Cemetery Lake

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Alcohol and burning metal. That’s all I can smell. The windshield has shattered into thousands of tiny diamonds. The engine has stalled, the front of the car has folded around the lamppost. The hood has twisted and bent up into a V, and from beneath it plumes of steam are rising and mixing into the fog. More steam is coming through the air vents into the car. The stereo is going. The heater is going. There is a high-pitched ringing in my ears. The lamppost is on an angle. Its fluorescent light has busted and sparks are slowly raining down on the car. I can taste blood and bourbon. There is a pain in my leg. My chest. There is pain everywhere. I tilt my head back and there is pain there too. I close my eyes and wait for it all to disappear. It doesn’t.

My neck hurts when I move, but I manage to unclip my seat belt. The door is buckled and there is safety glass all over my lap. There are chips of paint on my hands, cracks in the dashboard, and sharp pieces of plastic sticking up. One of my fingernails has lifted up and bent all the way back, a few threads of skin the only things stopping it from touching my knuckle. Before thinking too much about it, I wipe it backward across my leg so that the strands of skin stretch and break and the nail sticks to my pants and stays there. The door won’t budge, so I try to climb over the passenger seat. It is then that the floodgates open and pain wracks my body, one knee jamming into the hand brake, the other into the mostly empty bottle of bourbon that has somehow jumped from the car floor and onto the seat in the crash. It is all I can do not to cry out as I push open the door and stumble out to the road. My feet skid on stones and glass and I fall onto my knees.

The world is caught in the grips of an earthquake, but I’m the only one feeling it. I get up and balance myself by holding on to the side of the car. There is a shooting pain rolling up and down my leg. The glow from the traffic lights changes color as one set goes red and the other green. Glass grates beneath my feet as I move, pieces of it cutting into the soles of my shoes. There is blood on my shirt and pants and more of it flowing down the side of my face. I reach up and pull away fingers covered in blood. Only one of my eyes is focusing.

I look back into the car at the empty bottle of bourbon, and I understand instantly that its contents have brought me to this. I lean in and grab it. I adjust it in my grip, wrapping my fingers tight around the neck, and then I pitch it into the distance. It disappears into the night.

I look up at Jesus who is looking down at me from above the hovering fog. His eyes are open and his mouth is in a tight smile. He is looking into me, but he is not admonishing me. He is too busy. His hands are wrapped around a bottle of McClintoch spring water. The bourbon bottle crashes and the sound brings the world into focus. It tones down the ringing in my ears and allows a flood of other sounds to pour in. I look away from the billboard and wipe smoke and blood from my eyes and I move away from my car to draw in clean air.

The abyss gets deeper.

The path Father Julian told me I’m heading down takes an even worse turn.

A woman is screaming. It’s a high-pitched note that threatens to break the windshields of other cars pulling over. Ahead of me a four-door sedan has spun around in the intersection. The front of it is completely caved in. Clouds of steam surround it so I can’t tell if anybody is inside. The screaming is coming from a woman who has pulled over and has probably thought her entire life that she would take action in a moment like this and is quickly finding she can’t. She has opened her car door, stood up, but hasn’t gone any further. Another car is starting to pull over.

I reach the wreck first. I push my arms into the steam and touch metal, pushing myself close enough to see inside. There’s a woman in there, slumped over the wheel. She looks young. Like me, she had no air bag. I try opening the driver’s door, but it’s jammed. The woman’s eyes are open; they are rolled into the back of her head and her jaw is pushed forward, either broken or locked, and there is a steady stream of blood coming from the left side of her mouth. I pat down my pockets and find my cell phone, but can only stare at it in my hand.

“Out of the way, buddy,” a man says, reaching past me. He tries the driver’s door too, then moves around to the passenger side. He opens it. It screeches loudly. He looks over at me. “You gonna use that thing?”

I look down at my cell phone. It has survived the crash, but still I can only stare at it.

I have just become the very thing I hate the most. I have become Quentin James: full-time drunk and part-time killer.