For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. (Psalm 91:11)

As a rule, a newspaperman includes specific chronological information in his lede, but I'm afraid I can't do that with this story, not with any degree of certainty at any rate. I can only tell you these events took place just before the last Christmas of the last century. That's the best I can do with the "when." So let's move on to the who and the where I'll leave the "why" and "how" up to you.

 

I was on my way to Macon that night, traveling southbound on Interstate 75 between the Harold Clarke Parkway and Rumble Road. Fractals of snowflake were beginning to build up on my windshield, and I knew the roads were becoming slick and treacherous beneath my Impala. Inside the car, the heater fan roared, and warm air blew on my face. Quite cozy it was.

 

Just after I passed Faulkner's Christmas tree farm which lined the interstate to the west, I saw something menacing in my rear-view mirror: A pair of headlights sliding from side to side, one dipping to gravity and centrifugal force, the other rising, as the driver negotiated the interstate like a skier negotiates a slalom. Before I could determine if I needed to change lanes and get out of the way, a black SUV roared past my window, its tail lights glowing like two chunks of burning anthracite. 

 

There were two possibilities, I decided. Either the driver is unfamiliar with these environs  or he is an absolute idiot. Almost everyone in Monroe County knew that our own Deputy Bradley liked to hide just beyond the apex of the steep grade near Rumble Road to trap speeders. Almost everyone in Monroe County complained about it.

 

But Bradley was not at his usual station. Perhaps he had been called away to a more imperative matter. With no copper in sight, the black SUV roared past Rumble Road and toward Macon like a bat out of hell. 

 

As I rolled up and down the wavelengths of interstate toward the county line, I began to feel uneasy. The black wraith was a complete wavelength ahead of me now, and I hoped the drivers in front of him had sense enough to get out of the way . . . if they could.

 

As I topped a hill just north of the Interstate 475 split, I saw a sea of brake lights flashing on and off in the valley below me. And then I heard a dull crunch in the distance, felt the vibration of it on my skin, orange sparks flew into the air. 

 

I pulled into the emergency lane fifty yards from the accident and got out with my old Pentax K-1000 draped around my neck. Instinctively, I ran toward the carnage. The asphalt was littered with broken chrome and plastic; steam hissed from the radiator of the SUV. I heard sirens wailing in the distance. 

 

The black juggernaut had plowed into the rear of a blue Plymouth Horizon, shoving the smaller vehicle under a tractor trailer stopped in front of it in the Christmas time traffic. The roof of the Horizon had nearly been sheered off by the impact. Fortuitously, the wreck occurred almost within sight of the Bolingbroke Fire Station and paramedics were on the scene in minutes, along with state troopers and the local deputies -- including Deputy Bradley. I was tempted to ask Bradley why he hadn't been sitting in his usual spot, but to suggest he could have prevented the accident was ridiculous. These things happen. As long as people drive on interstates coated with frozen water, there will be blood from time to time.

 

Men in blue uniforms, some I knew and some I didn't, ran toward the wrecked van with bags of equipment. The station chief barked orders. A burly man with a beard lowered the titanium teeth of the "jaws of life" into place and tore into the passenger compartment of the Horizon.

 

I almost didn't bother to take a picture, because our publisher did not allow photographs of fatal accidents to be used in the paper. Still, the occupants of the mini-van might have survived the collision, so I lifted the camera and clicked the shutter. The flash bathed the scene in an ethereal glow for a moment. I could almost feel the camera tearing a rectangle out of the air, wrenching a moment out a piece out of its rightful place in the past.The emergency personnel turned to look at me; the station chief scowled briefly and went back to yanking on the driver's door.

 

Out of the cacophony of idling automobiles behind me, I heard a desperate bleating noise. An elderly woman with steel gray hair was running between the rows of cars and trucks lining up behind the wreck. Her face was wet with tears and snow, and she was screaming something about her daughter and her two grandchildren who had decided to go visit Santa Claus at the Macon Mall that night. 

 

Jesus, I thought.

 

A deputy managed to calm the hysterical woman enough to learn that the occupants of the Horizon were a young mother and two little girls aged seven and nine.

 

These are moments of the most fervent prayer. You might not fall to your knees and press your hands together, but you pray the purest prayers anyway.

 

Then, quite suddenly, a change swept over the EMT's and paramedics struggling to free the people in the van. I can't say for sure if I felt the presence of something or the absence of something else, but the sense of urgency was gone, and with it, hope. I didn't need to be told that none of them had survived. I could see the anger and frustration on the faces of the paramedics as some of them withdrew from the mangled metal that had once been a family car. On this night, death wins. 

 

I felt like the worst kind of paparazzi creep for having taken a picture of a tragedy like that, but I tried to reassure myself that I had only been doing my job. It was news, as unpleasant as it may have been.

 

I couldn't help imagining boxes wrapped in shiny red and green paper sitting under a tree somewhere with the names of the little girls on them. Would the family return the gifts or just give them to the Marines? My heart ached for them. It just wasn't fair. Christmas would never again be a time  of joy for those touched by this tragedy. I didn't want to think about the father of the two girls.

 

As I slipped away toward my car, a gurney rolled along the asphalt with a small, still body on it. The paramedics pushed the gurney into one of the four ambulances now on the scene. 

 

I could scarcely make out the silhouette of the SUV driver through the tinted glass windows, but he appeared to be slumped over the steering wheel. If there is any justice and mercy in this world, he would be dead too, I thought. Then, abruptly, he sat up and his window came down.  A mere teenager, he was, his eyes flickering in the red and blue emergency lights. He did not yet know the results of his carelessness. Which just made the tragedy worse. Blame rested squarely on his shoulders. He would probably serve time in jail, but the real pain would come later no matter what the courts ultimately decided to do with him. Unless he's a raving sociopath, I concluded, he'll be haunted by this for the rest of his days.

 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night, I whispered as I walked back to my car.

 

I dropped off the film in my camera at a Macon photo processing shop on my way home. 

 

In those days, at the turn of the century, my newspaper was still using film cameras. And since the price of chemicals used in the dark room had made developing our own film more expensive than having it done by someone else, our daily routines included runs to Macon to drop off film and pick up photos at an independent film processing shop.

 

I dreaded going to work the next day. Details of the tragedy would have to be compiled, and a story would have to be written. Someone, most likely yours truly, would have to make some telephone calls. I decided not to mention the picture I had taken. It wouldn't be used anyway, and I still felt like a creep for taking it. Dammit, some things just shouldn't be photographed.

 

Since I had worked overtime covering a pair of high school basketball games earlier in the week, I decided to take the next morning off. When I arrived, the office was empty except for the publisher. The editor had taken the afternoon off to have lunch with her husband in Macon, and the advertising people were out selling ads . . . or using that as excuse to get out the office and shop. 

 

I had expected to be inundated by questions about the accident when I arrived. Word travels fast in rural counties, and I expected the publisher to know the family histories of everyone involved by the time I opened the front door. She had lived in the area her entire life and seemed to be related in some way to at least half of the county's residents.

 

Surprisingly, she had not heard a thing about the accident. Perhaps the victims lived in an adjacent burg. She contacted her cousin, the chief deputy, but he told her that as far as he knew there hadn't been an accident of the interstate. 

 

I didn't press the matter. I didn't want to argue about something so awful, so I decided to retrieve the film later, if need be, and prove that I wasn't a raving lunatic. Our newspaper was a weekly and we still had three days before it went to press anyway. But I couldn't help feeling uneasy about the lack of information available from our local government agencies. Still, the holiday season often corrupted lines of communication. It had happened before.

 

After work, I hurried out to my car. I was on my way to Macon once again, traveling southbound on Interstate 75. Fractals of snowflake were beginning to build up on my windshield, and I knew the roads were becoming slick and treacherous. Inside the car, the heater fan roared and warm air blew on my face. Quite cozy it was.

 

Just after I passed Faulkner's Christmas tree farm, I saw something menacing in my rear-view mirror: A pair of headlights, the left one dipping, the right one rising as the vehicle they were attached to swerved in and out of traffic. 

 

"You've got to be kidding me," I said. "Not again, not another idiot!"

 

Then, a black SUV virtually identical to the one involved in the accident the night before roared past my window, its tail lights glowing like two chunks of burning anthracite. Almost simultaneously, the blue lights of a county patrol car lit up in the gloom ahead and Deputy Bradley's White Crown Vic slipped behind the SUV. As I passed by, the police cruiser and the black SUV were pulling into the emergency lane.

 

That's more like it, Brad, I thought.

 

A few seconds later, as I was considering this odd coincidence, my cell phone rang. It was my editor. 

 

"Hi," she said. "I was in Macon and I thought I'd save you a trip to the photo shop tonight. I'm here picking up the film, but all they have is a picture of two little girls sitting in  Santa's lap. Did you take this picture?"

 

As I was trying to formulate an answer, I came to a stop . . . beside a blue Horizon. A little girl with a candy cane in her mouth looked out her window and smiled at me.