WARNING: This is not a good memory.

It takes place on Christmas Eve, but it’s not a jolly thing. Or even a melancholy Judy Garland singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” memory. It’s a terrible and grisly one:

Michele was driving us home, because it was late, and my night vision isn’t great, especially in cities. In the overbright lights from strip-mall store signs, my depth perception gets bad. We weren’t more than ten minutes from Michele’s parents’ house, not long after I-410 shot us out onto US90 to head east toward home, when Michele swerved  in an attempt to avoid the body laying in the road. The person’s body. 

Our SUV was big enough that I honestly don’t know if we issed it completely or not. Michele pulled over to the shoulder as quickly as possible, but we passed two cars already stopped.  Exiting the car I noticed how dark it was for the first time. There were no lights on the stretch of road other than the distant houses and bodegas below the embankment of the road. Walking (running?) back along the shoulder, we passed an intact car that had pulled over, and a minivan with a sickeningly shaped hood dent. That driver was sitting in their car, “in shock” as they say on TV.. 

Another few yards down the road, a body was stretched out in the near lane, but it might as well have been a mile away. The only light on the road was headlights from oncoming traffic, barreling down at the same sixty-plus miles an hour we had been doing minutes before. I stood watch as cars swerved at the last minute as the shadow appeared in those headlights, until one didn’t. The corpse (definitely now) ragdolled a few more feet in the direction of my home. The only light I had was my phone I and another man spent a few desperate minutes moving towards the next rounds of oncoming cars, waving wildly in the hopes of slowing them down. I was scared someone would swerve too wildly and hit another car, but just as worried they would head onto the shoulder, where we were.  

Finally, someone came to a stop in the road, blinkers on, which dammed the flow of potential carnage in the near lane. For all that, it meant that people were now changing lanes to swerve around an unexplained stoppage, which still left a dangerous few minutes until the first police car arrived with flashing lights. As more police and emergency personnel came to the scene the aura of chaotic danger receded into merely numb horror at what we had witnessed. 

An officer took our statements and information, and gave us a business card. We sat for a while and Michele started to drive for home. Not long after, another officer called my iPhone to ask why we’d left. There had been confusion about if we’d been given permission or told to stay. I can honestly say I have no idea. I offered to return, but as the first car on the scene had actually witnessed the accident, we were superfluous, I guess. 

I watched the news for the next week, and finally saw a small article in the paper that said a man had been crossing from his neighborhood to the local store for snacks or beer or smokes and been hit. It was apparently a well known danger of that stretch of road.

There are lights on the part of the highway now, but still no pedestrian under/overpass for a mile in either direction. I clench up every time we drive home from my in-laws house, even though it was a decade ago.