Reaching Into The Car

Reaching Into The Car It was the summer. A girl passed us in the country. She had a little red car with celery and baguettes on the back seat and you could see she was happy. She had the radio on. Bobbing her head, white throat taking the eucalypt heat, singing along to someone with her hair in the wind. She pulled back in front of us and smashed flat strap into a tractor. He was doing no wrong: dawdling along to the next job, two wheels off the tarmac. two on, his back to her. I knew she was singing when the shatter happened and stopping had occurred. We drew up. I remember the sound of our handbrake as I opened the door anticipating horror. She had a compound fracture of the jaw which she didn’t understand, and because her vehicle was suddenly shorter, her femurs were, too. One of them, jaggedly white, was poking out the side of her purpling leg. In those moments of total shock one’s blood rushes to the major organs, so it doesn’t come out of the holes for an agonising dead length of moments. “I’m getting married” she gurgled through her shattered teeth, “I’m getting married tomorrow. I’ve just bought all the stuff.” I took her bloody phone in one hand, and as the tractor driver shuffled up, fondling his reflective jacket, whispering “I dunno how she did that,” I pressed the button of her last call, my other hand fumbling for a bit that wasn’t smashed so she could feel me as she screamed. I don’t remember what her name was, but I told it to the guy who answered. He worked in a bank. He arrived before the ambulance, a young man with spiky hair, a blue business shirt, pleated chinos and deck shoes. He stood beside her, reaching into the disfigured car for something that may no longer be there, his other thumb poking dumb numbers on his phone as he chanted “We’re getting married in the morning. We’re getting married in the morning. We’re getting married in the morning. We’re getting married in the morning.” It was very dry. Philip White .