Ron Waller looked up from the stick he was whittling and eyed the kid as he navigated around an old car’s transmission that had become half buried in the soft ground of his yard.
“Is this your bedpan, old man?” the kid joked as he paused and kicked at what looked like a rusty, overturned metal mixing bowl.
“It’s an oil pan, wise guy.”
Sitting on a tiny metal chair and wearing an oil-stained white tank undershirt, he smiled broadly and shook the kid’s hand. Ron had the appearance of an older man, and his young friend never missed a chance to tease him about it. He always joked that at age 25, he looked pretty good for a 50-year-old guy.
The truth was, a freak accident two years earlier had taken its toll, and the only thing Ron could find that calmed the snakes in his head was a pint of Southern Comfort, which he consumed daily. His remaining teeth were stained whiskey brown, and when he smiled, his eyes would completely close, a permanent effect of the injuries he suffered in the accident.
It was a story the kid had heard a hundred times.
On a cool, moonless night in 1975, Ron had left a friend’s house and pulled his bright yellow Volkswagen onto the highway toward Warsaw. As he began the 10 minute drive, he rolled down the window to enjoy the early summer air, unaware that that decision would be the difference between life and death.
It was a new moon, and as he approached the Osage River bridge into town, Ron noticed the river was shrouded in fog. With only one working headlight, he barely noticed where the road ended and the bridge floor began. He could only see about 20 feet in front of him, barely able to make out the artificial horizon formed by the curved floor of the old suspension bridge.
Ron had no idea that two minutes earlier, the driver of a tractor trailer loaded with 35 tons of grain had decided to ignore the bridge’s posted 5-ton weight limit, and had crashed through the wooden floor about halfway across, plunging into the river below, and leaving a gaping hole that Ron failed to see on that dark June night.
The bridge wasn’t very high above the river, but it was far enough for Ron’s entire life to flash before his eyes on the way down, and still have time for a prayer that he would survive the impact.
Most Beetles float pretty well, but Ron’s floorboard had long ago rusted through, to the point that he could actually see the road from the driver’s seat, so it immediately took on water and sank. The open window allowed him to exit the car as it slipped beneath the surface of the diesel fuel layer that covered the river, and he was able to swim to shore.
That was nearly two years ago, and every night since, Ron relived the event in his sleep. And, every night he awakened in a cold sweat and headed to the rickety porch and his unsteady little chair, to medicate himself with cigarettes and Southern Comfort.
Now, as he greeted the kid coming toward him, it occurred to Ron that this unkempt 13-year-old boy might be his only friend. Visits weren’t frequent, but Ron used them as therapy, telling him repeatedly about the accident, and how he couldn’t cross a bridge any more without stopping to gather courage first, and how all of the life plans he had made had washed away with his little yellow Beetle.
And then he would listen as the young man told stories of his own. Ron knew he had found an empathetic friend in this skinny kid from down the street, whose last name he didn’t even know, and who had experienced more adventures in his 13 years than most people do in a lifetime. The chats were therapeutic for both of them.
“You really need to write a book someday,” Ron told him.
"Maybe I will."