Accidents of a Country Road

It was a sunny Indian summer--like day. The air was warm enough to keep the windows open, yet chilly enough for the heater to warm my feet. The road I was traveling was a two-lane blacktop, what the Highway Department calls a secondary route. It wound through pine forests, farmland, hills splashed with color; it bulged, descended, arched around bends, careened madly down a hillside to cross a narrow bridge, then staggered victoriously up the other side of the valley. A jolly road, a happy sunny day.

I was looking forward to the feast to which I had been invited. I remembered the house well, all the good times to be had there, the stone walls always in disrepair, the garden of sweet peas, foxgloves and gladioli, the tall swing hanging from the oak tree in the back yard. To get there, you had to watch for Sam's Service Station, an inconspicuous shack choked with rusty cars in various states of collapse. You took the first right after Sam's and drove down a dirt road for three quarters of a mile. The first thing you noticed was the big porch that stretched from one side of the house to the other, filled with the weathered wicker rockers that were never taken in.

It would be a fine feast--a cup of hot toddy to warm me when I arrived, then, in the dining room, sitting around the Tudor oak table, we'd have turkey or roast pork, turnips, sweet potatoes, acorn squash, candied carrots, mince pie, pumpkin pie. We would talk pleasantly, the morning paper from the city strewn around the parlor; we'd reminisce, we'd joke, we'd laugh with the joy of good fellowship. What warmth there would be--a huge fire crackling in the hearth, pipe smoke in the air, the frayed, braided rug underfoot, the sound of dishes rattling in the kitchen. As the afternoon mellowed, I would be at my ease in one of the lumpy stuffed chairs by the hearth, drinking brandy, a heaviness settling in my bones. Perhaps there would be a football game on the old radio in the corner, the radio shaped like a Gothic window. It would be only background, only a hum.

Sam's Service Station should be just a few miles up ahead. How many times had I watched for it? How many times had I turned down the dirt road? I kept an eye out for it as I drove along the country road, banked with leaves, crossed with shadows. But then I was returning to the city, I was driving away from the feast. I had so looked forward to it. Yet it was late and I was driving away from the feast. I wasn't sure whether it had taken place or not or whether I had been to it or not.

• • •

I slowed down, hoping to see Sam's Service Station at any moment. It was easy to miss it, for you came around a sharp bend in the road and there it was, not easy to recognize if you were not anticipating it. It was possible to race by without seeing it at all. I drove around each curve expectantly. At last, I spotted a shack, but it was not the one I expected. It was not Sam's. It was Dick's Diner. I didn't remember ever having seen a diner along that stretch of road. I wondered if, in spite of my vigilance, I had driven too far. Perhaps I had passed Sam's station before beginning really to concentrate upon finding it. Or perhaps they had torn it down. Perhaps Sam had died. Perhaps Dick had converted the station into a diner. But they would have advised me of that. They would have told me to watch not for Sam's Service Station but for Dick's Diner. So I was not disheartened, I drove on, more slowly yet, keeping an ever vigilant eye alert.

Fortunately, I had plenty of time. For when I pulled open the draw curtains that morning and saw the resplendent sun pouring into my bedroom, I could hardly put off for an instant getting out into the country. Hardly--well, that's an exaggeration. I had my coffee and glanced through the morning paper. I had a full three hours before it would be reasonable to think about leaving, but my mind drifted to the wonderful feast to come. I had nothing to do that morning. They were making all the preparations, talking of domestic matters, but I had nothing to do. Nothing. Well, if I arrived early, I was sure they wouldn't mind. They would welcome me as usual and there would be more time for the hot toddy, stuffed celery and radishes before dinner. It would be a long, lazy afternoon, the sun filtering through the gauzy curtains, the voices hushed and languid.

If I could only find Sam's! I decided, finally, to turn around, baffled though I was as to how I could have missed the turn when I had taken it so often. Perhaps I was on the wrong road. I had not considered that. But I did not think so.

Suddenly, I got my bearings. I recognized the bend in the road ahead as the one I was looking for, the one just before Sam's station, though I could not have asserted in advance that the bend in question has, as indeed it does, or did then, three white birches arching over the road, a maple tree opposite them and a pile of gray boulders just beyond the maple tree. Curious how these impressions are stamped on our minds without our knowing it. Sam's looked as it always had. It was unchanged.

There was no one on the porch to greet me when I arrived. But, of course, I was early, they were undoubtedly busy with their chores. When I knocked and no one answered, I did not hesitate to walk in. No need to stand on ceremony, not after all these years, after all the merry times. I called out their names: "Walter...Scotty...Lia." No answer.

I walked through the parlor, into the dining room. I was struck first by the bare carcass of the turkey on a silver platter in the center of the table. Hardly a sliver of meat left. The thin wedge of its breastbone thrust itself up obscenely. I gazed at the streaked goblets and the dishes with nothing but scraps on them. The tablecloth was stained in places and everywhere there were bits and pieces of the wonderful bread that Lia makes so well. Big starched napkins, the creases still prominent, were tossed on the table and the heavy oak chairs. One was even thrown on the faded Oriental rug under the table. The swinging door to the kitchen was creaking back and forth.

• • •

Dick's Diner came into view. I had only two more miles to go before reaching the familiar turn and the short drive down the dirt road, through the little pine woods and the horse pasture, past the corral and the old barn next to which I'd park my car. I'd rush up the steps to the porch and embrace my dear friends once again and we'd spend the whole day feasting and regaling one another. I could now see the three birches up ahead, now the maple tree and the rock pile. I passed Sam's Service Station and turned down the dirt road. It was a beautiful, bright day and I started singing. I pulled up next to the barn, as usual, raced the motor, honked the horn and jumped out.

I ran across the yard and up the porch steps before noticing the strangers. An immense woman wearing a faded blue house dress studded with tiny pink flowers and a quilt coverlet over her lap was suckling a child. When she caught my eye, her rubbery mouth splayed into a tattered smile. She was nearly toothless and her fuzz-covered face spread around the smile like a large yellow squash around the inception of rot. Her sparse hair was matted against her livid skull. Her fat, pink arms cradled the child against a breast the size and shape of a soft honeydew melon. In overalls, rocking next to the woman, a stubble of gray hair covering his gaunt jaws and his chin, a large wart protruding from under his left eye, a man gummed chewing tobacco and blinked at me. The smell of musty clothes poured down on me.

"Where's Walter?" I demanded. "And Scotty and Lia? Where are they?"

The woman continued to smile. The man blinked. They both kept rocking.

"Why don't you answer me?"

I turned around and surveyed the yard, as though I needed reassurance that I had come to the right house. Two teenage boys were rolling in the flower garden, fighting. One grabbed the other's throat and started to strangle him. The couple rocked, smiled and blinked. The child in the woman's arms, buried in blankets and flesh, made sucking sounds.

"Where are my friends? Why aren't they here to greet me, as always? Who are you people?"

The woman stopped rocking. She leaned forward. Her smile thickened. She nodded in agreement.

The man, too, stopped rocking. He spit out some tobacco juice and turned to me. He let his jaw drop, but he didn't say anything. His jaw hung loosely below the black hole of his mouth. I stared at him. "Where are they?" I shouted. He nodded falteringly.

"I'll see about this," I said and I burst into the house. The parlor was the same: There were the lumpy easy chairs, the braided rug, the gauzy curtains. In the dining room, places were set for five, with the big starched napkins tented over each plate. The smell of roast pork filtered in from the kitchen.

The couple had followed me into the house. The woman laid the naked baby on his stomach in a corner of the dining room and lumbered into the kitchen. The man sat at the head of the table. Then the two boys banged through the front door and raced into the room, yelling vulgar names at each other and fighting over their seats. The woman returned from the kitchen, carrying the roast pork on a silver platter. She dumped the roast on the table. It rolled toward the man and stopped. The baby started crying. The man gestured toward the empty chair next to him, apparently (continued on page 227)Country Road(continued from page 166) offering it to me. The woman looked at me, smiling. I gladly accepted.

• • •

It was a curious thing, but when I turned onto the dirt road toward their house, I couldn't remember what my friends looked like. Here I had spent the whole trip conjuring up the feast, imagining the variety of country sauces, condiments and vegetables we would have, and now, when I tried to put my friends into the picture, they wouldn't come. Their forms blurred, their faces became empty spheres with buzzing eyes and noses, one identical to the other. No, not identical--different but unrecognizable, like faces seen through murky water. Scotty was the old man, I recalled. I should remember him. No, it was Walter who was the old man. It was his house, and when Scotty married Lia, Walter invited them to live with him, now that he was alone. But then there was Ethel. I had forgotten about Ethel all this time. So Walter was not alone, after all, and Scotty and Lia had bought the house. They had always wanted to live in the country and they invited Walter and Ethel to live with them and the two boys, now that the boys were older. I could never remember the boys' names. Or was it Ethel who had inherited the house, as often happens? Yes, her uncle died childless and willed it to her, or to her aunt; and when she died, her aunt willed it to her. But Ethel would not invite a family of four to live with her and Walter. A childless couple was one thing, but a family of four, with the children always getting into things.... No, I had it now. Ethel was married to Scotty, the two boys were their children, so there was no question.... Then was it Lia who inherited the house? Perhaps Lia was Ethel's aunt, still alive after all; but what about Scotty's parents? It was his parents who were staying with them, I thought.

I parked next to the old barn, sure that everything would pull itself together, once I saw them, the six of them, lined up as for a family photograph. I had even brought my camera. I would ask them straight off to take their picture, the oldest to the left, the youngest to the right, and that would settle the matter. Their names might not necessarily come back to me, but I would be sure of the relationship of oldest to youngest; and after taking the picture, I would listen carefully to hear the names they ascribed to one another. At home, after the picture was developed, I would write the names in ink below each person before I forgot them; and in the future, I would make sure to consult the photograph before setting out to visit them again.

They were not on the porch to greet me, as I had feared. The door stood open and the parlor was in darkness, in spite of the bright sunshine outside. When no one answered my ring, I walked in. "Walter," I called, "Ethel...Scotty," glad of the opportunity to link the person who responded with the name I called out, thus getting a start on the problem of their identities. But it would be perfectly plausible for Walter, for example, to hear me only by the time I uttered "Scotty" and to respond in the name of the whole household. He would walk out, arms open in welcome, and like a fool, I would say, "How are you, Scotty?" That would be a fine beginning to our afternoon. However, no one responded. No one at all. They--what was left of them--were all sitting around the dining room, some slumped against their chairs, others collapsed over the tablecloth. The flesh was gone from their hands. Their faces were rotted beyond recognition, if I could have recognized them. Bones were exposed here and there, lips gone, eyes rolled up into the head. As I gazed at them, the kitchen door was pushed open and the gray-and-white mare came halfway into the room. She bowed her head and nudged my chest. I grabbed some candy-covered almonds from a bowl on the table and offered them to her. She lifted back her lips and crunched them with her yellow teeth. Then she clomped into the parlor and out the front door. I ran to the door and watched her plod past the barn, across the dirt road and disappear in the pine woods.

• • •

I am a stubborn sort. The reasonable thing to have done after my car had broken down would have been to forgo the feast, fetch a mechanic and get the car repaired. But I had been looking forward to a genial afternoon among friends for so long and the day for it was so perfect that I refused to allow a gratuitous mechanical failure to spoil it. If I had not been in a remote part of the country or if it had not been a holiday, the problem would not have presented itself. I could have found a mechanic right off, entrusted my car to him and gotten a lift to my friends' house with time to spare. However, my circumstances were exactly what they should not have been. Attending to my car would mean wasting hours searching for the man I needed, not knowing whether I would find him, paying exorbitant holiday prices, not knowing whether, in the end, my car would run. And what kind of justice was it that made a man work faithfully, day in and day out, only to be forced on his holiday to attend to his witless car? I decided the best thing was to abandon the car and make my way to my friends' house somehow.

I knew I could not get a lift. For on a holiday, what little traffic there is consists of family groups; and no one likes to offer a stranger a lift in front of his family, afraid it might reveal a vulnerability in the family circle or even a desperate need for love. So I would have to walk. I guessed I was about six miles from my destination. At four miles an hour, I'd get there in an hour and a half, which would not make me too late. But an hour and a half later, I was only rounding the bend before Dick's Diner. I had two miles more to walk before reaching the dirt road, and then nearly another mile before arriving at the house. After all this time, I was only halfway there! I cursed my luck. Who else but me had to spend his holiday in such fashion, shambling through unfamiliar country, struggling against the cold, when a warm hearth and a bountiful feast awaited me? Perhaps while I was still bent against the wind, my friends would sit down without me, assuming that something had come up and that I had no way of letting them know. I was cold, I was hungry, so I did a foolish thing. I figured that since there were two sharp bends in the road, both to the right, and then the right turn down the dirt road, I could save myself time by striking out directly through the woods. In that fashion, I could probably cut the three-mile hike into a short walk. At least it was problematic, it was an adventure, while the more practical course along the road was grimly fixed and for that reason, as well as the distance involved, altogether unappealing.

I plunged into the woods. At any moment, I expected to emerge into the pastureland that overlooked my friends' house, but the woods were endless. I stumbled on for more than an hour, scratching my face, my arms, my legs, cursing my luck. Finally, I had to admit I was lost. But the sun was still high, there was still time to find my way. For a while, I made long sweeping arcs, north, then west, hoping in this fashion to hit either the dirt road or the main route. Then, in desperation, I turned abruptly south, thinking that I had overshot the mark. After walking in this direction for perhaps another hour, I became frightened. I gave up all hope of ever reaching my friends. I simply wanted to be released from these woods. I was utterly exhausted, chilled through and through, weak with hunger, and the sun was falling fast. When I could go no farther and was searching for a bed of dry leaves to make myself a kind of cocoon for the night, I found myself in an open field, and there below me, with wisps of smoke beckoning from the chimney, was my friends' house. I revived immediately. The day was not a total loss, after all. I rushed down the hill, calling out their names. It was quite a story I had to tell them, funny in a way, but only funny, it was true, now that I was safe. I wondered whether it was the outcome of a situation that allowed comedy in like a carefully screened guest at a fancy dress ball, or whether the situation itself was inherently funny. Suppose I had collapsed before reaching the clearing and slept the night in the cold. Suppose I had wandered for days and finally died of hunger and exposure. Would the story then be just as funny? Funnier, probably. Funnier if I had been forced to stay out the night, funnier yet if I had died.

As I crossed the yard, Walter and Scotty came out the front door. How glad I was to see them! My friends at last! The right family, no child clasping the fat breast of a clod, and they were alive. Alive and standing on the porch to greet me. I had struggled hard. I had been a fool to try cutting through the woods. But here I was. We were reunited. All was not lost.

"We were expecting you," Walter said.

"Good to see you," Scotty said.

"I had a terrible adventure," I said.

"We were just having some hot toddy," Scotty said. "Would you like some? It's the way you like it."

We walked to the dining room. One of the cuts on my forehead began to bleed again.

"Well, how is life in the city?" Walter asked.

"The same," I said. "How are you getting on?"

"We've bought a TV."

"I've always said you could use a TV," I said.

We entered the dining room. The heavy, high-backed oak chairs were pushed against the walls, one against each of the three walls facing me. We sat down.

"I suppose the business is doing well," Walter said.

"It gets better, then it gets worse," I said. "You're digging in for the winter, I imagine," I added.

"Yes, we're battening down the hatches," he said.

Scotty offered me some candy-covered almonds.

"How is your horse?" I asked.

"What horse?" he replied.