Around the Bend - Melissa Holbrook Pierson

When I lived in the city and rode a motorcycle, all I could think about was getting out of the city to ride my motorcycle. The struggle to break free of its grasp was sometimes titanic, and I picked exit routes with the same flawless ability I used to choose the one checkout line that was bound to grind to a halt just after I joined it.  Setting out with visions of winding country roads temptingly in mind, I would find myself a couple minutes behind the overturned tractor-trailer that would stop three lanes of traffic for two hours, or on the George Washington Bridge that was starting to resemble the buffet line at an old-age home.  Only after a purgatorial infinity would the ride begin, on the beautiful winding roads to the north.

Now—I could weep with happiness!—I live on one of those selfsame roads in the country. I have only to get myself to the end of the driveway.  That, I can do. Turn left, turn right: only the occasional neighbor’s car or truck bound for the factory next door, which supplies the world’s needs in wind chimes, ever goes by.

That is why, last Friday, I knew something was wrong before I could identify the source of my perplexity: suddenly a torrent of traffic was passing my house in a rush of unaccustomed noise, only a second or two between vehicles. Occasionally an impatient honk; it had been a long time since I had been subject to this urban bad behavior. I walked out to the road to see if perhaps I had been unaware of a warehouse sale at the factory: twice a year they opened their doors for the public to obtain all the Corinthian Bells and 56-inch Gregorian Baritone Wind Chimes they could carry. Even then, though, the traffic was never like this.

Indeed, cars were not turning in; they were rushing on in both directions.  Suddenly the only other possibility occurred to me: a detour off the state highway half a mile away.  Just beyond my house, after a blind curve, the road was to deliver them to a T, at the left the road that would take them back to their route past the diversion. If they knew where they were going, that is. Since the only explanation for this volume of traffic was the Friday-afternoon press toward the city-dweller’s weekend house, it was unlikely they did.

I was doing the lunch dishes when through the screen door came an even more startling sound.  Ambulances. The body’s immediate response to the pavlovian bell of the siren is an uprush of sick dread. Oh no. I realized only then that I had been waiting for it, for this inevitability.

I did not need to go look, did not want to. Instead I went out to stack cordwood, the only thing left in that moment, the solace of sweat. That’s when the third terrible sound ripped the day.

*

The helicopter seemed to be lowering itself onto my house, but at the last moment swung to disappear behind the scrim of trees separating my yard from the open field next to the factory.  The sound gradually died, till all was silent again; the traffic on the road too had stopped, caught in an awful irony: the cause of their presence on this road, a detour because of an accident, had become the origin of another.

In the city, you live in the backwash of noise: life and death on repeat, loudly intruding until it vanishes into its own constancy. Police choppers, sirens, horns, the battering of machinery, jets overhead.  None of it matters, unless it matters to you.

At this sonically isolated remove, meaning returns. Sometimes it comes slamming back.  And always it feels personal.

I threw down the wood I was holding and picked my way around trees and rocks, into the forest swamp, among the lashing cattails, and then I was on the edge of the field, an audience of one. Right over there the pilot walked around, checking his equipment, opening the bay doors. Red lights rotated silently on the emergency vehicles, the volunteer firemen outside, waiting.  Everyone waiting. It seemed an eternity before the stretcher arrived. I let the solidity of a tree have my back.

That this was happening here, and I was the only witness now apart from these silent actors, heightened the sense that time was stretching and would soon soundlessly rip, revealing some secret. The secret of my connection to a stranger, or maybe some other secret, deeper, more ominous, than that.

The rotor blades began whirling. Faster, faster: into the vortex was gathering not only the unimaginable power of mechanics but of human hope. Longer than it seemed it should take, and louder than all desire at once. At last, a few inches of empty space beneath the skids, swaying as if uncertain, like life itself. At last, lifting itself slowly from the grip of those who remained, sliding sideways through sticky air. The branches above my head whipped in the wind as the angel’s black underbelly passed over, almost close enough to touch. Instead I raised crossed fingers, the only benediction I had to give.

*

Dusk, and time for the dog’s walk. The road was strangely returned to quiet.  Just around the curve, I saw it: dark circles of fluid; parallel light gray lines scoring the pavement from one lane to the other. An uneaten sandwich lay in its wrapping on the shoulder. In the weeds opposite, I bent to a piece of bodywork; it was stamped “Volvo.” Then some chrome: a motorcycle footboard, folded double on itself by unimaginable impact. Hidden among the roadside wildflowers whose persistent beauty proves stronger than the odds was something that looked like a coin. The visor button from a Scorpion helmet. It could have been mine.

The next day, I turned the house upside down looking for my copy of the local news, the kind of paper that reported every incident of shoplifting, fender bender, or foolish statement by officials in the county. I remembered bringing it in from the box, as my habit is to read it every night in bed. But I could not find it anywhere, the first time I had ever misplaced it. I went online. No matter how hard I googled, I could find nothing.  The crash seemed never to have happened.

Two days later and all its detritus had disappeared from the roadside, except for the sandwich, biodegrading. But then my eye caught the glitter of something half-buried in the sand. When I pulled it free, in my palm was a small bell. It was the talisman many riders hang on their bikes, the ringing of which is meant to scare away disaster. In relief it bore the image of a motorcyclist with wings.

I go outside and stand on the deck; the only sound is what we call quiet, but is actually full: the rest of creation going on about its buzzing, chirping, singing business.  Only now I am waiting for something else. Will I ever again not expect the silence to be sliced open so a chopper can return from the same place it had disappeared, the crown of blue over the treetops?

I can see it pause, then lower, the wash making a nest into which it can safely fall.  Some events make us wait for them to be sucked into reverse, the film running backward on the sprockets. I see the motorcyclist returned here by flight, heading the wrong way in history.

Originally published by The Weeklings, June 2013

Melissa Holbrook Pierson is the author of five nonfiction books, including The Place You Love Is Gone and The Perfect Vehicle. She is also a critic, with reviews of books and movies in numerous publications. Three o her essays have been cited as Notable in Best American Essays.