Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

It was still very windy and I could feel the ice moving underneath me in the long ocean swells. I had not seen outside since I was deposited by some miracle on the top of the ice. I looked out the frozen frosted glass of portholes in hopes that I had been deposited in front of some Alaskan village, but it was not so. All I could see through the frost-clouded glass was a jagged frozen endless icescape. To get out I decided that it would be best to climb out by going up through the forward hatch, but I was not sure if the hatch was frozen shut or if it was going to be jammed so that I could not open it. I did not want to disturb the blankets and frozen mattress that made my end wall up in case I couldn’t get it back together good enough again. It was just the fluke of good fortune that the blankets and mattress wall had sealed up so well. It would be like lightening striking the same place twice to repeat it successfully.
I had no shoes or boots; they had been claimed by the sea. I did find some of my clothes were still with me, and so among them were some socks. I dried the socks and a couple of t-shirts over the stove. I then wrapped the t-shirts around my feet and pulled the socks over top of that to sort of make a boot. I tore one of the garbage bags up so that I could wrap my socking feet with to waterproof them. It proved to be a very slippery boot, but it might work well enough for short stints outside.
I pushed against the hatch to open it, it was a little stuck but it opened okay. The wind nearly took it out of my hands and I had to hold it firmly as I lifted it so the wind would not flip it open hard and maybe smash the port hole glass in it or rip it from its hinges. The powerful wind was actually warm, or at least not cold, as I had feared. It was by no means sun tanning weather, but it was not that cold so I surmised that it must have been coming from the south.
There was some blowing snow but visibility was still good. I climbed up through the hatch and stood on the icy deck, and as far as I could see were chunks and sheets of ice all jammed together. I had to be careful not to fall down because the garbage bags on my feet were so slippery, especially on that icy deck. The tilt on the deck made me begin to slide towards the edge, it was not that far of a fall even if I did fall off, but I could not risk any type of injury. So I sat down quickly on the deck and grabbed the edge of the hatch and hung on to steady myself. If I landed on the jagged ice with those slippery plastic bags on my feet I would surely have sustained some kind of injury.
I must have been blown north by this south wind into the northern pack ice, either that or a north wind blew the pack ice south upon me and now the south wind is blowing me back north. I had no way of knowing where I was. I scanned the ice pack for some kind of indication of anything hopeful, perhaps some of the supplies from my boat were scattered on top of the ice. Perhaps I could spot my GPS or a radio or something and it would all still work. It was a forlorn hope.
Directly beside me was a very large chunk of ice, probably reaching thirty feet in the air, it must have been part of the ice that sandwiched my boat and crushed the cabin off of it and forced the bow section atop the ice. So it wasn’t a miracle after all? I thought. I could see the ice rising and falling in long slow waves; there was no continuity in the ice sheet it was just pack ice that could be blown apart at any time. That was not a very comforting thought.
I climbed down off the deck and worked at collecting chunks of ice to melt for water. I would find any loose piece of ice that I could handle and toss it up on to the deck of the boat. Before long free and loose pieces of became scarce and I had to try to break free any chunks of ice that I could. Some were almost too big for me to handle and I drained a lot of my strength trying to get them up on the deck. It began to get dark before too long, the days are short up hear at this time of year, but I felt I had enough ice piled on the deck to last me several days. I decided it was time to go back inside and prepare for the long night ahead.
I was still very exhausted, my ordeal had left me so very weakened that the only reason I was able to do anything was on pure will power. Convincing myself to do the work of providing the ice for water for myself on the point that if I did not I would die. But I felt like I was in a bit of a zombie state, not completely conscience, a little beside myself, like I was watching everything through a thick pane of glass.
I tried to climb up onto the deck but I found that I could not; I was too weak to pull my self up onto the deck. I struggled with it and after each failed attempt I considered just knocking the blankets and frozen mattress that was the end wall of my shelter down and enter through there. But I really did not want to, as I knew that trying to get that wall back to the way it is would be nearly impossible. The reason it is working so good now is because the blankets were wet when I built the wall out of them and they froze nicely into place. If I knocked them down now they would not go back together so nice.
I kept trying to climb up onto the deck, getting frustratingly close to making it several times, but then my efforts peaked, I could no longer seem to make my arms pull hard enough or my hand grip hard enough to even pull my feet off the ground anymore. I was completely drained. I sat down and lay back against the ice. I was not yet ready to accept that I was beat, so I rested a while, hoping my strength would come back. I knew I would have to either get up on deck or make the decision that it was hopeless and break in through the end wall of frozen blankets.
At some point I found myself asleep, I felt warm and comfortable. Oh, it feels so good to be sleeping! I thought to my self. I was so tired; I am glad I was finally able to get to bed. I recall I was having some difficulty getting in here…how did I get in here? Was I able to finally get up on deck? I don’t know did I come in through my makeshift wall of blankets? … I must have, but I don’t recall repairing the wall how did that go? All these thoughts were coming and going in my mind underlined by the feeling of being so glad to be sleeping.
Then I tried to piece together the events that allowed me to get myself all cozy in bed, and I found I could not. I am still outside! I reasoned, and that thought startled me back to reality and I woke up. It was now very dark and there was about a half inch of snow stuck to me and the wind had blown a slight drift of snow beside me, I got to my feet, and realized I was now very cold. The blanket that I had been using as an overcoat all day was my only shelter from the weather. As the night cooled off it was becoming less and less adequate; I had to get inside.
In the dark, lighted only by the white color of the snow that reflected the glow of a hidden moon; I gathered more chunks of ice. I had to break any pieces free that I could, and increased my search pattern to find as much as I could. I piled these ice chunks beside the boat deck that I was trying to climb onto. Eventually I was able to make a small pile that was about two and a half feet or so high.
I climbed upon that pile and it gave me a boost up onto the deck. I made it. I hurried down inside and re-lit the stove. When you are cold there is nothing much like the warm caress of that wave of heat as it glides up over your face after igniting a gas-stove burner. Except perhaps the unexpected touch on your shoulder from a pretty girl while you are in conversation with her, her fleeting gesture leaving you wanting for more. Man have I been out here too long!
Earlier I had found a can of beans and a can opener in the bilge of the boat under the galley sink. I opened the can and set it on the glowing blue flame of the burner, which not only was my only source of heat, but it was also my only source of light. I was greatly anticipating eating the beans; it was going to be so good. “Mmm, beans and a lucky beer, so good, alghh…” I mock slobbered and drooled.
The beans were done, I pulled the tab on the can of bear and that distinctive “psst” sound broke the silence of my lonely shelter. I had cooked the beans inside the can they came in. However there was some kind of plastic coating lining the inside of the tin can and it melted and mixed with the beans giving a distinct burnt plastic toxic kind of taste that burned the back of my throat as I swallowed it; it was not that good. I had another beer to try to wash the taste out of my mouth and soothe my throat. Anticipation had been met with disappointment.
I was very disappointed that my meal had not lived up to my expectations, it was the only can of beans I had found; the rest were lost at sea. I had not put canned goods in the food locker, just the bread, the boxes of craft dinner, flour, and a few thing like that, all food that got soaked when my boat foundered. The canned goods that would not have been hurt by the seawater were all in a box on the bottom bunk rather than in the food locker, so they were swept out when the cabin broke away.
I climbed up on to the top bunk, but to save fuel this time I turned the stove completely off. I wadded my self up in a swaddle of blankets and quickly drifted off to sleep. I was completely exhausted; I may have slept for days except for the cold woke me up a couple of times. I finally gave in to the cold and re-lit the stove. I fell back asleep and slept in a deep sleep all warm and cozy. I woke up and noticed daylight shining in through the port holes, the wind had stopped but the frost collecting on the walls and porthole glass told me that it had cooled off considerably outside.
I felt better than I had so far in this ordeal; I was noticing a marked improvement in my condition. I had slept well and was feeling well rested. I took advantage of the daylight streaming in to rummage through the food locker and cubbyholes to see if I could see anything good hiding in them. To my delight I found an unopened vacuum-sealed pound of Nabob Coffee. I immediately melted some ice on the stove in the only container I had, the can from the beans I had cooked, the plastic liner was now mostly burned off so it should be okay.
It took some time to break off small enough chunks to fit inside the bean can. I found it best to break the ice off the chunks while they were still atop the deck rather that break them off after bringing the larger chunks inside and have small pieces of ice fly all about inside the cabin. It was now bitterly cold out; minus thirty at least I would guess. I used the crescent wrench to smash the bits of ice off and packed them into the bean can. I knew it would take more ice than the can could hold to equal the fill of the can in water’s liquid form, so I brought in a few liberal handfuls of extra ice chunks. By that time my hands were numb with the cold and so I would first have to warm my hands over the stove before thawing the ice on it.
It took some attention, adding more ice to the water as the ice thawed to top up the can, but soon I had some boiling water on the stove. I scooped in about a tablespoon of coffee into the boiling water using the handle of the crescent wrench as a spoon; I also stirred the grounds into the boiling water with it. I let it sit and cool for a while and then began sipping on the brew. It was difficult keeping the grounds out of my mouth, I strained them with my teeth, but they would get stuck in my teeth and then as I tried to spit them out they would find their way into my mouth anyway. All in all coffee was a huge luxury, I had brought in more ice than I had needed and I was able to make a second and a third cup.
By the time I had finished the third cup I noticed that it was already dark, I had slept most of the day away and had got up late. With nothing to do I laid back down on the bunk. My memories were not as clear now as they had been the shock and acceptance of certain death now past. I found that now I missed that terror that stirred those lost memories from their hiding places and allowed me to relive them, it was like having a second lifetime. Now those memories had seemed to scurry back to their hiding places like cockroaches from a kitchen light. I could still recall the experience of remembering, but the events I recalled were now just shadows in a room dimly lit.
I tried to recall something, anything; I needed something to grab my interest, to keep me sane all alone and wide-awake in the dark. I recalled nineteen sixty-nine, of my childhood this was the only year that I recalled by its date. All my other memories were events first, and the date unknown or extrapolated from other surrounding events. But the year nineteen-sixty-nine was different, I know that year by its date, it was burned into my mind by one incredible event.
It was bedtime; my mother had come upstairs like she always did to say prayers with us, each of us individually. “Dear Father,” she began, “thank you for this day and for give us our sins. Bless Grandpa and Aunt Eleanor, Alex and Cathy Uncle Hugh and aunt Lil, Sharon and Ken, and please stop the war in Vietnam, in Jesus name amen.” she concluded with us repeating every word after her.
Stop the war in Vietnam, at seven years old that was the only way I had ever heard the ending of a prayer. Sometimes I would ask mom what that meant, what was this war in Vietnam? My mom would give her spin on what she thought it was all about, and before she was done I would stop listening and wonder, why is she still talking to me? It had seemed as if the war would go on forever, it had for my entire life at that point. But this was no special event, I was born to this war, it was all I ever knew it had no significance to burn a date into my memory.
After my mom went back down stairs I was looking out the window, I saw the stars and maybe there was a moon, I don’t recall for sure, but I do recall thinking about traveling through space. Captain James T Kirk was the captain of the Starship Enterprise on the TV show Star Trek, and it was on after school on the major Tom show. I thought that the crew of the Enterprise had the best job on earth, well off earth…but not the unidentified crewmen in the red shirts; they didn’t have such a good job. I think it is because they were not that smart. Some space alien with enough power to stop the Enterprise in her tracks while at full warp power would be threatening the landing party. After they beamed down, and the guy in the red shirt would always take a shot at them with his hand held phaser, and get himself turned into a cube of granular crystals or something like that.
I wondered would man ever be able to go to the moon, how would we do it? I pondered. I came up with a few ideas. I had heard that E=MC squared, and since this was the only piece of scientific information I had I built a plan based on that Idea. It seemed obvious that since time was a factor in the relation to mass and energy, that the trick would be to decrease the mass of something by forcing its atoms to reach past the speed of light. If we could build a super conductor and charge it with billions of volts it may be possible to cause the electrons to surpass the speed of light by funneling them and causing some kind of electronic vernuli principle effect. This would mean that the charged particles would have to decrease in mass to maintain this law of physics integrity. In effect we would have an anti gravity machine. There was another possibility that might stop my vehicle from flying. That was if the mass did not decrease when the electrons exceeded the speed of light, but instead the third reciprocal which is time changed so that an hour or a day became shorter until the law E=MC squared was satisfied; in effect, slowing the particles down by speeding time up. I decided then and there that I would dedicate my life to using this idea to get the first man onto the moon, then after that, the ends of the universe, either that or a time machine; that would be pretty cool too. There was one problem it was so obvious that someone was sure to beat me to it, I had to keep it secret and learn everything I could so I could build it when I grow up.
The next morning, I think it was a Saturday, history would have recorded it for sure, and so some one could look it up. But I think it was a Saturday. Dan woke me up; it was early, earlier than I normally would wake. “They’re going to the moon!” he told me enthusiastically. “You gotta see this!”
I was shocked, how did they steal my plan so fast? I had not paid much attention to the news or any kind of news media for those first seven years of my life and did not know they were even trying to go to the moon, so it was quite a shock. I ran down stairs to see how they were going to do this. I couldn’t help but wonder how they had solved the time change element, for I feared that was the only flaw I saw in my plan.
“Are they really gonna go?” I asked Dan, “How did they overcome the time altering effect of producing an antigravity machine?
“Huh? What are you talking about, there just going to blast off to the moon” replied Dan
I still had a chance to make a contribution! It seems no one even considered the effect antigravity would have on time! They were going to just try to go and see what happens. I knew my calling would be to solve the time altering problems of particles that reach beyond light speed!
Dan shimmed the corner of the tuner knob on the TV with a matchbook cover and a butter knife to bring the picture in clearer. “That’s it! Hold it right there! The pictures clear every one shouting their own paraphrase of that sentence above the other at Dan as he tried to get snow off the screen. Then there it was a clear picture; that old Admiral TV was living up to its rank. But when Dan returned to take his seat on the couch it got all fuzzy again.
“It’s all fuzzy again!” we shouted over top of each other, each of us trying to be recognized as the first to notice the obvious. Dan got up and walked back towards the TV, as he approached it cleared up again. “Just stand there!” we recommended. But Dan picked up the rabbit ears and began moving them about to try to find a clearer picture. They were not real rabbit ears; I mean I know you know that we did not cut the ears off of some fluffy bunny. But they were antenna’s that pointed up like rabbit ears, I know you knew that, but these are not even real antenna’s, they were at one time real rabbit ear antenna’s, but they had been broken in the destruction mill that is the Milliken house.
These were made from straightened out coat hangers, which were jammed into the sockets left behind from the broken antennas. Band-Aids were used to tie some kind of thin wire to the ends of the coat hangers and stretched out from the TV in both directions, going from one picture on the wall to the next as it was strewn around the living room. Dan finally found an antenna configuration that allowed him to return to his seat. From time to time he would have readjust the antenna position as people came in and out of the room, changing the capacitance of the room and effecting the tuner and antenna configuration required to get a good picture on the screen.
On the screen they showed this long skinny tall rocket looking thing, it looked just like some toy rockets I had seen kids playing with at school. “You gotta be kidding! They’re gonna go to the moon in an idea that they got from a toy?” I was flabbergasted. I was still wondering if they had solved the issue of the unstable time element inherent in an anti gravity machine.
There was the countdown, it went on for several minutes, then it got to ten nine eight seven six five four three… ignition ….two one blast off! Then something seemed like it went horribly wrong, a powerful blast and ball of flame shooting out of the bottom of the rocket. “It is supposed to do that” Dan commentated sensing my concern. I was amazed; the rocket lifted off the pad and rose into the sky. They were not using physics at all, just brute force, literally blasting their way to the moon. I watched the screen all day as they showed the space ship flying through space on its way to the moon.
The sight was glorious; this space capsule with three astronauts inside flying through space with billions of stars whizzing by in the background. After several hours of this it occurred to me to wonder; where were they getting these pictures from? I asked Dan and he said that they were just beaming the signals back over the air. Makes sense I guess, but then I began to wonder; who was running the camera? So I asked this question as well. The answer came from my mom; she said “no one is running the camera! It a live shot!” “Oh yeah, I knew that!” I said hoping everyone believed me; I didn’t want to look stupid.
A week later they made it to the moon and so there was no need for me to dedicate my life to science and work real hard in school so I could put man on the moon, since it was already done. In a way I was relieved, goofing off in school is way cooler than being a “browner” as we called nerds back then. So that was the big event, man going to the moon. It was a very significant event and it was more poignant to me because I had no idea they were even trying to go to the moon and I had coincidentally given the idea so much thought as I fell asleep the night before.
I was still wide-awake, and I was aware of every aching bone in my body, I also had this cough that would not quit, and even if I were tired that cough would keep me awake. The propane stove would not keep me warm forever, eventually I would run out of propane, I tried not to think about it but I had to figure out what I would do in that case. I suppose I would have to tear bits of wood off the boat and burn them for heat and hope for rescue before I ran out of boat to burn. I was hoping that before this time came I would feel strong enough to try to walk for shore, and that the ice would also be strong enough by then to walk all the way to shore on.
I was not sure but it seemed as if I was listing more and more to port, and it was getting harder to stay on the bunk. I hoped this didn’t mean the boat was going to roll over so far that the stove would no longer be usable. If that happened I didn’t know what I would do. Between having no stove and no longer being able to use the titled bunk it would become very uncomfortable in here. I tried not to think about it. Why waste good comfortable time that I should use to enjoy the blessings I currently am enjoying to worry about something that might never happen. Perhaps that is what God meant when he said to Abraham "I AM” is who he really was.
I was hungry again so I boiled some water and tried to make Kraft dinner, it was real dark so this didn’t make it any easier. I made the cheese sauce and mixed it in with the noodles. I could only make as much macaroni as could be cooked in the bean can that was all that I had for a cooking pot, so I would make some, eat it, make some more, eat that, till the box was empty. It was hard to make each batch consistent, especially in the dark. It was the best I had eaten in a while though.
Anywise, that was the year nineteen sixty-nine, when I think of nineteen-sixty-nine, I think of that. My memories are generally organized as before nineteen-sixty-nine and after nineteen- sixty-nine. Perhaps a few more categories wouldn’t have hurt. I was probably fourteen when I came up with that memory strategy, at the time it seemed an even split, but now the after nineteen sixty-nine files are kind of overfull.
I don’t know the exact year, but I know it was after sixty-nine, perhaps seventy four or five, but it was November eleventh, my moms birthday, or was that the day the armistice was signed? Sometime in November, on my mom’s birthday, I know that. I always got her birthday confused with the end of world war one. This was because whenever I would ask her what her birthday was she would go into some story about how her birth was connected with the end of the war. She also said something about how every one wore an onion on their belt; “it was the style at the time!” she would say.
It was a Sunday night; we were on our way home from the cottage. I don’t know where everyone else was, but that weekend my little sister Shirley and I were the only ones who went up to the lake with mom and dad. It was late in the year but the days were not yet that cold, but the nights were very chilly.
When we left the cottage it was already dark, we had our last campfire for the year and dad had let us stay till after dark so we could enjoy the fire. Finally the inevitable came and we loaded into the trunk of dads Cadillac the last “Lawblaws Chiquita banana” box mom always used to carry our food and other essentials back and forth to the cottage. There was always; mustard, relish, ketchup, peanut butter and jam jars half or more used up, with goo still ringing the lids, if there was a lid at all. Half a loaf of bread or less, partial jug of milk, some dishes, and a few canned goods that escaped use was all crammed into that old banana box.
The final ritual before leaving was to burn all our burnable garbage on the campfire. It always seemed as if we were committing some final indignity to the fire. It had provided us with such a comfortable and memorable atmosphere for us to enjoy the evening twilight and the late night stars by. Then we would desolate it with melting plastic, egg shells, uneaten portions of Kraft dinner, the breakfast eggs that mom had burned mixed with the scrapings of the beans off the cooking pot, and a bag of floor sweepings from inside the cottage.
The fire consumed these items and gave notice of it displeasure with us for the act by belching a foul odor and unnatural colored flames. Then we would deliver it the abomination that made it desolate, we would douse it with the dirty dishwater, it would smoke densely, and then succumb to its fate. My dad would give the ashes the once over, it out he would say lets go. We would always disagree, and Shirley and I would grab some kind of pail from some where and run to the river and douse it with a few more scoops of clean river water until the smoke ceased.
One of our cats had given birth a couple of weeks earlier and so we brought the mother cat and the kittens with us to the cottage, not wanting to leave them alone in the city at such an early stage in their life. I don’t know who’s idea that was, but it was most likely Shirley’s. This particular cat had been to the cottage before and usually loved riding in the car, but this time it wanted out in the worst way. We had to catch the stupid thing and hold it from running away, when we got her and all her kittens in the car we set off.
No matter how many times I made the trip out of there I had to look. Every branch in the forest, every cedar rail on the fence posts, every turn in the road as it followed the lake shore, I drank it all in. I watched the waves out on the lake; the moon light shimmering a path across the water that followed me all the way along the road as we drove along, till finally turning away from the lake and heading south for the city.
As I had said it was mom’s birthday, and uncharacteristically it had become the plan for us to stop at the Ponderosa steak house on our way home and pick up some food to go. We were all poorly dressed in just our cottage clothes and we still smelled of the campfire so mom was not keen on us eating in, and it was late and so dad did not want to really waste too much time there either.
This would be the extent of moms birthday celebration, all weekend at the cottage she had never mentioned it, and nobody seemed to remember it was her birthday so we did nothing about it while at the cottage. Mom must have at some point on our way home let dad know that he had forgotten her birthday. So under the pressure of the moment and thinking as fast as he could on his feet, he gave into the nagging of Shirley and me to go to the Ponderosa. We were just nagging to go there because that was just one of those things that fit the brat pattern we were habitualized to.
Normally this would be insignificant. But the Ponderosa was out of our normal way to and from the cottage. Instead of turning south at Sutton, we would drive west through Sutton and then head south on a more westerly route. Sutton had a certain amount of significance to our trip home every week already. My dad had rolled and flipped his beautiful white Cadillac Fleetwood brougham coup end for end through the main drag of this town after leaving the highway at about a hundred miles an hour after failing to negotiate the sharp turn south at Sutton at that speed. But that’s another story.
We were heading south along this westerly route, and there was this gas station and snack bar coming up, so mom and dad said we could get some pop and chips and stuff instead of going to the Ponderosa, the Ponderosa idea had fizzled. Shirley and I agreed, but probably we were secretly planning to turn the pressure up on mom and dad to go to the Ponderosa as well, after our pop and chips were gone. I got an orange crush pop and salt and vinegar chips.
Back on the road only ten minutes had gone by; I noticed a stop sign at a “T” cross intersection coming up, about a mile down the road. Normally at this distance, dad would have at least lifted on the accelerator pedal by now, but this time he was still accelerating. I was a little concerned, but I did not want to be a back seat driver and so I thought to myself; He must know what he is doing, and sat back in my seat. The Cadillac had high backs on the front seat, so high in fact, that it was impossible to get a view of the road ahead while seated properly in the back seat, especially for a kid. As I sat there I had completely forgot about the dead end of the “T” cross and the stop sign that I had seen.
I was taking a sip off my orange crush, as I lifted the clear long necked bottle bottom up and placed it against my mouth to take a drink, my mom screamed “Oh my God!” but she also got my attention.
I looked forward, all I could see from where I was sitting was the top half of the windshield, the lower half obscured by the seat back. I will never forget the incredible green of the tops of those trees lit up by the powerful high beams on that car; it was more vivid than a dream. I seemed to float towards the roof of the car, weightless, and unable to control my attitude I seemed to summersault in the air, since I was not strapped in by a seat belt, after all it was the seventies and seat belts were for sissies.
I think I bounced off the headliner a couple of times, and I was being thrown about in the car, I felt like I was upside down, but I had no way of knowing, everything was black. I recall thinking it was taking to long. That I was at the threshold of all I could stand, and at some point I saw my own face, I don’t know how, or if it was just imagined, but I saw the look on my own face, and at the same time I could feel it.
It was a strained sort of expression, my cheek muscles both parallel and vertical on each side of my face, my eyes shrouded by my brow drawn forward in concern, my mouth uttering a pout, as if to inform whoever was in control at that moment that I had enough. The thought behind it all was make it stop! Then as if mocking my pout over my plight the force of the next blow was very severe, and I remember actually feeling as if I was being mocked, like some invisible spectator was laughing at me. From deeper inside me something was yelling with great authority: We are going to stay with this! I knew what it meant, regardless of what pain was coming, I was not to let myself succumb, and we would have the last laugh.
The force of the crash had me pinned to the backside of the front seat, I think I was upside down with my back against the seat, as if I had somersaulted out of my seat. It seemed that some time had passed while I was pressed against the back of the seat like that, but then it was not over, I was suddenly thrown first to the right and I felt myself slam against the right side door of the car. Then just as quickly it seemed as if I bounced of that door and slammed into the left rear door of the car, then I bounced off that and landed near where I was originally seated. I don’t know how accurate that all is, but it is how I interpreted the forces I felt acting on my body.
A strange thought came to mind at some point, I can’t say when in a chronological order of the events I have described, it was more of an “as” these things occurred. This thought, complete, came instantaneously, but it would take pages to describe all the aspects from which this thought was spawned and covered. We think in pictures, and that is what this was, a picture. It was the top of the stairs in the Milliken house as viewed from about halfway down the stairs looking up. I could see the light greenish- beige or yellowish tile on the steps, it had that sort of hazed swatch swiped kind of pattern that vinyl-asbestos tiles had. You know the one; I think it is an attempt to imitate marble.
The aluminum toe guards running across the outer edge of each step. Toe guards, that was rich, I think each one of us bears some kind of physical or emotional scar caused by one or more of our toes getting caught up and slashed on these things. I could see the bedroom door to the left at the top of the stairs, the banister, and the blue green texture patterned wall paper on the short wall at the top of the stairs that supported the roof, and the roof angled up from there vaulting to the flat ceiling. The bedroom door was angled to match the rake of the roof.
That was my bedroom door, and in there I would have to sleep tonight if I lived through this ordeal. How was I going to face that? It was hard enough for me to sleep, as it was, I could never get comfortable with my eyes shut. Whenever I went to bed and tried to sleep and I would close my eyes I would become very uneasy, to the point of terrible fear. I could not trust that there would not be some kind of evil trying to sneak up on me while my eyes were shut.
When I eventually would fall asleep I would actually guide myself into a very deep sleep, deep enough that the feelings of insecurity could not wake me. I dreaded trying to fall asleep after this night. “I might just stay up till dawn”, that was my only comfort, if I could stay up. At some point among all these thoughts I found my self in a deep sleep, I was very comfortable and warm. I was also very relieved that the night’s horror had not troubled me so that I couldn’t fall asleep. It must have a little? I thought. I tried to recall how the night had ended, how did I get home? Did Ron come and drive us home? I tried to remember I tried to picture myself getting home, getting out of the car, and going upstairs to bed.
I couldn’t picture those events and confirm them with the memories that those events should have produced. I had no memory of those events, the momentum of life had assumed those events had taken place and projected my thoughts into the future as if they had already occurred. But I could not generate one memory of the night after the accident. I tried to recall the police cars and ambulances, their flashing lights, anything like that at all, but no memory could be awakened. Then all at once I realized that I had no memories of those events because they had not happened yet, I was still in the car!
I forced myself to consciousness, it was like peeling through the layers of a cocoon, and then breaking through the last layer was like braking through the surface of the water after coming up after a deep dive into the river. It was like throwing off warm blankets on a cold morning, as fast as my eyes regained their sight the cold air of that November night seemed to pour over me. I sat there crumpled upside down in the dark disorientated, but not scared, cold, but not feeling any pain. I righted my self and sat back in the seat of the Cadillac and surveyed my situation.
I had even more legroom than the car designers would have ever dreamed it could have. The doors on both sides were bulged out, the roof was peaked up, and the front seat was jammed way forward. Every thing was silent, I called out to my mom and dad and got no reply, I called out and gave Shirley a shake but she did not move. I listened carefully for signs of life, but I could hear no breathing, no movement of any kind.
I leaned over the back front seat to see my mom and dad. I could hardly see my mom for she was crumpled up under the dash. My dad was jammed against the steering wheel and I could see that his body had folded up the steering wheel pretty good. There was very little room between the seat and the steering wheel for my dad to fit there; he had obviously been squeezed into that spot. His false teeth were hanging from the left corner of his mouth, and I could not sense any signs of life from him. I sat back into my seat and said audibly, “Their all dead”.
What now? Was the question begging for an answer, I did not know, but I did know what was next, that was how I was able to deal with it all, one step at a time. I have to get out of this car; that is what was next. I tried the door, but the trees and brush was all wrapped around car and held the door shut. None of the windows were broken but they were all spread open from their seals in a topsy-turvy manner and had let the cold night air into the car. Just then that mother cat jumped up from somewhere, and made for the opening that was between the glass and its twisted window frame. Needing some comfort I tried to grab it, but the cat jumped out and disappeared into the night. It was only a small comfort to see I was not the only life that survived.
I laid down on the seat and began kicking at the right rear door as hard as I could with both feet in unison, with each kick it opened a little more, I don’t recall but I must have tripped the latch. At some point there was enough room for me to squeeze out. Leaving the car I was also leaving behind my dead family members and it was almost like it meant something more than just the next logical thing to do; it was like a strange nascence into a New World, and everything would be different.
I made my way through the swamp and the mud, breaking through the thin layer of ice and soaking my feet. I approached the side of the highway, there were no tire tracks or a crash path here; we had flown through the air as we came off the highway, not touching the tops of the trees for some fifty to a hundred yards into the bush. I tried to climb the slippery slope up to the road, in the dark I fell back down two or three times, holding onto every lump of grass and willow twig or root that I could I slowly made my way up the bank.
Reaching the side of the road I waited for some traffic. A large highway tractor was the first to ignore my efforts to flag him down. Then three or four cars in a row, over the next half-hour a dozen or more cars failed to stop for me. I tried to be more aggressive, standing in the roadway to try to block their path, but it was hopeless, and they would either swerve around me or force me to jump out of the way. The wreck was well off the road and from the highway it could not be seen, so I guess everyone just thought I was nuts.
I had wandered about a quarter mile up the road towards some streetlights I could see in the distance, perhaps another quarter mile further up the road. At about that half way point I looked back and saw a car approaching the same stop sign my dad had gone through and then turn right and drive off. This frustrated me greatly, “oh no” I whimpered, “If I had stayed at that corner I could have stopped that guy, now he is gone”.
At that I decided to make my way back towards the intersection and stay near the car. Over another fifteen or twenty minutes three or four more cars came by, but none of them facing the stop sign and I was unable to flag any of them down. I was now very tired and cold, I was not dressed for November weather, and decided to go back to the car to rest. I made my way back down the embankment and drudged my way through the swamp and reaching the car crawled in and sat on the seat and laid back, I might have to wait here till morning. I thought, and so closed my eyes hoping sleep would bring the morning quicker.
I was not really feeling much emotion at this time; something inside put the tragic feelings of loss on hold for a later date. Now was a time for logical thinking, neither an emotional self pity bath or mourning was appropriate at this time. Functioning for the moment was what I needed to do know, I would worry about tomorrow, tomorrow, and face my losses as they were realized day by day, not all at once so that I would not be overwhelmed as if in some three-day nightmare.
I was tired, cold and of course unavoidably in a certain amount of shock, and I was walking that knife-edge of emotional stability. If I let myself lean towards the stress of that night in either direction I might become a blubbering idiot, then again maybe not, but I was not going to chance it. About another half-hour or maybe only fifteen minutes went by, who could tell at a time like this. Just sitting there seemed pointless; I was not going to fall asleep anyway, and all of the sudden it seemed a little morbid to go to sleep in a car with the corpses of three of my immediate family.
I decided to give looking for help another try. I climbed out of the car again and made my way over and through the brush that entangled the car. This time getting caught up in the brush and falling head long into the mucky swamp, breaking through the thin crust of ice on the swamp water and splashing through it and my hands sinking a couple of inches into the swamp bottom. I made it to my feet and again walked through the swamp back towards the road, jumping from clump of grass to clump of grass trying to keep my feet as dry as possible. I climbed the embankment again and reached the shoulder of the road. I waited for another car to come by.
I saw a car approaching the stop sign, it would have to stop and then turn left or right, this was my best chance. The car slowed to a stop, I waved my arms and stood right in his headlights to get his attention, blocking his path. But the car just accelerated away from the stop sign and swerved to avoid me and continued on its way. As its taillights disappeared in the distance I felt completely defeated. I tried to stop a couple more cars but it was no use, I couldn’t even get a stopped car to pay me any attention, let alone a speeding car. I began to question if maybe I was not alive, just a ghost who thought he was alive, and no one could see me, like some episode of the twilight zone or something.
I decided I was probably not a ghost and went back down the embankment to the car. I climbed back into the car, to get out of the cold breeze. After a short while I heard my dad begin to breathe. Well more like gasping for air, he was convulsing and gasping, I did not know what to do, and I was very surprised and not a little relieved to see that he was not dead. But he was gasping and struggling to breathe, I didn’t know if he was waking up or dying. This went on for some time.
After several minutes or more his breathing seemed to rhythm out and he woke up, and was obviously very confused, he was asking where he was and what was going on. He had not yet even seen or acknowledged me; he was asking those questions to no one that I could see. I got his attention from behind and told him that we were in a car wreck. He was still confused and asked where he was now, I told him he was still pinned behind the steering wheel. At that he said, “Oh, I see…” a certain amount of acceptance present in his tone.
“Is every body ok?” he asked.
Without hesitation I told him “No they are all dead“.
“Who is everybody?” he asked, unsure whom all his passengers were.
“Moms dead and Shirley’s dead.” I told him.
“Oh no…” he moaned. After a brief moment he said, “You better try to get up to the road and get some help.”
“I have tried; I can’t get anyone to stop!” I told him unable to hide the frustration in the tone of my voice.
“Well you will have to keep trying” he stated with the authority of a father.
At that point my sister Shirley began to cry, it was music to the ears of my dad and I. But only for a couple of minutes, well for me anyway, it got annoying very quickly.
“Shut up!” I told her sternly.
“But I hurt” she whimpered back, I could hear the fear and confusion in her voice.
“She was still lying crumpled on the floor of the car, in the dim light I saw her there, she looked smaller and more helpless than I had ever seen her before; she looked pitiful. I felt pity for her, not something I had ever felt for her before, but I believed the best thing for her was to get her to snap out of it quickly.
“Well you can’t be hurt that bad if you can cry!” I said just as sternly as I had told her to shut up.
“Oh I guess so, that seems right she said, and she stopped crying and sat up in the seat.
I gave her a few minutes to make sure she was able to know what was going on and to see if she was really hurt. Then I made one more trip to the road to try to flag down some help, but it was again hopeless and so I went back to the car and got Shirley to come with me to help me flag one of the passing cars down.
I led her through the swamp as best as I could and guided her to the road. A couple of cars went by and we failed to get them to stop. I then told Shirley that we should get to those lights in the distance, are chances were better there of getting help. I walked her part way there and remembering the frustration of missing a car that had stopped at the stop sign, I told Shirley to keep going to the lights and I would go back to the stop sign.
At some point I lost sight of Shirley, I could not see her in the distance, worried, I began walking from the stop sign back towards the lights that were about a half or more miles away. I made it a little over half way to the lights, running most of the way, still unable to see my sister. A car came up and I flagged it down. This time it stopped.
The car door opened and a lady of about fifty years old was sitting in the passenger seat, and told me to get in. I told her no, that I could not because I had to find my sister first, but told them to please wait because I needed their help. While I was talking the lady was talking over me and so neither of us heard what the other was saying. After I finished speaking she said that Shirley was in the car with them, at this I looked in the back seat and there she was. I climbed into the back seat of the little coup they were driving and they drove us back towards the accident scene.
Her husband was driving and he asked, “Who was driving?”
“My dad was,” I responded.
“Well where is your dad now? Why is he not with looking for help?” he asked
“He’s pinned behind the steering wheel” I responded. I sensed that he was questioning me to see if we were telling the truth, perhaps he thought we were just a couple of kids looking for trouble.
“And where is your mother?” he questioned further.
“She is dead,” I said in a rather dead pan tone, not yet willing to allow myself to even sample the emotions of that event.
“That’s awful” his wife moaned, and then the conversation fell silent.
We drove for less than a minute more and I yelled out for him to stop. “It’s right here!” I spoke with a startling and abrupt cadence.
“Its okay son, we will keep driving till we find it,” he said, thinking I must be seeing things, since there was nothing on the road to see.
“No! Stop!” I demanded. “It’s right here! Now turn around and shine your lights over the side and you will see it!” He turned the car around and positioned the car where I told him to and his headlights lit up the crash scene.
“Oh my” gasped his wife at the sight of the badly smashed car. It seemed to be sixteen feet tall on the front end I remember thinking at the sight of the hood and fenders stretched and crunched upward along the trunk of the huge maple, this tree was easily four feet across at its base where we hit it. The doors had bulged outward at the “B” pillars; the roof had a diagonal wrinkle across it.
The path it had taken after leaving the highway was marked by the trail of broken down trees, spruce, pine, poplar, some elm, lots of brushy willows, all broken off at the point that the car hit them. First at their tops, then progressively further and further down following the arc of the trajectory of the car till it hit the base of that huge tree just about the same time it would have hit the ground after falling the twenty or so feet down off the highway.

“Okay, we will go get some help” her husband responded to the sight of the crash.
“I’ll stay here.” I told him, but he thought I should go with him instead, but I insisted and he let me out of the car. I went back down the hill and told my dad that help was on the way. My dad was wiggling himself out from behind the steering wheel and climbed into the back seat of the car. He sat there silently and waited for help to arrive. Then all of a sudden we heard my mom stir, she was moaning a bit and then began to speak. She asked what happened and why she couldn’t move. We told her she was pinned under the dash of the car and that help was on the way.
The firemen arrived a little while later and so did the police and ambulance. The night sky was filled with red flashing lights. My dad was relieved that everyone was still alive, but he was still in shock and wandered into the forest looking for the kittens and the mother cat that had fled from the car. I saw him at one point trudging his way through the swamp looking for those stupid cats. At some point a policeman found him and brought him out of the forest and put him in the police car.
We all rode the ambulance to the hospital and got checked out. Mom had strained her back and some small bone in her back was broken, that was all I was told, I don’t know what bone or anything like that. Everyone else was okay, and after a few days of rest mom recovered completely. Although my dad did not die that night, that accident did kill him, he never fully recovered, he never regained his self confidence, and stopped fighting against the onslaught of aging, allowing it to consume and destroy him within a few short years.