Previous Chapter
The impact appeared to kill John Franklin instantly. At the very least it broke most of the bones in his body and put him in a coma, which was pretty much the same thing.
Li and Zip ran to get help. I stayed with Junior, who knelt over John Franklin’s body and felt along his bloody neck for a pulse. I watched John Franklin’s chest for signs of breathing, but he didn’t so much as twitch.
“Nothing,” said Junior. His hand came away soaked in blood.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, I watched EMTs load one of my fellow recruits onto a stretcher. And for the second time in twenty-four hours, I found a small, detestable part of myself counting off the ways that the accident affected me. As bad as I felt about what had happened to John Franklin, my thoughts kept looping back to the fact that my chances of making it through the cuts had just gotten a little bit better.
John Franklin was only the third dead person I’d ever seen. The first time was when my odd little all-male family took a road trip to Virginia in 2006. I was ten. Todd was eight. We sat in the back seat, quiet, engrossed in our wheedling Game Boys. My dad drove with his left hand. His right arm dangled across the armrest onto the empty passenger seat, where he kept a stack of maps.
We hadn’t even made it out of Indiana when we landed in a positively awe-inspiring traffic jam. Three lanes of vehicles chugged in place, packed end to end for miles, snorting clouds of exhaust up into the blank summer sky.
At first my dad handled it alright. He drummed on the steering wheel and fiddled with the radio. Only two stations were in range, both of them country, and my dad hated country. He turned the radio off. After a while he lowered the window and a hot asphalt smell poured into the car.
Kids are excellent at detecting the frustration of a parent. After an hour without movement, a prickly electric current began to accumulate in the air. Thirty more minutes passed. My dad blew air out of his mouth. If I’d had a mom, this is where she would have placed a hand on my dad’s arm, smiled, maybe spoken some quiet words of encouragement. But my mom had abandoned us seven years earlier.
As the static built, my dad drummed more insistently on the steering wheel, shaking his head and muttering. I could tell that I needed to do something, but I had no idea what it was.
I stared at the dim gray screen of my Game Boy. Somebody behind us honked their horn.
My dad leaned out the window and contorted himself backwards.
“FUCK YOU!” he screamed.
When he pulled back into the car, his face was splotchy and red.
“Why does this happen to me?” he shouted, pounding the steering wheel. “Why me, God? Why me?”
He spun to look at us. In rage, my father’s face was a horrifying sight to behold. His skin was pockmarked and worn, with spiky hairs poking out of his pores and nostrils. His eyes bulged like golf balls.
“And you two,” he said, “rotting your brains with those stupid video games, can’t even keep me company — Give me those—”
He snatched the Game Boys from our hands, spiked them into the cup holders up front. One of them bounced out and flew onto the floorboards on the passenger side, and my dad dove after it, bobbling it with trembling hands. The car lurched forward as his foot pulled off the brake pedal. He snapped back upright and slammed his foot on the brake, yanking us against our seatbelts.
“Fucking FUCK!” shouted my dad.
Todd began to cry.
“Oh, sure,” said my dad, “go ahead and cry, Todd. Always fucking crying. This is just great.”
This data point seems particularly damning in retrospect.
After a while, traffic began to move again, the cars and trucks trundling gradually forward. My father’s rage had long since subsided. He leaned over the wheel, muttering under his breath. Todd’s cheeks were puffy and slick with tears.
When we passed the source of the traffic jam, we were still moving slowly enough that I had time to get a good look. An eighteen-wheeler had veered over from the opposite lane, leaving deep, curved troughs in the grass. The truck lay, overturned, across half the highway.
Three smushed cars sat at crazy angles on the shoulder in various stages of obliteration. A pair of ambulances and a fire truck were parked beside them.
As I watched, the paramedics loaded a gurney holding something red and fleshy into the back of one of the ambulances. It took me a moment to understand that it was a body. There were tubes coming out of it. A girl about my age squatted in the grass nearby with her head buried in sooty arms. Beside her, a policeman rocked back and forth on his heels, hands in his pockets.
My dad looked too. He didn’t say anything, but his clothes suddenly seemed far too large for him.
He treated us to McDonald's for dinner and told us several times that he loved us very much.
Next Chapter
The impact appeared to kill John Franklin instantly. At the very least it broke most of the bones in his body and put him in a coma, which was pretty much the same thing.
Li and Zip ran to get help. I stayed with Junior, who knelt over John Franklin’s body and felt along his bloody neck for a pulse. I watched John Franklin’s chest for signs of breathing, but he didn’t so much as twitch.
“Nothing,” said Junior. His hand came away soaked in blood.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, I watched EMTs load one of my fellow recruits onto a stretcher. And for the second time in twenty-four hours, I found a small, detestable part of myself counting off the ways that the accident affected me. As bad as I felt about what had happened to John Franklin, my thoughts kept looping back to the fact that my chances of making it through the cuts had just gotten a little bit better.
John Franklin was only the third dead person I’d ever seen. The first time was when my odd little all-male family took a road trip to Virginia in 2006. I was ten. Todd was eight. We sat in the back seat, quiet, engrossed in our wheedling Game Boys. My dad drove with his left hand. His right arm dangled across the armrest onto the empty passenger seat, where he kept a stack of maps.
We hadn’t even made it out of Indiana when we landed in a positively awe-inspiring traffic jam. Three lanes of vehicles chugged in place, packed end to end for miles, snorting clouds of exhaust up into the blank summer sky.
At first my dad handled it alright. He drummed on the steering wheel and fiddled with the radio. Only two stations were in range, both of them country, and my dad hated country. He turned the radio off. After a while he lowered the window and a hot asphalt smell poured into the car.
Kids are excellent at detecting the frustration of a parent. After an hour without movement, a prickly electric current began to accumulate in the air. Thirty more minutes passed. My dad blew air out of his mouth. If I’d had a mom, this is where she would have placed a hand on my dad’s arm, smiled, maybe spoken some quiet words of encouragement. But my mom had abandoned us seven years earlier.
As the static built, my dad drummed more insistently on the steering wheel, shaking his head and muttering. I could tell that I needed to do something, but I had no idea what it was.
I stared at the dim gray screen of my Game Boy. Somebody behind us honked their horn.
My dad leaned out the window and contorted himself backwards.
“FUCK YOU!” he screamed.
When he pulled back into the car, his face was splotchy and red.
“Why does this happen to me?” he shouted, pounding the steering wheel. “Why me, God? Why me?”
He spun to look at us. In rage, my father’s face was a horrifying sight to behold. His skin was pockmarked and worn, with spiky hairs poking out of his pores and nostrils. His eyes bulged like golf balls.
“And you two,” he said, “rotting your brains with those stupid video games, can’t even keep me company — Give me those—”
He snatched the Game Boys from our hands, spiked them into the cup holders up front. One of them bounced out and flew onto the floorboards on the passenger side, and my dad dove after it, bobbling it with trembling hands. The car lurched forward as his foot pulled off the brake pedal. He snapped back upright and slammed his foot on the brake, yanking us against our seatbelts.
“Fucking FUCK!” shouted my dad.
Todd began to cry.
“Oh, sure,” said my dad, “go ahead and cry, Todd. Always fucking crying. This is just great.”
This data point seems particularly damning in retrospect.
After a while, traffic began to move again, the cars and trucks trundling gradually forward. My father’s rage had long since subsided. He leaned over the wheel, muttering under his breath. Todd’s cheeks were puffy and slick with tears.
When we passed the source of the traffic jam, we were still moving slowly enough that I had time to get a good look. An eighteen-wheeler had veered over from the opposite lane, leaving deep, curved troughs in the grass. The truck lay, overturned, across half the highway.
Three smushed cars sat at crazy angles on the shoulder in various stages of obliteration. A pair of ambulances and a fire truck were parked beside them.
As I watched, the paramedics loaded a gurney holding something red and fleshy into the back of one of the ambulances. It took me a moment to understand that it was a body. There were tubes coming out of it. A girl about my age squatted in the grass nearby with her head buried in sooty arms. Beside her, a policeman rocked back and forth on his heels, hands in his pockets.
My dad looked too. He didn’t say anything, but his clothes suddenly seemed far too large for him.
He treated us to McDonald's for dinner and told us several times that he loved us very much.
Next Chapter