Highway Valley Blues

“I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.”

-Hermann Hesse, Demian.

Part 1: Crescendo

Chapter 1: Prelude in a Minor Key

There was a sharp, grating sound. The wheels peeled off their intended paths and collided in a magnificent mix of flesh and framework. The three in the other car were burned alive upon collision and died. Drew Elle’s car, the one that was hit, slid to the right. The impact hit the left side of the car. Drew Elle died. He was the driver. Melissa, Veronica’s best friend, was sitting on the left side of the car behind Drew Elle and she died. Veronica sustained minor injuries but in her mind the damage was irreversible. I was riding shotgun in the passenger’s seat and I never saw it coming.

Drew had driven drunk before. Of course in school we had a million assemblies about drunk driving where the mothers of the slain children would stand and cry and sit back down again. Every heartfelt word would leave the jaded student minds only five minutes later upon mention of the special food item at lunch. Everyone would laugh and the discussion would shift to how the school’s preference of salty and lifeless food stuffs had gone too far. Plotting for revolts had been made against disgusting cafeteria food worldwide. And everyone would say the assembly was moving, but that they had heard it all before. And someone copied someone else’s homework and it was like nothing had happened at all, because nothing did happen.

Until now. And when I think about all the pettiness and superficiality in my life, I start to feel like it was all for nothing.

I met Drew Elle freshman year. We were on the same Freshman Football team until we were old enough to get into the JV league. When we mutually decided we preferred soccer, we changed sports together and played senior year on Varsity. I thought the best of him. He was a great guy. He was pretty much friends with everyone that wanted to make conversation with him and he was highly agreeable. No one started fights with Drew Elle unless they were jealous because they saw something in him that they couldn’t find in themselves. I looked up to Drew because I actually admired those qualities in him that I didn’t have.

His girlfriend Melissa was a real sweetheart. I think I will miss her the most. She was so gentle and kind, like an angel really. She was the perfect compliment to my bombshell of a girlfriend, Veronica. While Melissa was patient Veronica was certainly impatient. Melissa was forgiving and Veronica could hold a grudge. Veronica, however, did have her strong suits. She was opinionated, which combined with her other two virtues might have labeled her overbearing, but it was just the opposite. Veronica was well-read and was into the news and fashion and culture and politics. She was a top student and she was very independent. Sometimes I felt like I was tying her down, because I wanted a simple relationship that she would have found too difficult to cultivate.

I guess you could say the four of us hung out a lot. After the accident I started to wonder if all the memories I had of us only held external value to me.

Drew Elle with all his brilliance and virtue couldn’t really help getting a few slugs in him before he started up the car. Such was the case at every social function. The first time he got smashed we all called our parents, equally as smashed. We heard the usual disappointment in our parents’ voices but also realized we were being commended for calling instead of driving. Drew got the short end of the stick—his parents were infuriated about his intoxication and questioned him relentlessly with rhetorical questions. What if the police got hold of him? How would he explain that to his grandmother—it would send her into a fit! Drew was grounded for a month.

The next time, we didn’t get in his car again. He was mad and drove off without us. The next day, we found him not dead and decided to trust him. After that night we decided Drew was a man that could hold his liquor. He even claimed he could “drive better” when he was intoxicated. I don’t think many of us even questioned it.

That night was no different. As we left the house Drew jangled his keys, beckoning us to follow him to the car. There was no apparent danger driving home. Chaz Martin, a friend of ours, was teasing us and tailgating. His car made a very clever pass in front of ours across the double dotted line into oncoming traffic and back onto the right side. We laughed and we could hear Chaz and his friends laugh in happiness as they sped off down the road. We picked up speed a little bit, but not as heavily. When Chaz was tailgating another especially slow-moving vehicle, he weaved in front of traffic on a blind curve, with drastic results. The oncoming car didn’t see Chaz. We were so closely behind that when the car slammed on their breaks it had already collided with our own.

I don’t remember what happened next. Even for several hours after I woke up in the hospital they said I was unresponsive to calls. My eyes were open, but I couldn’t recognize the names of simple shapes formed by my retinas. But I don’t think I found it frightening. I don’t think I found the experience to be anything other than what it was, and I didn’t attach any meaning to it at the time. I was in a hospital. The idea was novel in nature but I didn’t feel any anxiety or excitement. My mind didn’t seem to register the events of that night and my most recent trip to the intensive care unit.

Nearly a night later a nightshift nurse noticed my increasing attention to my consciousness and decided to talk to me. She seemed to be a strong woman and had no problem telling me that both of my friends had been killed in the accident, as well as the couple in the other car and their young child. Even with my distorted sense of reality, I sensed her contempt for me. I felt nothing. The lack of any kind of feeling about the accident, like my hospital visit, also wasn’t surprising. I did manage to ask how Veronica was doing and the nurse told me she had only a few scrapes and some fractured bones, and she was out of the hospital already. I told the nurse I didn’t think I could feel my legs and she said goodnight and left me in the darkness.

I soon learned that my brain was trying very hard to repair itself organically, but the damage done was life-altering. Or maybe, it was just my emotional state that was so damaging. At any rate, I was told that the problem with my legs was, quite literally, all in my mind, and it would get better with therapy and time. I felt like a newborn. I felt numb to the world and the world felt numb to me. I learned to walk again and speak again. At first, even when I talked to the nightshift nurse, my speech was slurred, I stuttered, and had an overall hard time pronouncing words I could usually just say without thinking. The nurse probably left that night without addressing my most current concern because she had no idea what I was saying.

At the end of the week, I was out of the hospital in my temporary wheel chair. I didn’t talk very much and my parents made no attempt to talk to me. I was alone. That weekend I went to Dave Elle’s wake and funeral. I didn’t talk to anyone. I knew that if they talked to me, they would be afraid or they wouldn’t know what to say. The stuttering was more traumatizing than all the inner effects of brain damage.

That was the first time I saw Veronica again since that night. She looked very sad. She gave me a recent local newspaper that read “Couple, child, and two would-be grads—dead”. I gave her a look that wanted to mean something.

Veronica returned to school after a week. I came back after a month and a half, only a week before school let out. I continued to keep up with school work at home but being a social person, I craved being part of high school society again. Veronica visited me quite often after the funerals of our friends. As the weeks passed, however, she became more and more distant. We didn’t talk much about the accident. It was always a taboo subject between us.

When I was far enough into therapy where I could say a few sentences at a time without stuttering too horribly, I joined the school again. Even though I wasn’t driving the car, even though I wasn’t the one cutting in front of traffic, the accusation that I had subconsciously murdered my friends was in the stares of all the students I encountered. After the first day back from school I went over to the cemetery where Drew Elle was buried. I sat in front of his stone for hours, crying.

It was the first time that I had “visited” him since the funeral. I had gotten up from my wheelchair to stumble feebly to the hole in the ground and looked down at his casket and threw my rose down it dispassionately. I was so numb that even when they buried my friends, I didn’t cry, leading many to assume I was not grateful for their sacrifice.

I touched the smooth black stonework and traced the engravings. “Beloved Son” it read. Everything was coming undone so fast. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I thought Drew was going on to play pros, and I was going to get into college on my soccer scholarship. That day I learned that my soccer scholarship was, sadly, no longer an option. My grades were passing, just good enough to get into community college. The big name university was gone. My best friend was gone. And now my girlfriend was leaving me.

“You’ve changed, Ryan,” she said quietly that afternoon on my back porch. “Ever since the accident you’ve become so introverted and…unfeeling.” Her dark eyes were filled with worry and I knew what she wanted to do. And she wanted me to give her a reason to do it.

“I hardly think that’s my f-fault,” I said. “You were affected, too.”

“I’m not saying it’s anyone’s fault,” she clarified. “And yes, I was affected. I was miserable for weeks. I felt so much guilt for something that was totally unpredictable. I went through therapy.” Even now tears started to well up in her eyes thinking about events passed. She was a very emotional girl. “I’ve just been worried about you, because I know you hurt and I know that you must have cried…but I haven’t seen any of that.” She tried to calm down as I handed her a napkin. “Do you know what I mean?” she asked.

“You want to know if I’m sane—if Drew and Melissa’s death meh-meant anything to me.” Veronica didn’t say anything. She bit her lip. I’m very sure she could feel my resentment. She didn’t even care to say she didn’t mean it like that. “Veronica j-j-just go, okay? Don’t feed me bullshit. I can se-s-see through your fake feelings. Don’t you think I know th-that you want to leave?” I could see she wanted to cry again, but I did, too. I knew she was going to leave. I was making it easier on her.

“I love you,” she said. “But you know I’m going to Wesleyan in the fall. I have a chance,” she said bravely, “to start over—to leave the past behind me.”

“Including me,” I murmured lowly. But her resolution was unchangeable, and I didn’t know what to do to make her stay.

Summer faded. Fall came. In my small mountain town, the colors of the day were brilliant. People from nearby towns would rent cabins in the mountains so when they woke up in the morning they could view the land and every color of dawn while they drank their morning coffee. Little shops bustled with business as usual. Despite it all, fall felt like death violating the air. My parents, who let me drown away my summer with endless bouts of sleep were now were pushing me to get a job. College was no longer my future, and joining the working world had become my all-consuming quest.