Jesse Lee Kercheval at the New England Review:
It is 1966 and I am sitting on a stool at the Burger King on Merritt Island, Florida, eating French fries. My view is Highway 520 and the cars speeding up to the rare stoplight just beyond where I sit. My father, my sister, and I have been to Cocoa Beach to swim and are on our way home. I always beg to stop at the Burger King. I am always famished after swimming and there is nowhere to eat on the beach. Also, we are not a fast food family so this is a treat, something my mother, who never goes to the beach, does not know about. I love how, after being at the beach, the French fries taste doubly salty.
Then a station wagon with a surfboard on top smacks into the rear end of a long, low convertible with its top down, which is stopped for the red light. There is a tremendous noise. I feel it in my body, metal on metal, and the surfboard goes flying off the top of the station wagon, through the air. It decapitates the driver of the convertible. Just like that.
more here.