Strangers Collide

It's just after 2 a.m. I'd been sitting up reading, curled up under a throw on the couch, enjoying the cool breeze from the open window. Just before 2, a sudden sound split the silence - the unmistakable sound of crumpling metal, swerving tires, grappling breaks and shattering glass. The noise rent the air so abruptly that I started into the upright position and was at the window by the time silence descended again.

I couldn't see anything, but I knew it had to be close. And then there were the shouts of voices and the sudden peal of sirens filled the air. They seemed to be coming from all directions - from the north end of town and the south and from its very belly down by the river. Police cars, firetrucks and ambulances descended on the intersection.

And then there was the sickening quiet with the blue and red lights kicking an eerie strobe against the windows of the bank building. Even from a block away, I could hear the crunch of glass under the passing traffic; the discordant voices on the radios.

I can't actually see what happened. Can't see the cars or the passengers. I don't know who was loaded into the ambulance that just pulled away. I don't know what's left for the tow trucks angling across Third Street. In just under fifteen minutes, the street has fallen quiet again...a few passing cars, distant voices, the low whistle of a train. And yet, it's another one of those moments where I'm up here, peering out the window over the limb of the tree outside, and they, whoever they are, are down there, sharing the same strange moment. Two powerful bodies in motion and then. Stopped. For one breathless instant.

Post Script: As I was rereading this to post, I heard a scream and looked over my shoulder out the window in time to see one car rear-end another as they sped through the intersection. One turned in front of the other, the later careened into the side of the first, and so it begins again. How unbelievably eerie.