As Luck Would Have It (9 page)

The
Dart
hit the cab of the truck more or less head on. 
Mr. Casslemond
was dazed for a moment or two and then saw through the windshield how
horrifying
this was.
  Nearly frozen with fear, he could see
the driver and front se
at passenger in the car clearly
, a man and a woman
. 
As he stared with disbelief, he realized that they were not moving and
now
smoke was beginning to rise from the front of the car. 
He wanted more than anything to jump from the truck to be able to see for himself that it wasn’t as bad as it looked, that no one was seriously injured.  Why couldn’t he move? 
His right leg was hurting , but i
t didn’t seem that he was
injured too severely,
just stuck somehow.  He tried to move his legs, but they seemed pinned under the dashboard.  All he could do was struggle to get free as he watched what was unfolding with a mix of terror and revulsion.  The smoke became thicker in front of him, which was frightening enough; but then he noticed flames coming first from under the hood of the car, then it seemed
in just a minute or so
, from the passenger compartment itself.

He
could move his arms and wanted to open the door, or at least the window of the cab, but they seemed to be stuck as well.  He became more panicky as the car burned and he
pushed as hard as he could on the door, but it refused to open.  If he could just free his legs, maybe he would be able to open the passenger side door, or kick out one of the windows, but he could not move his lower body at all.  He stared now at the burning car right in front of him, and had no choice but to accept
the fact t
hat he was helpless to do anything
but watch
.  He alternately closed his eyes
or
else
looked away, the scene in front of him too dreadful to fully take in
. 
Then he
glanced
one more time before he
felt like he would pass out
.  My God, was he imaging this
;
was his mind taking control of the situation in some
sadistic way by c
reating
this hallucination?  Was that a boy in front of the truck just starring straight into his eyes as he,
Mr. Casslemond
starred right back into his?

****

R
egret is such a hard emotion to understand.  Why is it that we set ourselves up so often to experience something that we know is going make us feel
so horrible later on?
 
Maybe
it
is
carelessness on our part that causes us to either miss opportunities or do things that we will inevitably fe
e
l sorry for, or maybe it is more of a need
to assert ourselves and exercise control over our actions
;
to hell with the consequences.  Regret is often both predictable and avoidable, yet we seem to consistently miss our chance
s
to either
anticipate it or steer clear of it.  Is it inevitable that we will do and say things that are nearly certain to result in regret later on?

Regret may be unique to human beings, but
I wonder if it is intri
nsic to us. 
We weren’t born with the need to regret spilling our milk when we were little; it was taught to us. 
Perhaps th
ere is no innate need or prerequisite
requirement that we feel regret, but we all do, save for the sociopathic among us.  We experience it
, sometimes to a nearly paralyzing degree for no reason at all, except that we are human beings, and as such, are both blessed and cursed with such unique emotional responses.

That winter, I was full of regret over things not done or said for the benefit of my parents.  Consumed with feelings of remorse, I could hardly imagine
why
I had not done better in the
ir eyes
, not worked harder to make them proud or happy, not
told them more, if ever, what important people they were and how much their lives mattered in the scheme of things.  I constantly wracked my brain trying to remember times where I might have hurt them or caused them unnecessary grief.  You must be thinking as you read this; wait, all children do this, that’s normal, for teenagers especially, why are you tor
menting
yourself?  Because now there was no way to
fix
my mistakes, no chance to right my screwing things up,
all opportunities lost that I expected to have, with all the time in the world to have them, gone in a few seconds on that icy cold night.  It seemed at the time that I would be tortured with these feelings forever, or at least until I died, which I was hoping would be very soon.

I was sure that the only escape from this agony would be to kill myself.  Once the funeral was over and grieving relatives went back home, I began to seek out a plan to do just that.  What poisons were around that would do the trick?  Could I really lock myself in the bathroom at my Aunt Doreen’s house under the guise of shaving and actually make deep enough
razor
cuts to force my suffering heart to pump the life from me, just because my brain kept prodding me
to go ahead and get it over with
?  My uncle Jack didn’t have a gun, I was pretty sure of that, and
I was
certain
that
the Kleins, staunch Democrats that they were, we
re
giving sizable donations to major gun control organizations.  They would be no help in that department.  Could I gather up the nerve to
just take the clothes line from the yard into the basement and rig up a simple but effective gallows that would no doubt put an end to this misery?

*****

One day at work in early 2010, Mr. Finnernan announced that there would be a meeting for the entire staff the following morning at
10
:00.  This was a rather unusual event, as
our boss
was not comfortable in a group larger than two and everyone knew tha
t he would avoid the discomfort that
such a meeting would cause him if there was any other way. 
So quite predictably, th
ere was a good amount of buzz
and a degree of anxiety
around the office
,
and after the announcement was made at about 2:30 in the afternoon, no one did any more work
after
that
as far as I could tell
, concerned as
they
were with what was going on.  I was
n
ot one to be so readily distracted from
what I was working on and I had no problem waiting another 18 hours to hear the news.  So I continued with the task of sending personal emails and making a grocery list for the dinner party I was planning that weekend.
 
Tim
McCarty
, a low level manager I’d known for about a half dozen years
,
regrettably
waltzed right into my office and interrupted my train of thought, just as I was trying to decide on the right guacamole recipe.  Andrews, what the hell is up?

I starred at Tim for a minute, contemplatin
g an answer.  Here was a pudgy under
-q
ualified
subordinate
with questionable motives
, who I
ignored whenever possible.
By this time I had no authority over him or anyone else, but there was an unwritten
hierarchy that more of less assumed that a jerk like him would not just walk right in unannounced and even more uninvited.  He acted like we were friends, which was ridiculous, with his frequent unflattering comments about some of the women in the office, which were obviously inappropriate in any setting, but particularly with a
former
manager some
12
years his senior.  He strutted around the place like he was some stud that women might be impressed with, but I doubt he ever screwed even the most desperate of them.  He was in sorry need of a tailor and a personal trainer. 
I looked at him a second time, probably with a more puzzled look, wondering who the hell screwed up his hairdo.  I wanted to tell him where to go, but knew that I would be better served by maintaining a more professional aura.
How the
hell
should I know?

*****

Once
Mr
Casslemond was pulled from his truck and taken to the hospital, he’d pretty much learned the extent of the profound tragedy that he had
created
; a calamity that had materialized out of nowhere, a disaster so heavy that it could
not possibly ever be lifted from him.
  It was only the second accident he’d been in over his entire life
time
; the first when he and his wife were rear ended while on vacation in Wisconsin in 1960, the year that I was born.  As he waited for the surgeon to arrive, the attending physician showed him an x-ray that confirmed the multiple fractures in his
right
leg.  They would need to operate to repair the damage, and then there would be a lengthy recovery period,
maybe
six months or more.  Yes, he would be able walk OK again, but he would never fully regain the use of his leg.  Best case, he’d have a constant limp to remind him of the
suffering
he
had
unintentionally
left
as his legacy.

They had given him
a
sedative and something for the pain, but
Mr. Casslemond
was alert and agitated still.  The silhouette of the boy standing before the flames seemed inked onto his brain like a newspaper photograph.  How would he ever erase this image from his mind?  Somewhere through all of the activity and commotion of the emergency room, he’d heard enough to piece together the
unthinkable
puzzle; two fatalities, the boy’s parents, no siblings, an orphan, not
injured.  Where was he now,
Mr. Casslemond
wondered?
  He cried aloud from the pain of it, not from his broken leg, but from someplace down deep inside, someplace that
Mr.
Casslemond had
not been to in a very long time.

When he awoke, it was nearly midnight and his wife sat crying quietly at his side.  The operation was over; the drama that would become their lives
just beginning
.  His leg splintered and repaired; their dreams shattered beyond any hope. 
Mr. Casslemond
could only hold onto her hand while he stared at the emptiness in front of him and wondered, what now?

What now, indeed.  Such questions of course have no answers, but still we have to ask.  How are broken lives to be glued back into something resembling existence?  How would I, confused and frightened, ever find my way back on any course leading to anywhere other than oblivion?   How
would Mr
. Casslemond
, older but no wiser when it came
to a situation such as this,
get up from that hospital bed, with useless crutches, with family
members
that could offer only hollow support, with nobody, anybody
possibly
able to lessen the awful guilt that
would plague
him with nightmares, every night for however many
sleepless
nights he had left.  Why do we torture ourselves asking questions that have no answers?  Why can’t
Mr. Casslemond
and his wife escape to
Florida
like they planned and get as far as possible away from here, where they don’t belong anymore, especially now?  Why can’t I just move in with my Aunt Doreen and Uncle Jack and forget about the rest?

Move in and live with my Aunt Doreen?  Yes, that was the decision that had been made on my behalf with absolutely no input from me. 
My mother’s only sibling, her
sister Doreen
,
was a true whack job.  But with the passing of my mother,
she was the only
of my grandparents’ offspring still
alive.
  I never knew if these plans had in any way been considered ahead of time in the event of some tragedy, or what discussions,
c
onsiderations
,
or arguments may have ensued following the accident.  Nothing was said in my presence in any event until the news was delivered in person by none other than Doreen herself when she showed up one night at the Klein’s house where I had been camping out
in the days following
the accident.  I would have done almost anything if the Kleins could have been able to adopt me, and from the look on Mrs. Klein’s face when my aunt made her unscheduled appearance, she might have preferred that arrangement as well.  At least my aunt and uncle lived nearby and I could easily ride my bike to visit Joseph
,
after I had no choice but to vacate their house.