A Book of American Martyrs(18)

It is over now. God has taken her to His side, she is with the angels now.

After some time, it was possible for Edna Mae to embrace me, and for me to embrace Edna Mae, and not to speak of our loss. It seemed clear that Edna Mae forgave me, for my error in taking the vehicle out onto the highway at that time, in the falling snow where visibility was poor, and a fine film of ice was forming on the pavement.

The fury in my heart at the driver of the pickup truck, that may have displeased God, I did not mention to Edna Mae, or to anyone.

I do not think that my vehicle was speeding at the time of the crash. There was never any accusation of that. Nor that I had failed to respond quickly enough, to jam my foot against the brake pedal, and to turn the steering wheel to avoid the crash though turning the wheel was to no avail, it seemed.

Though it is true, my thoughts were distracting to me. Like gnats in a cloud about my head such thoughts made me vexed and impatient and filled my heart with belligerence, that the sight of the pickup failing to stop for the stop sign and instead venturing out onto the highway did not make me fearful (as it should have) but of a mind to punish.

No! I will not slow down for you.

God damn you.

A jubilance of rage filled my heart like the cry of a trumpet—but almost at once, my foot was on the brake. Except too late.

Though it would be told to us, who’d survived the crash, that there was nothing we could have done to save ourselves.

Whatever happened to our Daphne, she was gone from our lives. For as long as I was injured, I understood that this was my punishment for what had happened, though it would be told to me that it was not my fault. Skull fracture, brain swelling—dislocated shoulder, lower back—though I did not take “painkillers” (as they are called) yet my memory was poor, and for a long time my eyesight was splotched as when you have gazed too directly into the sun. If you said to me “Luther, we are going out at noon,” ten minutes later I could not remember that you had said anything at all; and at work, once I was able to return, Ed Fischer had to instruct me carefully what to do more than once.

Sometimes I would remember that something important had been told to me, but I would not remember what it was. And other times I would not remember that something had been told to me at all.


YOU ARE NOT TO BLAME. Jesus has taken her to dwell with him.

This was explained to me by our pastor, as by others in our church who prayed for my recovery and also the recovery of Edna Mae who seemed to fall ill, even as I grew stronger.

It was a discipline of mine, when I was at home, and later when I was returned to work, to study the accident from every angle. Plainly I could see that there was no three-year-old in the vehicle, in the child’s seat in the rear.

How many times in my lifetime as a father have I buckled a small child into the rear seat, sometimes children into two child-seats beside each other, and I did not do this, I am sure, on that day. What had flashed through my mind in the crash was the thought—If I die, at least no one else will die with me.

Somewhere behind my eyes I would see it begin. A sick sensation in my gut for there was no way to stop it. The pickup truck on County Line Road—hardly slowing at the stop sign—pushing out into the right lane about two hundred feet ahead—(the driver, invisible to me, making a quick decision that he can accelerate fast enough to avoid being struck by the first vehicle speeding toward him)—(yes it is a chance a driver might take—it is a chance I had probably taken in my own lifetime more than once, but never when anyone was in the vehicle with me)—for there is the expectation that, though you don’t have the right-of-way, you can rely upon traffic to (probably) slow down for you.

And so, the driver in front of me braked his vehicle, before I could begin to brake mine. So my vehicle slammed into the rear of his, amid the sound of brakes shrieking—and then, the crash like an avalanche that seemed to go on, and on.

You are shaken like a rag doll. You are lost to yourself.

Once a crash has happened, it cannot be undone. But before the crash happens, there is a strange sensation almost of slowness when (you think) you have enough time to make a decision, you believe you have time, turning your wheel in another direction (for instance) that will avoid the collision, or begin braking sooner, or later—and the crash might be averted, or would happen differently.

In slow motion I would see the accident. Waking from sleep I would realize, I was seeing the accident. Speaking with another person I would see the accident. As in a film in which everything is clear at first, and then begins to break up, and to melt. And I would hear the brakes, that were the brakes of my own vehicle, and I would hear the sickening sound of skidding, swerving, crashing. And I would hear the screams. I did not hear a child cry.

My vehicle (which was a 1993 Dodge sedan I had taken for inspection only a few weeks before, and which was deemed in good condition despite ninety thousand miles on the odometer) struck and recoiled from the vehicle in front of me, and was thrown against the median guardrail. After the stunned first moments of the crash I could feel the air quiver, I could feel vibrations in the air like vibrations in water, there was a shuddering of metal, and smashed glass in shapes like frost, the dented squeezed-together hood that looked as if a giant had lowered his foot upon it, and his weight.

There was a hissing as of steam. And the shouts, calls for help.

The crash was one of the turns of my life, I would realize later. At the time I was not able to comprehend its meaning. For a long time afterward my head often pounded with pain, and my neck, and back—my legs, knees—even my feet—which was distracting for I am not a man who cares to show pain to others, or any kind of distress to signify self-pity. And so I could not work out if the accident had been the fault of Luther Dunphy in a way no one (else) would know; or whether the accident had been just partly my fault; or whether it was entirely the fault of the driver of the pickup, and my involvement in it like the others’ involvement was accidental.