THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: DRIVING

In 1979, after a long day of work, a man drives home at night, crossing Oregon’s hills and lanes at the height of summer. His shirt is filthy and wet from sweat. The windows are open and bugs flutter and crack on the windshield. Tomorrow, he will hose the car down to get rid of the accumulated filth of spattered mosquitoes while listening to baseball.

For now, he just drives. Automatic.

Bushes and heavy trees count past, one, two, three. The lanes rise and fall, the music is soothing, and he begins to nod off. Then, signs. One, two, three. MERCATOR, one says. L. FOR MUNICIPAL JNCT. says another. COUNTY HOSP. the last one says. For some reason, though the signs have no bearing on his drive, they stir him from his drowsiness…for a moment.

It returns as he takes the turn at a clip, feeling the rear of the car sliding out behind him, with a plume of dust reflected in the rear-view, lit by the brake lights as he corrects. It feels like he could toss his head back and just…go. Just let the car drift out of the lane, up into the air, and continue on into the buzz…forever.

He corrects as the road straightens and his headlights light an even clip of road again, flanked by scattered trees and lush, green ferns and bushes.

Suddenly. Awake.

A car, a Datsun, turned at an angle but not blocking the road ahead. A person — a woman in a slip — lays near the front wheel well, face away from the headlights. Unconscious or dead. The door to the car is closed. It’s a confusing scene that generates so many questions. But the real strangeness would not occur to him for some time.

The man’s heart is banging in his ears now. He turns down the radio and slows, but for some reason he won’t think about until much later, does not stop. He tugs the car to the shoulder on the left and rolls past, slow, headlights cutting through the dark and bugs. The moment seems to last, pulled out like taffy strings, separating with exquisite slowness. At his closest, he is within ten feet of the woman in the road, and doesn’t he see her move? He thinks he does. Later, he is CERTAIN he did.

There’s no blood visible. He’s certain of that, though the car is stopped in the gap between a run of streetlights. He can't see her face, because it is turned away from him.

But besides that slow drive-by, he doesn’t really slow. His foot finds the floor, and his car roars as he speeds up.

The valley rises again, and the man makes the top in what seems like seconds instead of minutes. His hands are numb. His mind has not yet processed what is happening. He steps from the car.

Looking back, the Datsun sits perfectly framed beneath a streetlight a quarter mile back in the distance. Minutes pass with only crickets.

First, the woman in the slip stands up. Then, one by one, like the hidden Indians in the picture, seven other people file out from the woods to stand near her. Their faces are covered by something he can’t make out. Masks? Paper?

They consider the man’s car at the rise.

He gets in, and drives.