There was a body lying under a sheet on the low, grassy hill. A uniformed police officer stood sentinel a few feet away, fiddling idly with a handheld electronic device I couldn't identify at a distance.
I didn't see the body at first, distracted by the glossy sheen of the looming fire engines; the police cruisers littering the highway's narrow shoulder at jack-knife angles; the gleaming wreck of the car. It was a mangled twist of metal and glass that looked like it might have been on fire before we had managed to inch our way up the long, slow caterpillar of rubbernecking motorists.
"I can't even tell what kind of car it is," said Kevin, a self-proclaimed autophile and one of my new coworkers, peering intently over the steering wheel. There was a low murmur of agreement from the rest of us. Kevin's sedan crept a few feet forward.
I didn't know cars well enough to venture a guess. All I knew was that the logic of spatial reasoning suggested that whoever had been riding shotgun was in a bad, bad way.
"Dodge Charger," Kevin announced, not quite triumphantly. I imagine it was difficult to feel victorious when the wreckage was so close. He made a considering noise, and added, "Or, it was, anyway."
We were on our way back from lunch—happy, lazy, full of a variety of Asian noodle dishes and French pastry by way of the Korean bakery. We'd been talking about jury duty, and fish heads, and our favorite punctuation.
("There are people in this world who will tell you not to use an Oxford comma," I said over our meal to another coworker, Jim, who was closer to my age, extroverted and friendly and totally without guile. I dug my chopsticks into a wide bowl of miso broth and unearthed a sagging knot of noodles. "If anyone tells you otherwise, you just send them to me. I'll handle them."
I was aware that I was probably coming across like the alcoholic protagonist of a hackneyed noir pulp novel, but figured there were worse things to be.
Jim didn't seem to mind, or else he felt the same way about the Oxford comma as I did, because he gave me a serious nod and tucked back into his pad see ew without further comment.)
Two minutes earlier the sluggish traffic on the way back to the office had been a nuisance, one of those delightfully irritating human happenstances that allow individuals to come together as a unit in the interest of complaint. Now, I had forgotten to be frustrated, distracted by the pair of shiny black loafers poking out from under the crisp, white edge of a sheet halfway up the hillside.
"Oh," I said, surprised. "It looks like somebody didn't make it."
"What?" Jim craned his neck to look. "Really?"
"Yeah," I tapped on my window and nodded, even though Jim couldn't see me, sitting in the front as he was. "There's a body up there, under a sheet."
Carla, who was in the back with me, leaned over so far her head was practically in my lap and agreed, "Oh, yeah," in that vague, slightly breathy voice people sometimes fall into when they're cautioned to expect something to be a certain way and find it to be precisely as promised.
I had always been—and still am—one of those people who thought frequently on death, and dying. It fascinated and horrified me, invading my thoughts to the point that I would be hovering on the cusp of sleep most nights only to jolt upright, gasping for air and crying out for God, or my mother, or simply begging the universe please, please, please, not yet, I need more time, because I could see, in that instant, just a fraction of the enormity of ceasing to be.
"Is that what that was?" Kevin asked. I hoped, absurdly, for a moment that I had been wrong.
Maybe, I reasoned, that person is just injured, and the sheet is for privacy. Maybe I misjudged what I was seeing. Maybe they're waiting on an ambulance right now, and everything will be all right.
Maybe, I allowed, but probably not.
"Yeah." I twisted in my seat to watch the body disappear as we made our around a long curve, picking up speed now that traffic had started moving again.
"It was a long way from the car."
Over the past few years and several cross-country moves, I had fallen into the habit of murmuring apologies—blessings, some might call them, or maybe prayers—to myself whenever I passed roadkill. I would see it coming, this little flattened scrap of grey-black-brown, split wide and bisected by bright pinks and reds, and my stomach would lurch from sorrow and the imagined stink.
We did this, I would think to myself. This is the highway that humanity built. Three cheers for the progress of industry. Then, I hope it was fast. I hope you weren't scared. I'm sure that you were, but I hope.
"I'm sorry," I would say aloud, sometimes. "I love you. Go in peace. May a soft landing await you wherever you arrive."
There was a body lying under a sheet on the low, grassy hill. It was a real and visceral reminder that someone, somewhere in the world that day had lost a brother, or a son, or a father, or maybe all of those, or maybe more.
All I could think to say this time was, "Shit."
We passed under a bridge. For a split second my vision was flooded with salmon-colored stone, and then the sun burst back in.
"Sorry guys," I said with a little grin. "I swear a lot."
"How fucking dare you," said Kevin, flashing me a smile in the rear view mirror. Everybody laughed.