A Couple Reasons Why I Dislike Deer

9-25-03

Essay 1

 

 

 

It was the most life-changing experience that I can still remember vividly: A car accident.  In a split second, a typical ride home turned into a tragic brawl between car and road, as well as the hill beside it.  The incident happened so instantaneously that there was no time to be afraid.  Instincts just tell you to hold on tight and maybe you won’t die.  If I didn’t know better, I’d say this event transpired simply to give me a better understanding of the treachery of the road, and the frailty of cars, their drivers, and life itself.

            It was May 19th.  The evening began as a visit with my longtime friend Alan “Loogie” Galpert to work on his homemade computer.  It was a beast of a machine that the bank owned more than Loogie, but still awe-inspiringly speedy.  We did such geeky tasks as cleaning and reapplying thermal compound, rewiring 12-volt power cables, and making switch panels out of duct tape.  A few hours later, at about 6 or 7PM, I was getting flustered from messing with the computer and begged Loogie to accompany me to Victoria to see my girlfriend, Beckie.  He agreed to my proposal after the cold cathode light in his computer mysteriously went dead.

            The both of us hopped into his ’92 Honda Civic and headed due south for twenty miles.  The Civic was black with drippy blobs of bird droppings all over it, had few interior luxuries aside from a CD player, and was very used yet surprisingly still ran.  It was only a few weeks before that Loogie and I had an incident with a suicidal deer on that same road going to Victoria.  The dim-witted animal was standing on a hill to our left with two other deer.  It watched us rigidly from its vantage point.  I could see the deer but Loogie, whom was driving, was paying more attention to the CD player.  So when the male deer bolted towards the road, Loogie didn’t catch on to the profanities I was using to point out a lunatic deer was running right towards us.  He only slowed down a minute amount, about to 40mph, before the car collided with various parts of the deer.  My side of the windshield had a generous number of cracks emanating from a central point where the antler stub collided with it.  We continued on to our destination unaware of the remainder of damage incurred.  Upon arrival, we were not only greeted by Beckie but by a broken headlight, dented hood, nonfunctional dashboard displays, and a stuck shift lock.  That was an experience in itself and one that set Loog back $850 in repairs.

            But there we were on our way to Victoria again not soon after Loogie’s car had been refurbished.  To take a break from our geeky pastime, we were going to spend time with my girlfriend for a few hours and then return to Loogie’s house to fix the cold cathode light.  After the twenty miles were done, the three of us chatted it up for a half-hour.  Then, we watched an eerily humorous movie entitled Sorority Boys in its entirety, and Beckie fixed Loogie and I the most delicious sandwiches we’d had in months.  Once the movie was finished, we had to part as we all did have school the following day.  Beckie and I said our good byes, Loog put the music back on, we clicked in our seatbelts, and the geeks were back on the road again.  The speedometer and fuel gauge were still dead, but at least both headlights worked.

            We were pretty content from the day we’d had so far, so Loogie cranked up the music and was probably driving too fast.  We talked about various topics of interest while we cruised out of Victoria, passed the prison, and along the narrow path that is Route 49.  Separating Nottoway and Lunenburg counties is the Nottoway River.  We sped across the bridge that traverses the river and started the blind turn to the left.  A shadowy figure appeared on the hill to our right.  At first, it seemed stationary and looked like a bush or shrubbery.  But then, like our first encounter with a deer, the shadow seemed to spring to life and darted right for the car.  Loogie caught notice of the shadow-turned-deer in the lights and slammed on the brakes.  The turning momentum had the car spinning almost the moment he had hit the brakes.  The vile deer was the least of our concerns now as we twisted around in the road with no hope of regaining control.  The car completed its first 360° spinning trick on the opposite side of the road and went into the finale after hitting the embankment.  It began to roll as the both of us were trapped inside this roller coaster gone wild screaming various profanities.  My arm was thrown out of the window and touched the dewy grass as the car continued to roll.  My mind was flickering, trying to figure out whether or not it should flash my life before my eyes.

It seemed as if our death-defying ride would never end, but then it did after two complete rolls.  The car landed upright facing the road and still running.  The CD player continued to play.  The air smelled of exhaust and newly cut grass.  It was at that moment that I realized I had been blinded.  My glasses had been ripped from my face during the ordeal.  Loogie, meanwhile, was still exclaiming violently colorful words.  I tried to calm him down so we could get a hold on the situation and so I could utilize his eyes to find mine.  He turned the car off and we tried to see if there was any damage to the engine.  We could continue on to Crewe if the destruction was only cosmetic and return to pick up the pieces later.  There was no obvious damage so he started it up and attempted to drive.  Upon crawling out of the ditch and back to the right side of the road, Loogie realized that the front wheel was behaving strangely.  Indeed, the front right tire was off the rim.  As the passenger door was stuck, I crawled out of the window, and we contemplated our next action.

We had realized that there was no chance of getting back to Crewe in the Civic, so we would have to hail passing cars for assistance.  The problem with that was no cars had come by for at least five minutes.  We started back along the road to Victoria with hopes of finding my glasses and attracting some help.  It was the darkest darkness I can ever remember seeing.  The blurred image of Loogie’s figure was all that my eyes could make out.  Like a blindfolded rat in a maze, I would have to feel the constraints of my unfamiliar world.  I scurried down the road with my seeing eye Loog for a dozen meters.  Then, as if a god had peered down from the heavens, an intense light grew out of the darkness.  We waved our arms fanatically to our savior who happened to drive a shoddy station wagon.  The car lurched to a stop before us.  Loogie was surprised to find his boss, Peppy, from Big T at the wheel.  Loog explained the situation briefly to Peppy who then got out his cell phone and called the Nottoway police dispatch.

While we waited, Loogie and I inspected the damage.  The windshield had shattered completely and buckled in at the top of the passenger side; all but one of the lights had been smashed out; the hood was crumpled like a once-folded piece of paper; the trunk looked as if someone had abused it with a sledgehammer and its contents were only accessible through one of the broken rear lights; and of course, the tire was no longer totally on the wheel rim.  It was a totaled mess, a new resident of the junkyard.  Loog kicked his car in disgust.  I gave up on hunting for my glasses at that point and gave in to the haze.  Peppy stayed with us and watched like a retired firefighter with nothing to do.  This was as exciting for him as watching those police chase shows on TV.  Although his presence was somewhat reassuring, I only tolerated it.

It took at least fifteen minutes for the first police officer to arrive.  He appeared as a crappy light show through the trees with sirens wailing like a trumpeter before royalty.  He pulled in behind Peppy’s wagon.  We gave the officer the debriefing and he checked out Loogie’s license and registration.  It followed your typical accident aftermath like clockwork.  Then, another truck came down the road and stopped.  Out of it popped a large, burly man with a whiskery face.  He was apparently a paramedic as he asked us if we were injured.  He also asked us whom the president and vice president were to check for our comprehension and consciousness.  At that moment, I couldn’t feel any pain.  Loog seemed to be fine as well.  We realized how fortunate we were to have survived with not a single injury.  Had we not been wearing seatbelts, we could have had serious head trauma or worse.

The big man and I went down towards the spin and roll location to search for my glasses.  Along the way, we spotted large pieces of glass and debris from the car.  After only five minutes, he called out that he had found them.  I went over to his light and sure enough, there they were laying in the grass as if on vacation.  There were no scratches or mangled pieces, but only some grass and dirt on the lenses.  I tenderly cleaned them off and slipped them onto my face.  The haze turned more into a daze.

About that time, the state trooper came down the road and continued on past the other cars and out of sight across the bridge.  He must have been inspecting the accident site as he returned momentarily.  He questioned the other officer briefly and then turned to Loog and I for interrogation.  His stern stature and edgy mood gave us the feeling that we were guilty of something unknown to us.  He didn’t believe that there was a deer or that the speedometer wasn’t working.  When he was finished, he took Loog back to his car.  I thought Loog was being arrested.  I nervously waited at the back of the Civic and listened to the cops talk about the models of their cars.  Another officer arrived at the scene merely to chat while Loog was still at the trooper’s car.  I leaned against the car and watched the time pass by.  It was already half-past eleven.  Loogie came back and told me that he called Love’s towing. 

We talked for some twenty or so minutes until the tow truck got there.  It was driven by a quiet, old black man whom was probably woken from his slumber to get us.  He steadily went about his job of rigging the Civic to a chain and pulling it onto the bed of the truck.  Loog and I watched as this went on and slowly the cops and company began to pull off on their way back to FasMart or wherever.  We got into the snug cab with the old man and headed slowly and solemnly back to Loog’s house in Crewe.  When we got there, we endured a lengthy argument with Loog’s mother.  Loog wanted me to stay longer and work on his computer like we had previously planned, but his mother wanted me to go home so my parents knew I was okay.  While the two of them fought in the living room, I went into Loog’s room to tell Beckie what had happened and that I was okay.  She had apparently gone to bed, so I could only leave her messages.  I went back to the living room and told them that I didn’t need to stay, because I was fairly exhausted and wanting to go home anyways.  Loog was peeved, so he didn’t accompany us to the other side of Crewe where I dwell.

When I got home, the door was open and my father stood in the hallway almost totally in shadow.  I knew he wanted to know why I was late, so I gave him the story like I had so many times already that night.  He was half empathetic, half disheartened and had little to say in response, so he wandered back to bed soon after.  I sat at the computer for a short while, chatting with Loogie.  Much of my body was aching at this point and I felt that if I moved too abruptly, I might shatter like a clay figurine.  I went to lie on the bed and fell asleep almost instantly.  It had been a crazy night to say the least.

Loogie got only $100 for what remained of the Civic.  He has the license plate of “Loogie” from the car mounted to his bedroom door.  The road until recently still bared the skid mark scars of that night’s calamity.  Loogie and I not only got a better respect for motor vehicles and the dangers they can impose, but I also gained added nervousness about learning to drive.  Whenever I come across that bridge on the way back to Crewe, I subconsciously slow down to 45mph and watch that hill for malicious deer.  I wouldn’t want to repeat what happened on the evening of May 19th.