vituperation

…continued

"They want to know how old he is," Robyn called.

"Hey, man," I said, leaning down over the prone guy, "Can you tell me how old you are?"

The man on the ground did not respond.

"He’s out," I yelled.

She relayed the information to the dispatcher on the phone, while the witness and I stood staring at the possibly dying man lying in my back yard. The sirens drew closer quickly. One of the benefits to living where we do is that everything is close, except for a hospital. The hospitals are in Huntsville, a good fifteen minute drive at ambulance speeds and even longer when you’re obeying speed laws and traffic signals. There’s currently a movement to get a hospital in Madison — which I very strongly support, since it would be about four miles from me — but it’s meeting stiff opposition and there isn’t one yet.

A police car pulled up outside the back fence, on Busy Street, and an officer came through, shining a big flashlight to and fro over the debris scattered across the yard.

"They need directions for the ambulance," Robyn called. She was staying back by the patio, keeping her distance from the accident scene. I wish like hell I could’ve been back there with her. I took the phone from her, while the policeman tried to do a visual examination on the unconscious man.

"Can you hear me, buddy? Are you awake?"

The man on the ground moaned loudly and started struggling to get up. There was a large splash of blood under his face, brilliant under the flashlight’s beam.

"Be still! Don’t move!"

The man moaned again and continued to writhe. The police officer laid a hand on his back in an effort to calm him, explaining in a strong voice that the man was injured, that he’d been in an accident, and that he shouldn’t move.

I gave the emergency dispatcher directions to the front of our house, though the ambulance actually pulled up to the back when it arrived. I had to stop in the middle of my instructions, because the firetruck arrived and there was no way I’d be able to hear anything on the phone if the dispatcher had questions. The spotlight on top of the firetruck lit up not only the entire accident scene, but most of the neighborhood beyond our house.

The rest of it sort of blurs together. All in all, we were in the backyard for an hour and a half. Paramedics took the man away on a stretcher. He was awake, and though bloody, he was talking to the rescuers and had no visible major injuries. The police got two statements from the witness, two different policemen at two different times. A policeman spoke to Robyn and I, and gave us a business card (Officer Vermillion. Cool, no? Just like Crayola!) with the case number so we could get a copy later.

Family of the man who wrecked arrived, two women standing out at the edge of Busy Street holding onto one another and crying loudly. Until they started fighting, that is. According to the police, woman A was the man’s wife, and woman B was their friend, or possibly their cousin. The car belonged to woman B. She’d just bought it a couple of days before and, despite all the laws in Alabama, was uninsured. As was the driver.

There is an abject lesson to be learned here about having insurance and about letting someone else drive your car, I’m sure, but I’ll refrain from preaching.

After much discussion between the police and the firemen, they decided to cut down several sections of the fence the car was leaning against, then tip the car over onto its wheels. Once the car was righted, a tow truck pulled into my neighbor’s yard through the torn down corner of fence the car demolished as it cartwheeled off of Busy Street. The winch on the wrecker dragged the car up onto the bed, because the wheels wouldn’t turn.

And it was over; they were finished.

"Thanks, guys," the last cop said to the firemen as he went through the front gate, "see you later."

He paused for a second.

"Well," he finished, "See you at the next one."

Some possibly interesting tidbits:

• Out of that big accident, the only damage to our property was the single section of fence the car came through. The rest was my neighbor’s fence.
• There were no less than three Christmas-tree-shaped air fresheners on the rearview mirror, all of which (including the mirror) ended up outside the car.
• It took the spud and I about an hour to completely clean up the yard, including using the shop vac to clean up the safety glass scattered everywhere.
• There was a HUGE bottle of Gain detergent in the car that ruptured during the accident. It spewed all over the yard, and it still reeks out there. Gain used to be my favorite-smelling detergent, but now the smell makes me sick to my stomach. There was also a ruptured bottle of Clorox, but we couldn’t smell it because of the Gain.
• There was a pair of haircutting scissors embedded in the yard, pointy end straight down, right under the chest or neck of where the man was laying. He landed on them hard enough to break one of the finger thingies (I like to use the scientific names).
• Repair to our fence should cost less than the deductible for our homeowner’s insurance.
• There were several pieces of fence and glass on the roof of our shed, and one piece of wood in the tree on the side of the shed opposite the accident.
• Just outside our fence, where the car slammed into the ground on one of its bounces, there was a hubcap, a windshield wiper, and a sideview mirror.
• I was out cleaning in the ditch behind our yard and found a piece of 4×4 almost 100 feet away from where the car hit the fence.
• We found an unbroken fog light under the shed.
• The police thought the fight between the women was amusing. As one put it, "They got here and one was like, my husband!, and the other was like, my car!"
• I had to hold the light for a fireman while he removed the battery from the car’s engine compartment (right before they loaded it onto the wrecker). There was a big spear of fencepost running through the radiator and into the engine block.
• We think our cat Spanky was actually in the back yard when it happened. All four of the kitties were spooked, but he went so far as to hide in the far back corner of a closet in the guest room. He wouldn’t come out when I found him (I had to go in after him, because that closet door wasn’t even supposed to be open in the first place). He didn’t purr the rest of the night.
• The spud never knew what happened. She said she never heard a thing, though her room is also on the back of the house.
• The cats are pissed because they can’t go outside until all the fences are mended.