanted money that he had no intention of paying. “I’d rather piss it away,” he said.

 When Celia and I reached the peak of our flight, our arms went up in the air like we were praying to a higher power, as an assortment of grubby ballpoints, scribbled-on scratch pads, and empty cigarette boxes floated along with us. The beer surged out of our open bottles and the rest of the six-pack lifted off the seat.  The box of Uncle Baptiste’s pickup truck was empty so it was lighter at the back and heavier at the front where the engine was.  As we went over the top of the curve, like starting down a roller coaster, we could see plain as day that we were heading for the ground nose first.  Celia screamed all the way down. 

On the day of the other accident, a boy I knew from elementary school invited me to his house for lunch.   I knew Hughie because we played marbles at recess on the cement playground.  I showed him my shooting gallery with little doors cut into a slab of wood with 1, 2, and 3, written above them.  This was how many marbles a player got back if he could shoot his marble through one of the holes.  Most of the kids were bad shots so the shooting gallery was a good way to get a new supply. Cat’s eyes got two shots, aggies only got one.  Hughie usually played circle marbles with his other friends, but he wasn’t very good, so when he ran out of marbles, I’d lend him my shooting gallery.  A few times he brought me a cat’s-eye cob from home to say thank you.  Like the other kids, he called me Pigpen.  I didn’t mind it too much because I hated my real name.  It was at recess on the day of the accident when Hughie told me about his mother’s invitation.  He lived even closer to the school than I did, and since Ma was always gone back to sleep by lunchtime, I went with him.     

We never invited people to eat at home with us.  If they showed up when we were eating, Ma never offered them anything, probably because she didn't think there was enough. Pa said it was the way she was raised.  When we got to Hughie’s house and I met his Ma, a lady in a clean dress who smiled a lot, she asked me my name.  I told her it was “Pigpen” so she would know she had the right kid in her house.

She looked over at Hughie like my name was his fault. “Pigpen’s not a name,”  she said and smiled at me like I was a puppy. “What’s your real name, young man?”

I looked down at my hands that were still dirty from the last time I played cars in the driveway of our back-alley house with my brother.  I put them behind my back and spoke quietly again, hoping she wouldn’t hear me. “Clarence.”

“What was that honey?” she asked.  “Darren?”

I wished it was Darren and I almost said yes.  “Clarence,” I said again, but I couldn’t look up at her in case she laughed.  

“Does your mum call you something for short?” she asked.

Ma usually called me ‘You!’ and ‘Boy!’ and pointed, but I told Hughie’s Ma my short name was Cal.  Ma didn’t remember our names if she was mad.  I was sure she shouted at me the most, always telling me I should know better.  Pa said it was because I was the man of the house when he was away, so I had to help her out. 

“I hope you like potato salad Cal?” Hughie’s Ma asked. Nobody was ever interested in what I thought about food because I had no say in what we ate. Usually it was cold pork and beans, or prem on bread that didn’t always have the mould cut off.  I said, “Yes please,” to the salad even though I didn’t know what it was.   

“Good,” she said.  “You boys go wash your hands and I’ll bring your hamburgers out to the patio.”

My stomach growled and I felt a bit sick, partly from the perfumed white bathroom towels, and from the thought of a juicy hamburger of my own.   Hughie led the way through the living room that looked like it was out of a catalogue with the plastic still on the lampshades, and out to the back garden.  Hughie’s mother came out behind us to ask if we wanted milk or cola to drink.  I had never had a choice and if I had, cola was not offered at home.  Mum bought it sometimes, but it was strictly for adults to mix drinks.  If we kids made it disappear sip by sneaky sip, there wouldn’t be any dinner that night.   Hughie and I sat in the shade of a big tree at the edge of a lawn that was so green and perfect it could have been plastic.  I craned my neck looking for the place where he played in the dirt but didn’t see one.    

Hughie’s Ma brought a glass of cola for me and milk for him.  The milk probably came from a bottle, delivered to the door every morning by a milkman, and kept in a fridge that didn’t smell like beer.  Ma said fresh milk was too expensive so she used powdered instead, but she didn’t mix it very well in our glasses so it always had lumps.  Pa worked at a ranch half a day away up the North River and usually came home on the weekends, but not always. He said he milked a lot of cows up there, but he never brought anything home to drink except whiskey.  

After our hamburgers and potato salad, Hughie’s mother came out to ask if we wanted chocolate-chip or peanut butter cookies.  Hughie said he was too full, but I asked for chocolate-chip because I wanted to taste one even though my stomach was about to pop.  I could stuff a few more into my pockets when Hughie wasn’t looking.  When we left, his mother waved us goodbye from the front door.  There was no shouting at Hughie’s house and I never once saw him get a smack on the head.  I’d been knocked flat a few times for things that weren’t my fault.  Sometimes Ma gets mad if she thinks I blink too much.

As the pickup truck started the downslope of our surprise flight, a swarm of cigarette butts flew out a knocked-open ashtray and peppered our faces.  I pulled back hard on the steering wheel, in the stupid hope that I could make the truck land on its wheels like it was a plane. We would drive away like nothing had happened.  It was a long way down and I think I started to shake because I knew that the longer the ride was, the harder the bounce would be. 

When Hughie and I left his house after lunch to walk back to school, I spotted my older sister at the street-corner. I knew it was her because she was wearing her favourite pumpkin-coloured dress with its puffy sleeves, and smock stitching on the top. The skirt had dirt streaks on it because she’d had it for a while. Our clothes usually got ripped or wore out before they ever got washed.  I couldn’t wait to tell her where I had been, so I left Hughie behind to catch up with her. I don’t know if she heard me coming or not, but right then she decided to run across the road.  I stayed on the curb when I heard a screech of brakes and saw her fly up in the air as high as the hood of a green car.  The driver got out and ran around to where my sister must be, but I stood on the curb frozen, not sure if I would be hit by another car if I stepped forward.  A few grown-ups came running so I figured they could look after my sister better than me.  Hughie had seen the whole thing.  “She flew like a sack of potatoes!” he said, excited to have witnessed an accident with his own eyes. I was afraid to cross the street in front of the car that hit my sister, but Hughie dragged me across anyway because he wanted to see.  There were too many people squatting and kneeling on the road for me to see if my sister was there or not.  One of the adults told us to get off the road, and another guided us over the cross-street to the school.  I didn't want to believe that my sister was lying in the road, and told myself she was probably already over in the playground and another little girl had been hit.    

Uncle Baptiste’s pickup didn’t land on its wheels like I hoped, but came down at a steep angle.  Celia was up against the ceiling by then because she didn’t have the steering wheel to hold her down.  When the nose of the truck hit the ground with a bang and a crunch, the back window exploded into the cab.  With too much momentum to stop, the truck stood vertical for a breathtaking second before taking off on another flight.  This time we were upside down.  Floormats, tire-irons, and rusty jacks clunked down on us as we went head over heels.  As this second flight reached its peak, Celia slipped out the back window.  I tried to grab her but only got hold of a running shoe that came off in my hand. With both hands on the wheel, I stared straight ahead at the blank sky and waited for the truck to come down on its tail.  

Celia wasn’t a bad girl but she was a bad influence on me because though she was only six months younger, she had tried pretty much everything.  I was surprised she wasn’t pregnant yet.  We’d had sex a couple of times but I always used a condom even though she made fun of me.  I didn’t think I was ready to be a father but she said “Whatever happens, happens.”  It was her who talked me into borrowing Uncle Baptiste’s truck because she had to see Creature From The Black Lagoon at the drive-in. She liked going to the drive-in because she could drink beer there without anyone knowing.  We were both too young to drink legally, but Celia was always on the lookout for ways to get happy.  A few weeks earlier she had invited me to a friend’s house to party and we had only been there five minutes before a fight broke out.  Someone got thrown through the front window so this old man showed up with a shotgun and started blasting holes in the ceiling.  Celia thought it was funny.  I didn’t give a damn about The Creature From the Black Lagoon but she didn’t want to be late.  When I had taken my foot off the gas because somebody was turning left in front of us, she probably thought it was funny to yank on the steering wheel to go around them.  That’s what sent us into the ditch.  She wasn’t laughing now.  

When the truck landed with a bang and a crunch, the force almost pulled me out the empty back window but I hugged the wheel and hung on. The long-body truck stood on its tailgate for a second like a fencepost without a hole, deciding which way to fall.   Pieces of the bodywork and undercarriage that had broken off in flight, thumped to earth around us.  

Hughie and I were across the road in the school-ground, watching through the chain-link fence when we saw the ambulance arrive, but the after-lunch bell rang so we had to go to our classrooms. I hadn’t seen my sister anywhere in the schoolyard so my hope that she had missed the accident was fading.  When we were all sitting in class, I put my hand up to ask if I could come up to talk to the teacher.  

“About what?” she asked, and I could tell she was upset with me for interrupting her at the start of the lesson. 

“My sister, Miss.”

“What about her?  Surely this can wait until after class Clarence.”

Someone else must have put their hand up because the teacher said “Yes?” to someone I couldn’t see.

“There was an accident, Miss.”

“Why didn’t you tell me right away?” the teacher scolded me.  Like I had done something wrong, she marched me down to the principal's office.  They knew about the accident and told me to wait there for my Uncle Baptiste to come and get me. Sometimes he stayed over with Ma when Pa was away and helped look after us kids.  I must have started crying because I remember the principal’s secretary hugging my shoulders.  I wasn’t only crying about my sister, but because I knew the accident was my fault.  If I hadn’t gone to Hughie’s, my sister and I would have been walking back to school together and she wouldn't have run out in the road. 

I guess I’d have to say that the accident with Uncle Baptiste’s truck was my fault too.  I didn’t have to do everything Celia wanted.  If I let myself get twisted around by her I’d probably end up like Ma and Pa.  Sometimes Pa said he was sorry he and Ma had ever met.  I didn’t want to make the same mistake. 

After the long pause as it stood on its end, the pickup truck made a creaking sound and something snapped, before it toppled over sideways like a good sized tree that groans when it falls. The truck landed on the passenger’s side in a cloud of white dust.  There was a wheeze and the truck rolled over onto its wheels and plopped down like it was ready for another run.  My ears rang in the quiet and I thought I was deaf or dead as I watched the dust roll in the smashed windows.  I wondered if the dirty cloud would carry me away like the other one had done with my sister.  Ma gave her dolls to the younger kids and  threw her clothes in the trash.   I took her place at the table but it always felt like I was sitting in her place and she would be upset.  When I coughed out my first breath of dust, I knew I was alive, but I wasn’t so sure about Celia.  Whichever way it turned out, it was the end of her and me.