Debris

I'd never liked to drive at night much; the lights all seemed to run together and the glare 
off my glasses made it even harder to concentrate.  But the freeways of Houston leave no margin for error.  Even when the traffic is light, there are problems.

The biggest problem is that nobody covers the beds on their trucks, and well, it's Texas. There are a lot of trucks. The result is debris, some days like a war zone on the highway.

I'd had a long day at the office; it was past dark when I waved to Simon in the parking garage.  The lights of downtown twinkled, laughing at me for wanting the comfort of my suburban nights, a glass of scotch and mindless blaring of the television.

I was caught in a memory from last week's TV drama when I pulled onto I 45 south.  Right away, I knew something was wrong. There were just too many cars, the traffic going too slow.  I flipped my radio from the best of alternative rock to the irritating voice of the AM traffic station. But all they had to report were last night's baseball scores.  Boring game then, even worse to hear the recap.  I punched buttons, hoping to find something to explain the delays, and wasn't focusing on the road the way I should have been.

I almost didn't have time to swerve out of the way when I saw the suitcase.  It was an old Samsonite, cracked, I'm sure, from the fall to the pavement, and women's clothing blew from it.   A red negligee, with deep lace and streaming ribbons flew out in the wind as I steered around it, and caught on the wiper blade on the passenger side of my car.  Horns blared behind me as I corrected a near miss and I waved my hand to the mirror as apology.  Only thing worse than junk on the highway is an unpredictable driver in front of you, especially in the late rush hour.

The nightgown clung with a kind of desperation, flying like a fan flag from the car.  I found myself wondering about the woman it belonged to.  She must be shapely and confident to wear something like that.  It would be something to come home to that at night, instead of the cats and my slippers.  I felt the first warm slickness between my thighs and wondered if Joe might want to come over later.

Taillights in front of me swung into a wide S before I realized there must be something else on the road and hit the brakes. Good thing I did, or I'd have never missed the mattress lying there.  I shook my head as the fender of my car caught an edge of it anyway, and I could see in my mirror that part of the pillow top was caught on the underside of my car.  What kind of idiot carries a mattress in an open truck on the interstate?

I'd have to get under there and hope it didn't muck up the engine somehow.  I hate car trouble. I checked my location and realized there wasn't another exit for five miles. By then I'd be one exit from home.  Might as well take my chances. I heard more than felt the clunking of the thing as it no doubt wrapped around my drive shaft. 

The number of cars didn't seem to be thinning, the way it normally did as I got farther from town.  I wondered if there had been an accident or roadwork or just what was going on.  I didn't want to fiddle with the radio anymore and knew there were no options to avoid the traffic mess that were still left to me, so I hit the button to the rock station again and hummed along to Hotel California. The mattress top or whatever it was, thumped along to the rhythm, and I signaled to change lanes.  With so many cars, it would take a while to work my way to the exit, and I needed to get started.  I glanced in the rearview mirror and then glanced again. Something was hanging from the car behind me, too. A spot opened to my right: I had three lanes to cross, so I moved into it. 

From the new lane, I looked back again. The something that was caught in the shattered glass was an arm, with the fingers of the hand tipped with glittering silver nails, fluttering in the wind as the car moved.  I looked back several times, the way one does at any accident along the freeway, before I realized that the red negligee was no longer hooked to my wiper.  The clumping at the wheel continued though. I signaled again, two more lanes to cross and less than a mile to the exit. I forced my way into a space that caused the car I cut off to lay on his horn, but that's life in the city.  In a few minutes, I'd be home.

I would have been, but the inching traffic stopped moving altogether. The interstates are their best when you can speed along and avoid the stop and go of regular town traffic, and at their worst when they become parking lots.  Stopped half a mile from my exit, two miles from my scotch.  I slammed my hand against the steering wheel, pissed.  Still I jumped when I heard the pounding on the glass.

A woman, dark waves tangled like she'd been riding in a convertible, dressed in what seemed to be the negligee that had flown from my windshield, hit her open palm against the window.  The strap to the gown fell empty on the left side and she leaned heavily. "Hey can I have the rest of my stuff lady?"

I hit the button for the power window to hear her better.

"Since you're stopped now, do you mind if I get the rest of my stuff?" She was looking around as though she were in a hurry to find everything.  "Jesus, there's my arm over there. Can you just help me here a minute?"

She bent down and I could hear her struggling with what was caught beneath the right wheel. I looked out into the mass of unmoving cars, and saw them then.  It seemed that every car had something hanging, an arm, a swatch of hair; one even had the torso of someone whose bare bottom had caught on the bumper and was mooning whoever looked that way. Between the cars was movement, a mass of inhumanity that I couldn't blame on bad night vision. 

I looked closer.  Every car had something wrong… a bent fender, smashed windshield, caved in side panels.  I got out of the car to see what it was she struggled with, and felt nausea rolling up my belly at the sight.  "It was just a mattress. I only hit a mattress"

The leg, wrapped around my axel like thread in a vacuum cleaner, did not bleed, but seemed more like used chewing gum.  The toes of the mangled foot were painted silver, and though limp, glittered with tiny rhinestones. I turned away to vomit, and when I looked back the woman in the negligee had released it and was putting it back on like it was a silk stocking.  "Thanks hon." She moved away with a flip of her dark hair, licking lips that were far too blue to be warm, and yet.  And yet. She pulled the other arm from the windshield of the wreck behind us; a pick-up with a mattress still tied securely in its bed, and smiled. "I think you will find yours three rows back, over there in that third lane."

I felt limp then, startled to see that only one of my legs was beneath me.  I looked back to where I'd been sitting in my car and saw the team of rescue workers wielding the huge saw to cut my bleeding body from the sedan.  I don't know how I did it, but I moved closer to them, catching the tunes of the radio, still playing hotel California.

"Witness said she was swerving all over the highway," one officer said to another, filling out a clipboard.  "I can smell the preservative on her even now, even above the stench of death. What kind of nut hits rush hour traffic in Houston in that condition?"

"No clue," his partner said as he picked my glasses up from the pavement, the lenses oddly still intact.  "Has the aroma of old scotch though, wouldn't you say?"