As far as I am concerned I’ve made very few bad decisions in my life. I mean bad, really bad, like the capital B-A-D kind of bad. I’ve smoked crack in a West Hollywood alley with a hermaphrodite. I’ve had unprotected sex with strangers in countless venues, the highlight of which is the now defunct “hot-tub-hotel” on Santa Monica Blvd, Splash. I’ve taken my clothes off to be photographed – and exploited – and for a mere hundred pounds – but I was young, and hungry – and it was for a German magazine, so who would see me anyway? But I digress. Did I mention that I’ve fucked my best friend’s boyfriend, my best friend’s girlfriend, and my best friend. And, the list goes on. In retrospect – not a place I often dwell – the weird thing is, I don’t consider any of these decisions that bad. I say this because even a decision with not so great consequences is worth learning from. Worth the little bit of extra color it adds to my person. At least that’s the philosophy I’d adopted until this one particular October afternoon a few years back. You see, allowing my 14 year old son to drive my newly acquired, top-heavy, loose steering-wheeled, KIA SUV, was a horribly bad decision. Without a doubt, the worst decision of my life.
Our log cabin, just outside of Big Pine, sits on the foothills of the White Mountains in the Eastern Sierras. Our five acres and the surrounding area is beyond spectacular. Big Pine is a strange town, populated with the kind of folk we’ve fondly coined “the dirt people.” Derogatory as the term is, it’s our family gag, and none of us can use the phrase without the rest of us doubling over in snot-shooting laughter. The drive from the house to town is 7.5 miles. About a mile down a dusty paved road from the house to the hwy, then exactly 6.5 miles beyond that to town. I know that because it’s the marker mile I use to tell people how to get to our place. “Turn right a half mile after the 6 mile marker.”
It was Halloween eve, the boys were 14 and 16 at the time. Sebastian had a learner’s permit, Jaxon did not. The three of us had had a weekend of rabbit trapping and puzzle making. The rabbit trapping was Jaxon’s thing, he’d set up a cardboard box in the orchard where the cotton-tails hung out, and with a rope attached to the box he’d wait at his upstairs bedroom window, rope in hand, for a rabbit to enter his bated cardboard cage. If one did, he’d yank on the robe to upright the box. Needless to say, he never caught a rabbit.
The boys needed costumes for school. It was about 5.30 in the afternoon. We piled in the car, the new SUV I’d bought the Friday before, for no apparent reason, and drove to the local K-mart where we hit the kid’s costume area for ill-fitting made-in-China outfits. Sebastian drove the 7.5 miles to town, and after a lot of giggling and fluorescent lit Zoolander type modeling, we settled on a ghost for him and a skunk for his brother. Sebastian was already tall, he was the only white boy on his high-school’s varsity basketball team. He’d worked so hard to make the team. They were to begin practice the following day. The polyester costume label’s read – Suitable for ages 4 through 7.
Jaxon had asked if he could drive on the way back. I’d told him absolutely no on the hwy, but sure, on the road up to our place I’d let him. He’d never been behind the wheel of a car before. I drove the 6.5 miles back to our turnoff, crossed over the steel cow grate at the entrance of the road and pulled over next to the metal fence that ran the length of an abandoned alfalfa field. After switching seats with Jaxon I pointed out the accelerator, the brake, and showed him where to hold the steering wheel. I turned the key in the ignition, instructed him to shift the transmission, and off we went. Slowly at first, but gaining speed exponentially. This is where time slowed down. Like a ticking clock in a horror film. I recall saying “you must keep control of the vehicle.” At which point his brother parroted from the back seat, “yeah Jax, you must keep control of the vehicle.” And so, as a means to joke with his brother, and “keep control of the vehicle” Jaxon reached down to flick on the indicator, and in doing so took his eyes off the road. We swerved left, then radically to the right, and that’s where I checked out. The velocity of the swerve had slammed my right temple on the side of the door and knocked me out. I came-to as we tumbled. Metal to dirt. Metal to dirt. Metal to dirt. A loud, hollow thumping.
I opened my eyes to a cloud of gritty dust as the car came to sudden stop on it’s roof. I can’t help but liken the feeling to a ride the boys and I took together at the Pamona Fair. Strapped into to a metal grated cage, left hanging upside down for seconds – that seemed like hours. I turned to check Jaxon was OK, he was, then turned to the back seat.
His brother was not there.
“Sebastian?” I wiped the back of my hand across my right cheek. I was bleeding. “Sebastian?”
The top of Bart Simpson’s yellow screen-printed head peeked above the airbag at Jaxon’s chest. Jaxon was also tall, and very thin. He wore an extra-large men’s t-shirt in an attempt to camouflage his skinniness. He liked the Simpson’s, would sit for hours watching episode after episode. He appreciated the adult humor, often commenting on it’s inappropriateness for children. My own airbag was pressing uncomfortably against the metal snap of my Levis, or rather my husband’s Levis. I wore them when he was away.
It was getting late, the mountain monsters had eaten most of the sunlight. (We talked about the mountain monsters when the sun suddenly disappeared behind the Sierras at around 4.30 in the afternoon; when we watched the ominous shadow creep across the Owens valley towards the house.) On the upholstered roof below us swarms of dust and last years dried alfalfa bits and pieces had settled next to my flip-flops and my silver locket. The necklace had been in the cup holder, I’d taken it off earlier that day at the hot springs. The boys had given it to me for my birthday a few years back. We’d gone through the boxes of family photos to find pictures small enough to cut out their faces and place them inside the silver heart.
Everything smelled brown. We were in the field, the seemingly endless field. But it all looked the same as it had earlier that day – the jagged mountain horizon, the cows in the distance, the thickets of Cottonwood trees lining the irrigation canals. It was as if I was the only thing that had changed – Like suddenly I was a spinning top inside an Ansel Adams photograph. An unstable spinning top, like I might wobble off the table at any moment. Where the fuck was he? Where the fuck is he? The car windows had blown out. The metal framing of one of the back doors had been peeled back like sardine can. It seemed like the back of the car had caved in on the front. . Where is he?
“I’m going to get help.” Jaxon’s voice was deeper than I was used hearing. It hadn’t completely broken yet. Then he burst into soprano tears. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”
“I love you,” I wished I’d said that. I have no recollection of what words I actually used.
We clicked ourselves out of our seat belts, rolled onto the upholstered ceiling and crawled out the windows onto the prickly ground. Jaxon ran in the direction of the horse ranch, I ran barefoot around the car in search of his brother.
It is hard to describe exactly how I felt at this point. I kicked into some kind of search and rescue one-woman show. All I knew was that I couldn’t lose it. My skin tingled. I felt no pain. Adrenaline. I tasted metal in the back of my throat. I circumnavigated the car a few times, expecting the worse – listening, searching.
I was on my third time around the car when Jaxon shouted from the road. Sebastian was lying in the middle of it, in fetal position, about 60 feet away from where the car had broken through the fence. Jaxon didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop, he told me years later, he couldn’t bare to face what he’d done to his brother. He kept running up the road towards our “dirt people neighbors” who we’d never met, but had joked about.
I would have taken 17 hermaphrodite crack heads fucking me in the ass over this situation. I’d sign up for a life of pornographic exploitation. I’d have done anything to wake up from this. I felt like I was in a nightmare within a nightmare. That my legs had gone out from under me and the plane was about to crash. We were going down, no control, my drunk father had fallen asleep at the wheel. There was an ant infested hamster on a wheel, spinning, going nowhere in particular. I had to get to my son. The controls were out, my feet turned to jelly worms and wouldn’t hold me up. I was fruit loops, fruit roll-ups, fruity pebbles. A Spiderman lunchbox. I’d been fucked and sucked and exploited by weird German photographers, and was too high on balloon clown crack to get where I needed to go. To my son, lying just feet away.
“Where am I ?” Sebastian opened his eyes as I settled by his side. The road was still warm from the earlier desert sun.
His jeans were torn apart from his skidding along the road. His t-shirt was up over his chest. Every inch of his skin was ridden with sticky red and black and gravel. His curly blonde head rested in a pool of his own blood.
Distant police sirens.
6.5 miles.
“You’re in Big Pine baby. We had a car accident.” I leaned down to kiss his torn up lips and a drop of my own blood fell onto his cheek.
“Am I going to be OK?”
“You are going to be fine, baby,” I said.
He looked me firmly in the eyes. “Don’t lie to me.”
I prayed I wasn’t lying.
