The Wreck

The Wreck 

Owen was gob smacked that someone who had been such a close friend would go along with terminating his position in the English department. His best friend, and mentor, called him into her office and informed him that his position had been terminated. He searched her face for evidence for remorse, but found none. Bernice was tight lipped and avoided making direct eye contact with him. She refused to answer any questions. 

Owen threw his books in boxes. He didn’t even care about cleaning the entire office. He rushed out to the car and opened the door to his cheap, plastic Saturn. Owen didn’t care much for the cheap plastic cars of the eighties. 

he spun his wheels as he pulled out of the University. Alicia, his girlfriend, had just broken up with him and had thrown the engagement ring at him last night. He never understood exactly what he did and was starting to feel like he was right smack in the middle of a Kafka novel.

He pushed his foot on the gas and went around the corner to fast. Owen lost control of the car and hit an oak tree.  His car was destroyed, but the tree wasn’t damaged.  A woman who appeared to be in her sixties, walked out to the car.

“Are you okay?” she said. Owen could barely nod his head. The woman called 911. She looked vaguely familiar; perhaps Owen had seen her on his way to the University many days.

 A little girl was staring up at him with large blue eyes. It was as though she could see through him.

Owen could hear voices, but he couldn’t speak back. Then he heard his Uncle Kermit who had giant hands with callouses. He could feel his uncle’s hands. He had fond memories of going to his uncle’s and smelling the freshly mowed grass and listening to the rat tat tat of the water sprinkler. Now everything blurred.

He heard the lady telling him he would be okay, then he drifted off. He would make Bernice pay for her betrayal.

The woman’s voice faded. She later introduced herself. He did not know he would spend years coming to her for advice. Maybe she is the one who somehow kept him from drifting into oblivion. She tried to help him let go of his grief and anger. But he couldn’t. He would visit Gracie for the next twenty years, and he would also come to realize that he would need the little girl with the large blue eyes. Gracie and her granddaughter had something special, and it would take years to figure out how they could help guide him back to the place he needed to be.   But the night of the accident he had no hope in anything. He felt betrayed, broken, and like a complete failure. 

No, Owen never asked for everything to be fair, he only wished for that one chance to finish his story. It would be easier just to move on and leave. Now they for the rest of time he would be viewed as a monster.    The night was cool, transparent and somehow even tempered. It reminded him of sitting on his grandmother’s wooden porch in late September when the leaves were just starting to change. It seemed like it was more than a life time ago. Now he felt like he was merely a shadow inhabiting a world beyond the living, but it wasn’t life or death. And did he really have a choice? His confidents kept advising him to let go of the past, but the past was very much a part of him, but he knew he would be stuck until he could tell his side of the story.  He believed that the reader brings her own experience to the story, so every story has infinite points of view.  And all good stories were series of could’ves went through his mind. He tried not to wallow in pity which on made his predicament worse. His grief was replaced by a slow, growing anger at those who had betrayed him. The very one he thought he could trust, stabbed him so hard the wounds would never go away; not even after a life was over.  People could be so cruel and careless; yet he was the monster they created. Their fear and regret fed his hungry spirit.

In some ways it must’ve been easy for him that no one studied him closely, no one could notice that there was something askew, and something dark and puzzling in his expression that only a few could see.

Owen wandered up and down the empty halls, thinking about his version of a story that he never had a chance to tell.  No. Sometimes time didn’t heal wounds.   The past was sharp and inevitable.  The stars blackened in the clouds.  it must have been a night like this one when he glanced over her head at the cluster of trees behind him and heard the wind scraping against the trees. Time had gone by too fast and now all he had was time. He watched people grow, change and move on; whereas he remained in the same place. He was restless but couldn’t move forward. Sometimes wounds were like a cancer that invaded the soul and killed the spirit over and over again. He tried to pray, but he had a hard time believing in a higher power that would ultimately release him from his current prison of grief and resentment.  It was so much harder to forgive a close friend.  He had trusted Bernice and still cherished the memories of the summer picnics.  She was still attractive after all those years. Bernice was tall and thin and had deep hazel eyes that could be both empathetic and fierce. He admired the way she could see through a person, and he longed for some kind of closure he wouldn’t get.  Was it still worth it to stick around, and try to force her to see him, or just move on and try to set himself free?

Where could he go? He couldn’t leave, but couldn’t stay.  No one could see him wandering through the halls. The sense of constant inertia was difficult. When he looked in the mirror, he couldn’t look at himself.

Was he really a monster or was it a matter of perception? The bitterness made him feel weak and powerful at the same time but ultimately, he had given his power away.   Bitter thoughts circled above him in the shape of hawks. He wondered how many victims called out another era, looking up with fear and regret.

 He tried to pray. Maybe the words would eventually come and he would be able to let go and move on.   Gracie kept telling him that nothing was ever lost, and he would find love again. He just needed to trust and then let go. Rilke said holding on was easy but letting go was so hard. And every angel was indeed terrible.  They wandered in between worlds. He wanted to see them, to touch them.  He had those moments where he felt warm and alive and confident, he would find that one person.

He walked outside the campus and looked at the nearby woods full of ghostly losses. 

Owen re lived the moment again: the betrayal followed by the accident at Gracie’s house. That one moment lasted longer than a lifetime and overshadowed his other memories.

He saw the full moon rising between the clouds, and shattering into infinite fragments of stories. The tales that was the only pieces of a life that ended too soon.  And Gracie would help him find his story that began and ended the afternoon of the accident.