RUNAWAY TRAIN

         How juvenile! The cars coming south are blinking their headlights, warning me that a State Trooper is ahead. US Route 9 has one more twisting two-lane mile to go before it departs Columbia County under the graffiti-covered railroad bridge, where even the semblance of a shoulder disappears. The road is marked for 55 MPH. Many drivers heading north barely push that limit. The speed demons wait until after the bridge and the county line; there the road expands to four broad lanes and two wide shoulders.

         It's just after seven on Friday evening before Labor Day. It will be dark by 8:00. The dog and I are driving north to visit the rest stop on I90 for her evening walk. I am following a motor home. Usually a long line follows these slow moving behemoths, but this one is sailing along at the speed limit. We come out of the double "S" turn; the Railroad Bridge is ahead. I am glad the motor home is going in the same direction; I would hate to encounter it under the bridge. While it is smaller than a Walmart truck, the driver is probably not as experienced.

         I pass the motor home where the road widens and pull into the right lane in front, negotiating a gentle bend to the right. It's now that I see the flares ahead. Seems early for a sobriety checkpoint. As I slow I can make out an accident. The personnel directing traffic are either fire or EMT people. I also see a State police car. The four wide lanes have been cut to one, the same one I in which I am driving. The flagman indicates that I should stop. The dog begins to bark. I look ahead. A black vehicle, a pick up truck, is overturned on the shoulder on the other side. From its underside it looks old.

         Several other cars are scattered fifty yards ahead. The EMT man waves me on. I can’t help but become a ‘gaper blocker,’ as they were called on the traffic updates on the radio in Philadelphia. Twenty feet beyond the pickup on the shoulder is a tarpaulin with a shape under it. The shape is human. An emergency crewman is kneeling nearby. The head and one shoulder are not covered. It appears to be a man with gray hair and a suntanned face. From my far side of the highway, I see a gray pallor to his complexion. I pass a stopped sedan. It is pointed in the same direction I am going, but on the other side of the painted median. Its front is crushed. It must have crossed the center line and hit the truck head-on. A man is slumped over the wheel, trapped inside. Another EMT man attends him.

         I drive on, to the I90 ramp. As I head west, the dog, who has been barking since we stopped, quiets down. I hear the sound of a helicopter. It is the Medivac unit from Albany Medical Center. I know where it is going, ditto the ambulances streaming east on I90. To get home, I will have to wend my way east on Route 20 to Nassau and pick up the road to Chatham.

         On arriving home, I want to call Pam and tell her my thoughts. She is not on line, and by learning that, I have the feeling she is not home. I had left her a joke that would have led to a response had she been home. Now I send an email telling her of the accident.

         The next day I read on the web site of a television station that George Strick of Valatie was thrown from his truck and died. In addition, an EMT man directing traffic suffered a heart attack and died. The driver who was trapped behind the wheel is being treated for his injuries. “Officials say that alcohol was involved in the crash.”

         I leave a simple 'hello' on both Pam’s phone and her cell phone. I want to tell her how the body on the road revived my memory of a day, years ago, when I spotted a body in the front seat of a car parked behind a house down our common driveway. His face was gray also. I alerted my father and his neighbors. We approached it gingerly. The door to the house opened and a man came out. He saw us and laughed. The creature in his car was a dummy used for First-aid demonstrations.

         As Saturday wears on and Pam does not return my call, I begin to get nervous. The story about the dummy loses whatever humor it had. George Strick takes its place. Seventy-five and apparently going home, he probably had exited I90 and was on Route 9, puttering along in his old truck. He had not worn a seat belt. He did not know that another man had a few too many and took to the road. Now the vision of him keeps coming back to me and worries start about my friend. I can’t help it, things happen to me and to those I love.

         Forty years ago, my sister, in high school, stayed after class and had to walk to public transportation. She took the short cut through a park. A single-track freight line bisected the park. Perhaps one train a week used the track. Janet came upon a similar scene as mine. A girl from the Catholic high school had been walking home on the ties. Unknown to her, some time before and miles away, brakes failed on a stationary freight car. It began to move. It rolled the miles that separated it from the park, passing through grade crossings unscathed, until it mowed down the schoolgirl.

         The scene and circumstance is embedded in Janet’s mind. It forms the introduction to the book she is writing. Twenty-seven years later, on a Friday night also, a terrible storm hit that same spot. The railroad tracks were gone. The little creek, called a run, that meandered through the park both in Janet’s time and on that night in 1989, became a raging torrent of four-foot high water. It exited the park, flowing through a culvert under a road, and crossed under the path of the old railroad tracks. A rail-less footbridge crossed the run there.

         The rain let up. A group of thirteen-year-olds left the shelter of a restaurant and walked over the bridge. They were horsing around. The largest of them, a blue-eyed girl with brown hair and a confident mien, was having fun playing bump-em. Someone nudged her hard. She slipped and slid off the side of the bridge, striking her head. She was unconscious when she hit the water. Despite the efforts of the other teens, she was carried off by the current. Janet’s niece and my daughter, Lixie, was found drowned a few hours later. She had never regained consciousness.

         To keep my mind from Mr. Strick and the memories he stirs up and from my uncertainty about my friend, I do physical work. The storage boxes in the cellar are thrown about and put in alphabetical order. A load of recycling is hauled to the dump. I mow the back yard. When I stop and sit down, other thoughts pop up. Will I get a call like in 1992, the one that announced the sudden death of my brother, out riding an old chain bicycle, killed instantly by a heart attack?

         I recall Pam telling me she had fallen getting out of the shower the night before, and her tale of her aunt falling and not being found. I push myself off the couch and take the mower out front. Even though it’s not hot, when I finished I am soaked with sweat and sore from moving boxes. I change clothes, lay down in my bed, and feel the dog jump in next to me. I pick up my mystery, but in minutes I doze off. The ringing phone wakes me just after five. It is the voice I so much want to hear. She had been at her son’s house in the country, where there was no cell phone service. As she drove home, her cell phone beeped to tell her she had a message. Though I had only wished her ‘good morning’, she called back instantly. I babble about the accident, and then realize she is driving. We agree to talk later when she is home.

         My dinner tastes wonderful. Afterward, on the Saturday night before Labor Day, the dog and I drive to the rest area on I90, proceeding with caution up twisting, winding Route 9. We reach the safer area where the road widens. The man under the tarpaulin, and all my other ghosts, have gone on hiatus. There isn’t another car on the road.

Valatie September 1, 2002