Where We Live and Die Read Free Page A

miles per hour, but I’ve never seen anybody go slower than sixty-five. Since we’re right on the township line, we’re not an ideal area for speed traps. By the time a cop on our side of the line pulled out in pursuit of a speeding car, the violator would already be in the next township.
    We’ve lived here five years, and in that time there have been over twenty serious accidents (that I know of) within two miles of our driveway, plus countless fender-benders and other vehicular mishaps. Indeed, our first winter at the house, an ice storm turned York County’s roads into Slip ’n Slides and our road was wall-to-wall fender-benders that morning. Automobiles were smashing into each other like bumper cars and lining up in front of our house. I stood out there and directed traffic and brought folks coffee until the fire department arrived.
    I know of four fatalities that have occurred in the time we’ve lived here. I personally witnessed one of them. A couple on a motorcycle rear-ended a pick-up truck that was making a left turn. Both riders were ejected from the bike. The woman’s head cracked like an egg inside her helmet. There wasn’t much the truck driver, my neighbor, or myself could do for her. She was dead before the paramedics arrived. I never found out what happened to the guy that was on the bike with her, but I remember that his chest looked like raw hamburger.
    One of the other fatalities happened about a mile from our house. A machine operator from the Harley Davidson plant was coming home after second shift and hit a tree. The tree won. Speculation is that the driver fell asleep at the wheel. The third fatal accident happened fifty yards from our driveway. A lone driver ran down an embankment at three in the morning. The accident was quiet enough that both my neighbors and my wife and I slept through it. We didn’t know anything was amiss until we heard the sirens outside. By then it was too late, although, judging by the condition of the car and the body, it would have been too late long before they arrived.
    The fourth fatality occurred at the top of our driveway.
    And that was how I met the girl on the glider. And that is where our story really begins.
     

    ENTRY 5:
     

    I wasn’t home when it happened. It was mid-January, and I was a Guest of Honor at a convention in Missouri called VisionCon. After Saturday’s book signing and Q&A were over with, I spent the evening hanging out in the hotel bar with Mike Oliveri, Cullen Bunn, Val Botchlet (who used to moderate my old message board forum), my friend Richard Christy’s cousin Adam, playwright Roy C. Booth, and the guys from Skullvines Press. I was pleased to note that the hotel bar, upon learning that I would be back in town that weekend, had Basil Hayden’s and Knob Creek on hand (the year before, they’d only had Jack Daniel’s and Jim Beam available, which are like the Coors and Budweiser of bourbon). Needless to say, we had a good time, and I didn’t get to bed until after 3am.
    When I woke up the next morning, I called home to talk to Cassi. She sounded tired and I soon found out why. She hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. She told me there had been another accident. Four kids, all of them between the ages of eighteen and twenty, had wrecked their car right at the top of our driveway. Three walked away from the accident. One did not. The accident happened just after midnight. Emergency vehicles, firemen and paramedics had been on hand until well after dawn. Had Cassi experienced some kind of crisis, and had to leave our home, she would have been unable to get out of our driveway. The emergency crews had it blocked off, along with the road. I asked her if she knew the details and found out that she didn’t. All she knew was what one of the paramedics had told her—the wreck, the number and ages of the people in the car, and that one of them had died. I asked her if Coop had been on the scene, since he works as an EMT and our