A Hole in the Night

I was very excited today it was my friend Katie’s birthday party;

it was also, almost my last day on earth.

I am sitting here in my shorts with the afghan Katie’s mom made for me, just thinking about being safe and warm. I think back on the day, it all seemed so normal, well in the beginning anyway.

I slept in this morning. When I got up I took Tinydog outside to go pee. When we came back from our walk I put some sausage on my George Forman grill and went to take a shower while it cooked. I shaved and showered just like usual, it was a day like all of the others lately.

After my shower I got dressed and ate my sausage and cheese, when I was done I got up and got more cheese. I grabbed my bicycle, opened the door and pushed the bike outside so I could ride the half mile to work. It was an uneventful ride and an uneventful day at work. I only worked part of the four hours that I could have worked. I am a couple of hours ahead of schedule and I will make the rest up by working extra on Friday, its easier on Friday because the students have all gone and I can get right down to work. I walked out to where I put my bike.

I unlocked my bike and rode it to Katie’s house. I could see her house from the college so it only took a couple of minutes. When I rode up Katie and my friend Chris’s wife Amanda were walking out of the front door. Katie said they were going to get the ice-cream for the party. I locked my bike up and got in the car with them.

We drove to the grocery store; it was only a few blocks so the ride didn’t take very long. We went in to the store and I got a couple of pizzas. Katie picked up a couple more and she got a big tub of Neapolitan ice-cream. I got us some candy bars and I also got one for Katie’s son Jake who was back at home. We paid and left the store.

When we got back to Katie’s we went in and she made the pizzas, we ate them, and then we sang her the happy birthday song. We ate brightly frosted cupcakes and Neapolitan ice-cream.

After we ate Amanda went home because a storm was rolling in and like the rest of us she had eaten too many sweets. Shortly after she left the storm rolled in. They move in quick and hard in the Ozarks. They can get dangerous in a hurry. There were a few flashes of lightning and a lot of rain but it wasn’t proving to be a bad storm. I decided, with many protests from Katie, to ride home in the storm. She wanted me to put my wet bicycle in her car and have her drive me home. I told her I wanted to ride home and she stopped protesting.

This is where the story gets interesting.

I walked outside and unlocked my bike, I had only worn a t-shirt and the rain drops were cold and wet right away. I unlocked the lock and turned the bike around. As I mounted the bicycle I saw the rain coming down in the glow of the street light. It was very surreal. There were dream like qualities, starting with the light and dark combination. The darkness was all around but it was sliced open by the street light and it was almost like the rain was falling through the hole that the light had made in the blackness. The lightning flashed in the distance and I could see remnants of the hills and the trees that used to be there before the darkness stole it all away.

I rode off into the hole that the street light had made in the night. Each raindrop, made its presence known as it soaked through my shirt and touched my warm flesh. It wasn’t long before my shirt was soaked and the individual raindrops were all working together as one to cool me in the night.

I rode down the first hill and the inevitable cold wet muddy feeling crept up my behind as the water was slung up my backside by the rear wheel. I rode fast. It felt good and I felt free. I was alive slicing my way through the night as the raindrops did their best to find any dry spot on me that they might have missed.

I down shifted as the hill changed from down to up and I worked hard to keep my momentum going. It wasn’t long before I was at the corner under the shining salvation of the street light. I paused not knowing if I really wanted to enter the darkness again but knowing that I was going to anyway.

There were more lights now and some cars going by. I could see the bridge over mill creek in the distance, It was only twenty yards ahead, there were no street lights by the bridge. I was peddling hard to cut my way through the darkness toward the lights on the other side. I was at the beginning of the bridge and there were headlights coming toward me. The lightning flashed, I knew the driver of the truck had seen me and I relaxed a little. I peddled hard and I was moving fast. The truck and I got to the other side of the bridge at about the same time. I was washed in the unbelievable brightness of his headlights. It was almost maddening to be in total darkness with bright lights shining in your face. Nothing else exists in that moment, there is a tunnel of light and there is only light and dark. There isn’t any part of anything at that moment that has grey edges. It becomes a black and white world for a split second in time. Life and death are contradictions just as light and dark are, but neither exist without its opposite to define it.

A black shape moved between the truck and myself. A split second, not even enough time to contemplate what the shape was, had elapsed when the crash and the screech of breaks filled the night. I pushed my break handles and the squeak of the rubber against the wet metal cried out into the night. I put my foot down; all of this took place in a fraction of time. I was afraid to look behind me, was it me that got hit, was that death’s shadow that moved before me only a second ago. If I turn will I see my crumpled body under the wheels of that truck, spokes and handlebars protruding from my flesh? I slowly turned, the truck was in the middle of the bridge, its inertia had stretched its rear springs and compressed its front springs from the sudden stop. It looked like a cat ready to pounce, its break lights looked back at me in the darkness, raindrops cut through their stare.

There was a body in the road, it was me. Oh God what do I do now.

The truck settled back into its normal posture as its forward momentum was released into the black rubber patches on the pavement. Its headlights illuminated my broken body. No, not me, not my body. A deer lay in the road ahead of the truck.

I turned, legs shaking, and put the kickstand down on my bike. I had to see if I could help. The approaching headlights of a car illuminated the broken grill lying in the road. I stepped out into the road as the car stopped and removed the obstruction. I waved the car on and turned to take the piece back to its owner.

A man got out of the truck and went toward the front, he raised his arm and kind of stomped one foot as I could imagine him saying "Damn". I recognized him but my mind wouldn’t let me focus enough to know from where. Was he angry, did he think that he had hit me like I thought he had done, Was he going to blame me for scaring the deer into his path? I didn’t know. I handed him the piece from his grill as he said thanks Doug. The light from his cab illuminated his face and I was sorry. He is a good man, a good man that is struggling in a world of hatred and sadness. He is a pastor of a local church. Why do things like this happen to the good guys? He is in my typing class and I like to hear him talk. He isn’t negative and demeaning like most pastors. He is a down to earth good person.

His wife and at least one child were in the cab of the truck. I asked if they were alright and he said "yes". The deer gasped and he said "poor things still alive" then we both looked, he said " no maybe not" as it lay there in the headlights looking up at me. Had this deer taken my place? Was I supposed to be lying there? I wasn’t even in the road when the truck hit her but it was all so close. She wasn’t there then she was. I would almost swear that a portal had opened up in the blackness, a hole made by the headlights. She ran from another world, through that hole and into the path of the oncoming machine. A machine she could never comprehend. The only thing a vehicle means to a deer is fear and death.

The deer gasped again, she was dead but her body didn’t know it yet. He said he was just going to wait for the police to make a report for his insurance company. I turned and walked down the center of the street as two cars passed and then I crossed toward my bike.

I got on my bike and rode home, wondering the whole time if there were any other holes in the dark elsewhere that had opened. I wondered what else might have run through those open portals. I wondered if I would ever feel safe again. The storms in the Ozarks sure are different from the ones back home.

Douglas Face

04/02/08

Melbourne AR

Right after Katie’s Birthday Party