by Tim Sommers
Where you are, death is not. Where death is, you are not. What is it that you fear? –Epicurus
I knew I was in trouble as soon as I saw them. They were driving one of those huge pickups with four back wheels instead of two – what I now know is called a “dually” – and they kept drifting to the side of the road, hitting the rumble strip, and then jerking back into their lane.
It was early June, Old Mine Road just east of Litchfield, Illinois, late on a Friday. I was working as a courier out of St. Louis and I had just completed my last run of the week, intravenous medication for a little girl on a farm, one of those runs that makes you feel okay about what you do, and I was heading back to St. Louis.
It was a clear evening so I could see these guys from way off, drifting then jerking, drifting then jerking. The problem, my problem it turns out, was that this was a two-lane road with a sixty-mile-an-hour speed limit, no shoulder, and the roadbed was raised about four feet or so above soybean fields on either side. Furthermore, we were coming up on a stretch of road hemmed in on both sides by guardrails. I actually considered driving off the road to avoid them. I pictured my conversation with my insurance agent not going well, though.
I slowed a little and drove between the guardrails. They drifted again and hit the nub end of the guardrail head-on. The back of their truck rose into the air and all four back wheels came off and spread out across the highway like hellfire missiles. I sped up a little and managed to drive under a tire coming straight at my windshield, then I hugged the guardrail as tightly as I could, but the truck was upside down now sliding across the pavement on its roof, sparks flying, and I was out of room.
(A policeman who interviewed me a few hours later, even before it was clear whether I would live or not, insisted the truck was not upside down. “People don’t remember things after trauma like that.” I said, “Why are you talking to me then?”)
Then it hit me.
Every pane of glass in the car exploded at once, my airbag deployed, and the car went through the guard rail becoming airborne and knocking a four-by-four post into the air so that it spun in front of the windshield like a helicopter rotor. As soon as I saw it, I thought, “That’s going to come through the windshield and hit me in the face.” Then it came through the windshield and hit me in the face. Read more »