The voice told me: Report to a 50-car pile-up, about twelve miles out on the turnpike.
Thought I heard the radio, or the television; they were both on. The
TV, on the left, on the bed
stand by the phone, the radio to the right, on a night stand alone,
they were turned down low. I
slept between them, unable to fall to sleep without their sounds.
The dozen-mile or so drive on the turnpike was hard. I drove through
sheets of dark water. The
street lights along the road were down. I could barely see the lane
ahead, more than half a foot
at a time. Wind and water swirled through the dour air and rocked against
the truck's cab. Having
driven on this road before was not a help, but an impediment. My foot
wanted to drive faster, to
get there. The black rain and the darker, sour wind warned me of my
nearness to a possible
accident of my own.
The truck inched along, taking a long time.
Still, I was among the first to arrive. I was doubly tired, sleepy.
My eyes were red. My legs, weak.
My head, woozy. I hadn't taken my medicine. My stomach gurgled, too--
before I had gone
to bed I had forgotten to eat. A highway patrol 'droid approached.
He wore the long black boots
and black clothing of the domino class 'droids. He asked, "Are you
all right?" I nodded, said, "I can
handle it."
"That's the spirit," he said.
I saw rain drenched bodies lying on the turnpike, smashed-up and bleeding
blood and dropsy, and
other morbid body fluids collecting at the torn flesh and opened wounds.
The dead looked smaller,
some looked tiny like compacted infant bodies, all twisted. I turned
away before I barfed. A
voice, with the tone of my father's, ordered me to watch, and not to
choke like a wimp. You're
gonna be a father someday? Look!
The voice said: Be a man.
I next thought of my mother. My mind went back to her deformed body.--
"I hope I die," I thought
I heard her say, and heard her sobbing. I didn't want to imagine
how it would have been, if she
would have gone on living in that reeking stump that became her
body, --her frail form held up,
not, -- by terribly thinning and brittle bones, --and her living on
with the squinty little plague buggers
that ate away at her flesh with their vicious teeth. There had
been an advantage to hovering back,
near the door, closer to the hospital hallway, where she wouldn't see
me as she spoke aloud about
things she would not have dared say in her well-er days. I knew that
she suffered too much from
her pain.
I was now 24, and a tow truck driver, the only human employed in that
capacity. My head spinned.
I felt as if something, almost everything, was wrong. I was thinking
of giving assistance to the
dying! And I knew I should not have been thinking that!
Helping those dying people, down in the street, that was the job of
the 'droid medics. I shouldn't
have kept thinking of my mom, of how she was when she died, nor should
I have kept thinking of
my Dad deriding me. I was a mess, as far as doing my job was concerned.
For a long moment, I
could do little but stand around in a daze. I looked like I didn't
belong there. I knew I belonged
there. I was there to tow the mangled vehicles. The stuff running through
my head that kept me
from my job was crazy. What I am now, I began to be that night. I looked
from the mangled
vehicles to the mangled bodies, and then back to the vehicles, then
to the bodies. As I looked, I
instantly remembered pictures and texts I'd seen of similar smash-ups,
bleeding bodies and head
wounds. I remember everything I read, vividly.
The highway patrol 'droid said, "When are you going to start your work?"
I answered, "When the bodies are removed."
"Is that the new procedure?" he pressed.
"I will wait to tow," I said and walked away from my truck to stretch.
I passed the still alive body of a woman that lay like an object, in
the mud, on the grassy strip of
the four lane. Her dress was up and her thighs were covered with mud.
Her eyes changed color;
color drained from her face. I looked from her to the others whom too
were thrown about the road.
I heard her speak and was drawn back to the blood dribbling from her lips.
"Can you help me?"
"I can't."
Helping her was not my job. I was forbidden by the rules to do so much
as to offer a word of
comfort. I wasn't licensed or legally qualified. If I had so much as
told her to relax herself and
she would feel better, her survivors could have sued me. Well, that
wasn't the reason why I did
not help her. You have guessed it. My secret is out, eh? I wouldn't
help, because I felt so helpless,
because I knew that any help would be useless, her condition was hopeless.
"Please," she sobbed, more blood dripped from her lips.
I knew she would die. I knew she was near the time. She would be dead
long before her tears
dried. I realized she would die repeatedly in my memory. But, I couldn't
just so easily turn away.
Her eyes were tearing, she was in pain, her whole face was bleeding.
"Can you help me up?"
I shook my head, and pulled away, finally. Almost grumbling aloud about
the anger I dared not
speak. My face shouted: Stop pressuring me!
"Please, come back."
Yeah, right.
"Are you all right?" The highway patrol 'droid touched my shoulder.
"I hope to be will be all right . . ." I said.
"Maybe, you should go for some air?"
"I'm waiting for a tow."
"Well, it's up to you . . ."
I almost let free my feelings; I stuttered, "I can't seem to . . ."
"Boy, I know that feeling, " the patrol 'droid nodded.
I asked him, "You do?"
"Sure. You never get use to this. In the beginning . . . -- How should
I state this? Simple. I want
to delete this from my memory. Surprised? That is not in fashion for
'droids? Oh, well . . ."
He rambled on, so depressingly, until I interrupted.
"That poor girl's got five minutes," I said.
"Huh?"
The patrol 'droid stared at me. He looked irritated. I nodded with two
confident shakes of the head.
He was unimpressed.
"She'll be better off. See that face?" I said.
"Are you are a doctor or a tow truck driver?" the patrol 'droid asked.
I laughed. Ha ha. I was nervous and tense. I made a duff cackle, hoping
to cover my discomfort.
The patrol 'droid put his hands on his hips, and like a lofty disapproving
lord, he stepped away.
"You think I'm a looney? I just can tell, she won't last another two minutes," I said.
The patrol 'droid shook his head.
In spite of my desire not to, I started to rant, "There's
an advantage to being a 'droid, always the
very first at scene of human disaster. A 'droid has no feelings, no
involvement, only here to
witness and to write a report . . ."
I ranted on, until the patrol 'droid cut me short. "You're stressed out, buddy-boy."
"Leave me alone!" I shouted. "I know what your internal processors are
calculating! You are
wondering: How dare I even think these things! You know nothing about
me!"
The patrol 'droid moved away. For two minutes, a long two minutes, I
stood over the dying
woman, waiting to see myself proved right. Two minutes and no assistance
for her. The medics
on the scene dared not touch her until the link-up with the central
expert brain in Washington
came on-line. The medic 'droids were programmed to do nothing on their
own for feared of doing
something wrong that could make the dying girl's condition worse. I
could've easily squatted
besides her, held her hand, comforted her, without causing her any
further physical harm. However,
I could not touch her. I kept remembering all that I had ever read
about the legal jeopardy of even
touching the victim of an accident. The probability of being sued,
the stats, kept popping in my head.
I saw paragraphs of texts from law suits brought successfully in similar
situations by the estates of
accident victims against Good Sumerians, and others providers of attempted
life-saving efforts,
unauthorized humans and 'droids! The odds were wrong for anyone to
comfort the young woman.
Therefore, I waited and watched, as the rain drizzled down on
her dying body. She mumbled
something like a prayer. Her tears kept falling on the ground -- so
many tears that they formed
a prayer. My thoughts drifted again to my mom, and I felt little, my
eyes began to fill with water. I
almost mumbled aloud:
"Oh mama, so many times when I was small you said you prayed, and I
was the one you sent for
just to love, and my heart broke that you suffered so much and died
so soon!"
I remembered the warm tears that fell from my face as I hovered in the
rear, at her death scene
in the hospital room. I so was afraid to go to my dying mother that
it looked as though I did not
want to touch her. The folks thought I was cold, a smelly, louse, a
stupid boy who had grown cold
since his own operation the year before.
The year before, I was in a road accident. I had a head injury, loss
lots of blood and half of my brain.
I was given half a 'droid brain. I put this brain to good use after
my mom died. I read her letters,
her notes, the poems she wrote to me. I remember every line in her
face and every word
she spoke to me. My mind's total memory keeps her alive. In a way I
am happy because I can
recall, readily, bright memories full of the magic of childhood. My
father told me, I day dreamed,
that I was too much in memory. I tried to answer him back --in our
e-mails. When I wrote him,
he seldom answered, and when I called him, he seldom said much. He
put me down for not being
married, and for not having a steady girl. I did not tell him about
my girl. I saw no need, because he
was so distant. I learned something about him when my mother died:
he didn't know when to cry.
He was silent, showed no emotion. I did, and I did not cry. No,
no...I didn't. Though I didn't attend
my mother's funeral, I knew that she knew I loved her, and will always
love her. She never minded
me not saying it. I never had to apologize to her.
Loud moans brought my focus back to the dying young woman, down
in the street. Her life ended
with a last terrified grunt. "I was right," I said, "she's dead."
The patrol 'droid turned on me and glared. His eyes were red and drilled
into me like the eyes of
any angry human. I remembered scenes of the angry human faces that
I'd seen in movies and on
Tv. The 'droid's face was like those, and for a moment, was so intense
that he could have become
a mob of one, an ignorant, angry, backward, peasant villager of 19th
century central Europe, with
a devil size pitchfork, determined to drive a monster away. "Get back
to your tow truck, monkey
boy, " he scowled. I stood my ground.
Printed excerpts of the law and texts from a book on body language kept
unspooling in my head.
I challenged him, "If I say no?"
"What? Say what?" he barked.
I said, "And if I still say no?"
The patrol 'droid took a threatening step toward me.
"I hate idle threats, " I stared coolly into his blue nose and purple eyes.
He stopped.
"Your fellow civil servant," I said.
He snarled and shook his head. "Unfeeling, unhumane, savage boy," he
grumbled like a machine
with tight gears in its ass.
"I am no savage," I said. "This is a horrible accident, in a rain storm."
The truth of it --the victims overwhelmed me. I was stunned. I remembered
newspaper stories of
other accidents. I felt/ I knew that this specific accident could have
been avoided. I said so aloud.
The patrol 'droid threatened to report me to my supervisor. He said,
I was a callow boy, and that
my name would be scratched from the list of tow truck drivers on call
to respond to automobiles
accidents, and that I would be reprimanded. I said to him, "Is there
anything else you want to tell
me? I'm here to do my job. I am not here for a relationship."
He looked so angry. The Hell with him. I do my job. I told him that
'droids are not surrogate gods,
and that certain patrol 'droids need to occasionally have their ears
prepared for a real blistering.
They need to be told periodically that they aren't all that! With that
said, I turned my back to him
and went about my work, rolling dead bodies out from the wrecked vehicles,
flipping them out of
the way, and then connecting the crane of my truck to my tow. I worked
until late morning, towing
the twisted heaps.
About noon, I returned to my apartment, got into my bed. My body
was tired and beaten to my
toes, and I was remembering too much suffering. I lay in bed crying
like a child -- and then I told
myself to quit and rest.
## (c) Copyrighted 1996 by Franchot Lewis
