Crash on Runner’s Road

A twenty-year-old kid died in front of my window today. It was around 2:20 AM. I was in bed, writing a chapter in which the hero and the heroin of my story rekindle their love. It was a feel-good chapter – sensual and funny. I read it over and over. It made me smile every time.

I heard something heavy rolling on the ground, then what sounded like something dropping from the sky. A flash of light burst through my window milliseconds before the explosion. Instantly, the power went out. I thought a plane had crashed in my backyard. I got to the window still in time to see what looked like a 4^th of July fireworks spectacle. A little late in the month for that, I thought.

As I stood there, trying to make sense of what was happening, I heard another explosion, a little further away. More fireworks followed, or at least that was what it looked like. My brain put all the sounds together, and for a brief time I thought we were being attacked. Maybe what I had heard were bombs being dropped. I hopped on my bed and hugged my legs tight against my chest, as if the tension from my own embrace could protect me from the obliterating power of a bomb. Sirens sounded a short while later.

I felt the presence of death. It’s a feeling I have when someone dies near me. I’ve had it since I was a child, I can’t explain it. When I was little, it scared me, the feeling, this dark energy that so starkly contrasted with my jovial enthusiasm. But, as I grew up – and became this monument to social awkwardness that I am – the feeling stopped being scary. Today, it’s merely an odd companion. It’s just something that’s there, following me wherever I go like a really annoying curse; encosto, in Portuguese.

I couldn’t sleep – the sirens, the encosto hanging from my neck, the unsettling feeling that we can never be truly safe no matter what we do. I headed to the kitchen for a double shot of whiskey (this line could have been taken from the book I’m writing) and went back to bed. The [sound] of helicopters got progressively louder as I lounged there, sipping my drink. My cellphone showed 3:33 AM on July 20th, 2020. I chugged the whiskey. I just wanted to go to sleep.

It was already 6:30 AM when I opened my eyes. I threw on a robe and got in the car, drove to the front gate. The press was there along with police and countless trucks from the power company. No rescue vehicles or ambulances. Whatever had happened, the human component was no longer a factor in that chaotic scene. A major light pole made from cement and iron was bent at a 45 degree angle, its top stretching the power cables like rubber bands. I saw what looked like the wreckage of a white car peeking from behind a hedge a little further ahead; the black and yellow do-not-cross tape didn’t allow me to get any closer.

As I drove back to my house, I realized the bent light pole stood right in front of my backyard, outside the fence of my neighborhood. I thought I could probably see the crash site if I looked through this patchy section on the hedges. I parked the car and jogged towards the fence. There it was. The remains of a white Range Rover. I sunk my bottom into the dirt between the shrubs, pondering whether I should register the scene where someone’s life had most likely come to an end. Seconds later, I was adjusting the zoom on my cellphone’s camera.

There were policemen and techs from the power company everywhere. They walked around in a random manner, waiting for another category of workers to remove the loose pieces of the wreckage before they could do their jobs. Some of them took photos, others talked on the phone, a few just sat on the curb devouring fast-food for breakfast.

I took video after video focusing on getting the best angles possible from the uncomfortable position I was in and the distance between me and the protagonist of my morbid reality show. My legs cramped up several times, wedged in the tight space between the bushes, but I didn’t move, kept shooting, now and then ducking behind the shrubs, afraid a policeman could spot me. While I pointed the camera at the car crash I was now sure had reaped a life, I considered selling the footage I was producing, or maybe giving it away to the networks, or even posting it on my own social media; I couldn’t decide which option to pick.

The annoying beep emitted by large vehicles when they are backing up sounded. A flatbed truck stopped in front of the wreckage. Workers hooked chains attached to a pulley to the bottom of the Range Rover’s trunk. Slowly, what was left of the car was pulled onto the truck, like lose rags being mindlessly dragged across the floor by a cat. The massive metal structure fell apart further and further as the lengthy process unfolded. I felt my heart drop to my stomach.

After a quick google search, I found out who the victim was: a neighbor, living one residential community from mine. As I still considered what to do with the footage I was shooting, I thought about the mother of that twenty-year-old kid who lost his life on the side of the road in the middle of the night, alone. Losing her son was suffering enough, she didn’t need to be put face to face with the brutality that had taken him from her; the Range Rover was going at 100 miles an hour when it crashed against the cement and iron light pole in front of my window.

My indecisiveness over the fate of my intrusive little film was no more. I decided to post a photo on my social media instead, taken after the wreckage had been removed, when the only tragedy in sight was the bent light pole behind the palm trees.

We all have choices. I believe there is more than just the extremes, though: white and black, rich and poor, conspiracy theorists and scientists. It doesn’t matter if you sit on the left or on the right of extremism, it doesn’t even matter if you exempt yourself from creating or manifesting an opinion by sitting in the middle. Certain things are non-negotiable, but sometimes we lose track of that. We need to be careful, be on high alert so that we don’t lose our humanity all together. Because whether it’s in the name of pride, money, or even fear, losing our humanity is unjustifiable.

Leticia Brazill

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Originally published on the now defunct littledeathlit.org. RIP.