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Rational Conduct

By Kevin Tatro (US)

Chapter One

Fearing Wolves

Red flashes of light ate through the darkness as a line of sparks started faintly in the distance, quickly winding closer, snaking up the roadway with increasing anger turning into the scream of a thousand red tail lights yelling in mother’s voice….. Stop

It was an interesting event.  As the body screamed in pain from the adrenalin shock, crunching of disks in the neck and twisting the colon like only a mother’s hatred and rage can do, the mind took over, creating a safe distance from reality.  A calm voice took control, and calculations were made.  A well worn soldier in the heat of battle distances himself from the panic.  Survival mode clicks in.  And practice makes perfect.  Yes that is the line Ms Mott taught him in second grade.  Be prepared like a good Boy Scout and all will be well.  She was taller and wiser than he.

  A modern marvel of adaption isolated David from the cruel softness and reality of nature, as he lived in a TV show brilliant and cartoonish, now living out this event as the fuse of dynamite in a Road Runner cartoon.  David always felt sorry for Wiley Coyote who worked so hard yet could do nothing right.  Brilliant to the point of genius, yet a complete failure in episode after episode of his life  David was now in that cartoon, again.  Soon to experience a fantastic, freakishly cruel painfully real catastrophe, born of his most recent actions that were born from his genius  

David was too close to the car in front of him and when that last red taillight exploded in blood red, the final taillight before the dynamite went off, his blood pressure skyrocketed as his mind screamed back begging, “it’s not my fault”. 

On this part of the Merritt Parkway, the traffic typically flowed at fifty miles an hour with cars nearly on top of each other.   The maroon 1993 Ford Taurus wagon was actually further away from that last taillight than the usual bumper car scenario, as David’s family was in the car with him, traveling over the notorious Sikorsky Bridge spanning the Housatonic River in Stratford Connecticut. 

The steel deck of this bridge was scary as hell as you could see down through the metal grid, right to the water below.  To make matters worse, the bridge was constructed improperly from the start, making cars sway from side to side as they crossed, causing most drivers too much fear to allow them a view of the beautiful calming river valley below.  Braking on this bridge was nearly impossible, and the fact that the two-lane span was 150 feet above the river made the five hundred yard crossing terrifying.

“Oh shit.” …David was quite sure he said it to himself, but it was possible he had said it out loud, and the fear of that retribution made matters even worse.  He was really scared he may have said it out loud.  More scared than he was of the hairy traffic condition unfolding before him.  His pulse beat harder than usual and he could feel another adrenalin blast.  It was possible his wife may have heard him.  She would be angry he swore in front of the kids, but the fear faded fast as he needed to focus on the potential car wreck unfolding in front of him.  An accident was surely an excuse not to get bashed for a slip of the s-word. 

He’d been in bad situations before, and rarely swore in front of his wife and kids.  This cursing was probably another one of those voices in his head that was so loud he was sure everyone heard it, when in fact he hadn’t said anything at all.   It happened all too frequently.

David’s wife of seven years was in the seat beside him, in the usual position with white knuckles gripping the door handle and dashboard.  He’d never been in an accident, but she was always this way when driving with him.  She obviously had control issues and they both knew it.  For a moment he wondered…. what do you call a back seat driver when she chooses to sit in the front seat? A simple thought that distracted him and lowered his tension a bit.  He talked to himself a lot.

Behind this couple were three car seats, occupied by girls, ages four, three, and one.  Exceptional kids.  Always smiling and laughing.  Happy and playful at this moment when mom and even dad were a bit panicked.  Mom had three kids to deal with; she always looked panicked.

David crushed the anti-lock brakes with both feet, which responded with a rumble and a thumping that was not nearly satisfying enough to the driver or his white knuckled co-pilot.  The brakes in this sled were just not designed to bring the two tons of metal to a halt before plowing into the Mercedes Benz in front of it.  There was no certainty David and family would avoid a fender bender. Nothing major, but there would be a cost in insurance premiums and a lifetime of knowing his wife could, but never would say a word about it.

If the Benz hit the SUV in front of it and then they hit that car, the slowdown would be faster than anticipated, and the David Knapp family might find their insurance rates a little higher after this afternoon.  No fear for the kids, as this would be a fender bender at most, and they were safely strapped into their car seats.  It happens here all the time.  Not to David, but he’d seen it enough.  This time there was a fair chance he would be part of it.

In the rear view mirror, David saw a massive SUV.  It looked like a Lincoln Navigator driven, by an attractive 30-year-old woman trying to overcompensate some fear in life by driving a vehicle the size of a mall. It was always worth a laugh to look at the type of people who drive those things.  Some pathetic, and some downright scary.  This girl looked an overdose of both. Obviously scared of life, but mean enough to drive right over some little bastard that deserved it.  Yeah, she looked angry and without remorse.

 The Taurus was now loosing traction on the scary slippery metal bridge, and skidding sideways a bit.  The anti-lock brakes made no difference on the steel grid decking.  With a little counter-steer they would not hit the Toyota next to them, but the Benz in the front was getting closer, and that SUV behind. 

Things were looking ugly. 

An important phone call had apparently distracted the poor driver of the Navigator, and she was looking out over the river, enjoying the calming scenery, unaware of the tiny little cars in front of her.  Apparently, she was one of the few who could enjoy the view.  Too bad she wasn’t looking if front of her.  This Hitchcock music began to play, and moved in the theme song from jaws and David knew this part of the show was not going to be pretty.  The Taurus wagon was going to be hit from behind.  Hit hard.  And it would be his fault.  Everything was his fault.

By the time the Navigator made contact with the rear bumper of the little Taurus wagon, David had forgotten all about the Benz in front of him. The brakes were still locked, and nothing he did would matter. It had begun to look like he would have been able to stop before hitting the Benz, but that moment was gone, and his family  would soon be flying forward, pushed by a couple of tons of Navigator flying at fifty miles an hour with no attempt at braking.  The Taurus was so small and the Navigator so big, the impact wasn’t even going to make enough noise for the angry insecure lady to even interrupt her phone call.  David now had his eyes fixed in the rear view mirror, watching the ton of metal and crazy lady coming down on top of him.

David hollered instructions to his wife and his little children who have no idea what he was talking about. “Hold on! We’re going to hit.”

The initial hit from behind was almost non-eventful. Aside from a slight jolt from the impact, there were no crashing sounds, or the usual noises that send the adrenalin flowing.  But the car rocketed forward like a bumper car hit from behind.  The impact on the left rear bumper threw the station wagon forward with a little twist.  The Benz was no longer the probable source of impact.  They had been riding in the left hand lane, and now they were going to fly across two lanes and hit the guardrail on the right side of the highway. 

The Navigator never did slow down.  Hard to say if its preoccupied captain ever did put the phone down and try the brakes. 

David imagined a long line of little cars behind the Navigator plowing into it as it slowed from the impact of the Taurus and then the Benz.  Those little cars couldn’t see beyond the Navigator’s bumper and were probably unaware of the conditions unfolding in front of them.  They didn’t see the long string of lights like a fuse.  They didn’t know they were about to be the explosion.

David contemplated an entire train of cars ramming the SUV, and pushing the old station wagon nearly sideway, as it flew past the little Toyota on the right, crossed through the right lane, and seemed to accelerate as it hurled towards the guardrails. The maroon paint blasted off the plastic bumper like sparks, as the right front corner of the wagon hit the steel railings that kept this cute little family from plunging into the scenic river below.

David never knew it, but a sharp truck driver made a quick turn from behind the Navigator and avoided that rear end impact.  There hadn’t been a train of cars at all.  That quick thinking truck driver swerved around the Navigator at fifty miles an hour, and with his brakes locked up, smashed directly into the little light blue Toyota that had been traveling next to the Taurus. 

Five year old Jamie Knapp had been waiving to the middle age woman driving that car, and probably wondered why that nice lady had stopped waiving.  Little Jamie, with the cute pigtails and the huge smile, must have been a distraction to anyone near her, waiving franticly to get a response from the people in the cars passing by.  Jamie’s head had turned to see that little car fall behind as the Taurus continued to rocket forward while the Toyota’s brakes slowed that car a little bit, a very little bit before the big bad truck would smash it like a bug.

The cute little daughter, of the perfect young couple, now saw her middle aged friend in the little Toyota coming back to see her.  Jamie had a much better view now.  The wagon had spun sideways, and Jamie was almost facing that little car as the pickup truck rammed that little Toyota towards the thin sheet metal between Jamie and the nice lady’s car. 

The nice lady wasn’t smiling anymore, but was looking Jamie straight in the eye with a really wild look on her face.  Kind of like the look dad had the time he pushed Jamie too high on the swings as she looked straight into his eyes and flew from the swing crashing on the ground.  She hoped this didn’t mean her head would hurt again.

The left wheels of the maroon wagon now caught on the steel grid bridge, tilting the wagon just enough so the nice lady’s little car just missed hitting beautiful little Jamie.  Instead, that Toyota became a wedge driven hard by a truck and a whole line of cars right under Jamie’s seat, thrusting her and her entire family in the maroon colored wagon, up and up, and over the guard rails, for a quiet flight to the river below. The beauty of the river and the trees, and the beautiful evening sky would be splashed across the vision of the Knapp family. Jamie would never feel the crash.

The world was black.  There were no sounds.  No splashing water.  No pockets of air to gasp at. No feeling. No sounds. No breathing.  The sounds of grinding metal, crunching steal and visions of paint chips bursting and windshields shattering were not real.  David tried to remember the moment of impact.  The sounds of his wife and daughters.  The plunge to the river.  But none of it became real.  It was dreamlike, and he felt as though he was making it up, and not recalling actual events. There were no actual events.  Just this astonishing movie scene.

The world was very quiet now, and David felt warm.  The assumption of death was logical at this point, yet he sensed he had hands and feet and he was in the water.  He was fairly certain the car had plunged into the water, and yet he still imagined and felt himself alive.  Or so it seemed he was.

The movies were all wrong.  There is no light.  There are no air pockets.  Nothing for the cameras to see.  And people do not moan or call out to each other.  Ears become filled with water so all sounds are muffled and yet somehow sharp.  While no sounds exist, phantom sounds, or memories of sounds somehow pierce ears in a painful yet distant shrill of a violin played badly or better yet like the sound of squeaky wheels on a commuter train to New York.  And yet it was impossible to pinpoint the sounds, and they may not actually be there.  Perhaps just a memory of sound, or damage to that part of the brain, giving only false cues.  

Brain damage was a logical conclusion. After that kind of crash, it would be impossible to hear anything.  David’s ears were shot.  He was probably deaf, or too frightened to hear a thing.  The sound and force of the impact must have been like a hundred heavy metal concerts all at once.  The eardrums were most certainly shot. 

David was holding his breath. At least it appeared so. Was this a natural reaction?  Had he tried to do it?  How long had he been holding his breath?  Was he really holding his breath?  Only way to tell was to suck in a bit and find out, but that seemed like a bad idea just now.  Where were his wife and children?  Was he dead?  Again, death was a logical and not too horrible conclusion.

He had not been wearing a seat belt.  He rarely did and his wife usually scolded him for it.  He had tried to become better about it because he knew she was right.  She was right about many things, and he respected her for it.  She was very smart, probably smarter than him, but she was unusually paranoid, wasting a lot of energy and time on worry.  David didn’t worry much.  Not like his wife.  This was probably a key that made them a pretty good couple.  Constantly in conflict, but balancing out somewhere in the range of sane behavior.  A lot like the Ying and Yang, or the ID and Ego of Freud, day and night, good and evil, creation and destruction, land and sea, night and day.  Both could exist alone, but were much better off together. 

David was still in the front seat and could feel his wife there.  She had her seat belt on.   He unbuckled the seatbelt and pulled them both through an opening where he knew the windshield used to be.   The car had drifted to the bottom upright, and the swim to the surface was easy.  It couldn’t have been more than twenty feet.   The water was muddy and dark, but the lights from the highway above allowed David to tell which way was up.  There was a faint light in the direction that would be the surface.  It looked like small flashlights through his grandmother’s prescription cataract lenses.  Dark, and fuzzy, but definitely light.  He knew which way was up, and he went for it, salty, muddy water in his eyes, and the strong taste of salt and mud in his mouth. The dirt and sand crunched in his teeth.

Breaking the water surface felt great. He felt coolness in his face. He was alive.  He exploded into air and gulped huge breaths. He wasn’t drowning and could easily pull them to shore. It took a moment for his eyes to focus, and he saw the shore was a good fifty yards away, but he could do it.  He was a good swimmer, and that would be no problem.  As usual, life sucked, treated him like shit, but lent him the opportunity to get it all back again.  To make it all good once more and get another chance to do it right.

But, the gratification was short lived.  He couldn’t conceive of possibly getting to shore and back in time to unbuckle any of the children who were strapped in their car seats below.  If he brought her back to shore, could he possibly find the car again?  Were the children awake, holding their breaths looking out into the mud, their minds screaming for daddy?  Did they already scream, only to fill their lungs with the mud and sludge of the river bottom?

David saw their faces.  Impossibly, all three right next to each other, looking straight at him.  They hadn’t held their breaths.  All three had swallowed water and the panicked looks on their faces showed of pain, fear, and sadness that daddy wasn’t helping them.  They were dead.  David could see the time elapsed movie of life leaving each of them in a matter of seconds, while the tears on their cheeks seemed impossible at the bottom of the muddy river.

 The woman in his arms was unconscious.  She wasn’t bloodied or obviously injured, but she was out.  She wasn’t breathing and she was not going to get herself to shore.  She needed CPR now. She would keep him from going down again for the children.  For an instant he contemplated how to give her a breath or two on the surface.  He imagined her waking from the breath and coughing as he let go of her, diving to the bottom to rescue the rest of his family.  He would be a hero and do the impossible.  His children would live.

 It couldn’t be done.  Even if she did come to, she would be dazed and would just swallow more water.  He had to get her to shore.

There was no way he was heading for shore without the kids.  He was no super hero, but he was in pretty good shape, and that extra ten pounds, ok twenty pounds, of fat he had gained in married life was not going to keep him from doing something that had to be done.   She would float if he let go of her, and he would be back in an instant with the kids.  Could he live with it if she didn’t, and he never found her body again?  What could he live with?  He was the only one who was surely alive.  What could he live with?

Knowing both he and his wife couldn’t live together for the next forty years without at least a try for the kids, he took a deep breath, let her go, and headed back where he came from. 

There were no little lights to guide him to the wreck, as there had been when he looked for the surface.  He was heading down into an unending blackness.   He had no idea where he was going.  No sense of direction and only the slightest chance of finding the car in this muddy river.  There was no sound.  No horror music. No lights.  Nothing. His concern over the lack of direction soon disappeared as a greater fear hit him.  

As he kicked to force himself to the bottom, his foot hit something.  He knew that something was his bride’s body.  He knew that he should have been far enough away from her that they shouldn’t have contacted.  There was no response from the kick, and David knew her still corpse was sinking like a rock as he descended.  Perhaps she was falling even faster than he could swim downward.  She had no air in her lungs as he did.  He had decided not to waste time with a single breath of CPR, and instead go for it immediately.  She was sinking and it was possible he would run into her at the bottom.

She would look right into his face, from lifeless distant eyes knowing he had abandoned her.  Like some horror movie, her corpse with the eyes wide open would block his way to the children, and the horror music would play as an eerie scream filled his head.  If he were not in the briny, muddy, river he would have cried, and the tears would have soaked him till he drowned.  Drowning might be the preferred outcome.

David’s face struck the mud at nearly the same time as his hand, which was now plunged almost two feet into the silt-covered bottom. He paddled against the mud with his hands as his body turned and his feet were now being sucked into the mud.  He turned to look for the car, but could see nothing.  He hadn’t anticipated missing the car.  There was no horror movie body around him.  No white bulging eyes in the darkness.  There was nothing.  He was blind in this world, and had no idea where to go.  Opening all his senses, he felt the chill of the water.  His ears hurt. His heart pounded like it would explode, and he heard and saw absolutely nothing. He was using emotion to find what he needed.

David spread his hands and legs and began to move in a circle, much the same way he had been taught to in the lifeguard classes at Boy Scout camp when he was thirteen.  He loved Boy Scout camp.  Camp was one of the few places where anyone had ever realized he spent half of his childhood stoned.  The camp priest was only the second adult he had ever really respected.  He was way cool.  Did palm reading and everything.  He knew David was an underachiever, and that he felt lonesome, and under appreciated in the world.  Man, he would have been a huge hit on psychic friends network. In the back of his mind he remembered the advice of that priest.  Stop worrying about everything.  The worst thing that can happen is that you could be ripped apart by wolves.  Are you being ripped apart?  The thought of the priest gave him a little comfort, but he was lost in the dark.  Way lost.

Young father what’s his name would have told David to keep trying, though the car could be anywhere.  David had been at the bottom for some time.  His eardrums had collapsed and been causing him pain for a long time now, but a trip to the top for breath would be a final sign of failure.  Returning to the surface without wife or child would be too much to take.  With arms spread he kicked into the darkness heading in the direction he faced without any idea where he was going.  It was win or fail final effort.  Would his face be gashed open by the wreckage of the automobile, or would he swim into darkness until he too could hold on no longer, filling his lungs with an icy surge of polluted Housatonic River sludge water, and sinking to the bottom like everyone else.  He would swim until he inhaled the muddy sludge that would sink him and hold him on the bottom.

Unknown to the failing hero, he was facing exactly the opposite direction of the car, and he would have swam to his doom rather than return to the surface and continue living, if it weren’t for his bum knee and the leg that flopped sideways every time he tried to swim.  That stupid leg flew sideways and smashed his foot against the front window frame of the Taurus.  It was almost as if fate had made him break his leg at twelve, so it would flop sideways and hit this car eighteen years later.  He didn’t buy the fate thing, but his wife did.  He turned quickly, felt around for a moment, grabbed the window frame, and shot himself through the opening where the window had once been. 

For an instant he wondered how an entire window could be gone as that just doesn’t happen.  Car windshields are made of safety glass that crack and spider web.  But there was a huge opening here, just made for a rescue.  No broken glass to cut him or catch on his cloths.  The entire window was gone, and it felt like the opening was huge.  In through the opening and to the middle seat where the kids would be. 

He knew where each child sat and how the belts were attached. This was rote from a million practice sessions.  He did this under all conditions.  With crying kids.  While in a hurry.  In the rain.  With a kid under arm.  A bag of groceries. In the dark. Underwater.  Yeah, he could do this.

David couldn’t see anything, but kept his eyes open, experiencing shadows of mud that did nothing to help.  Normally, it was a real pain undoing these belts with the kids fighting and fussing, though now it should be easy, as the kids were, well…. Dead. 

He undid Jamie’s belt first.  That probably was because she was always first.  She was the oldest and complained if she didn’t go first, and her younger sisters never complained.  The middle child always took whatever was left, whether a hug or whenever she could get it.  She never complained and wouldn’t complain right now.  As a matter of fact she was talking to daddy now, “go take Jamie now and come back when you have the chance”.  “It’s OK”.  She would just sit right here and wait for him.  He imagined her in death, her little face looking at him and saying, “That’s ok daddy.  I don’t mind that you took Jamie first.”  The blast of madness swept through him.  She was dead, and didn’t know it.  There she was, happy and telling him it was ok he had let her die.

Good thing it only took an instant to undo Jamie’s belt, as it only left him only a moment to feel guilty and nearly suicidal for what he had done to Callie, leaving her as second.  He may have a taken a big breath of water to avoid that, but there was no time to think or feel sorry for himself.  There was no waiting for Daddy to come back.  This was all or none, for all of them.  Callie was next and her belt popped open and she was out.   Jamie’s dress sleeve and Callie’s collar were in his left hand as he dragged the lifeless bodies while his right moved for the third car seat.  This was super hero time.  The third one would be tough but he would pull them all through that huge window opening, kick to the surface, grab a breath and be moving to the shore by the time the rest of the crowd was scrambling down from the highway to find them.  The two children in hand floated lightly in the buoyancy of the water.  He would then go back and find his wife, and she would live.

The baby’s car seat wasn’t where it was supposed to be.  David pushed further towards the door, searching for the car seat.  Further into the twisted metal that could easily entrap them all.  No car seat.  His right hand hit the car door handle.  The space where baby should be was empty.  The seat had come undone.  It couldn’t possibly have floated out. It was somewhere inside.  Dragging the other little bodies behind, he lunged into the back of the car.  Their little bodies bumped and snagged on things as he moved.  He could hear them screaming, “Daddy you’re hurting me.”

Nowhere.  The car seat was nowhere.  He could see nothing, and she was nowhere around.  He couldn’t leave.  The seat could be inches away.  He couldn’t leave.  The other two were dying and he was staying here.  Hands flailing under the seats, through broken widows, against twisted metal, into broken glass.  They were all going to die.  He could do nothing to save them.  He could have saved his wife.  He could save his two children, and he could have saved himself.  But he could not save all of them, and now they would all die.

The darkness began to engulf him.  He felt the clothing of his little ones clenched in his left hand, but he had gone limp.  The panic was still there, and the fight lived on, but he had died, and he started to float into submission.  He had always felt he should control his own destiny. So weird that in the end he had no control.  He was alive but couldn’t control things any more. David had always ruled his dreams.  The strong take control their reality and make happen what they want to happen. They never have a need to be afraid.  There is no giving up.  Like a true hero, he struggled and fought every second of his life without rest.  All the way until the moment of his last breath.  This was so strange. He would lower the average life expectancy of an adult male in the US.   He was now finished.  He had taken his last breath.

What a fight it was.  A car crash.  The sole survivor.  Forgetting his own injuries to save his family.  Diving to the murky bottom to save his kids.  But he had failed and was now drifting helplessly towards death. Quiet.  Darkness.  Nothingness.  Just cool, muddy water.

A sense of calm deepened as he waited for that peaceful sleep.  But he wasn’t to get to sleep.  He wasn’t allowed to, and his body was charging up into a full panic again. Some type of underwater, post death second wind.  He had drifted out of the missing front windshield and was floating to the surface.  He could see the surface as the lights on the bridge above penetrated the murkiness again. HE swore he could hear muffled voices and shadows on the shoreline.

Full panic again.  His muscles spasmed wildly as he began flailing and kicking his arms and legs.  Panic again as he wondered where the children were.  He still had two clutched in his left hand. Throwing his head from side to side he looked for the third.  He should be dead right now.  No one was that strong.  He didn’t want to be awake.  He wanted sleep.   But where was his other child?  He was so tired.  Too tired.  He wanted death but it wouldn’t come.

The surface of the water broke like the initial car wreck.  A thunderous crashing sound as the water surface exploded around him.  Noise was everywhere.  The rough water was smashing at his face.  His legs and arms thrashing so his cargo would not to be taken by the increasing strength of the murky water.  He had been in the water for hours or weeks?  He couldn’t tell how long, but he was exhausted. 

Despair and panic is a strange combination.  Fear makes every muscle in the body twitch like the poor repairman fried on the electric service lines.  David could just as well have been dying, holding onto one of those massive power lines that carry gazillion volts to the cities.  Unable to let go as his body smoked, and his mind in despair looked out from his corpse with no hope.  Just waiting for the pain to stop and the sleep to take over.

Where was Kelly?  His wife.  He had left her here on the surface, and now she was gone.  His baby was missing.  Nowhere in sight.   The two older kids still griped in his hand with their heads under water.  Dead weight that would slow him down as he worked for the shore.  There was no saving anyone. All would die but him.  He would live for another fifty years, with a million volts of electricity forcing his dead and despairing corpse to twitch as if it was alive. Why couldn’t he just die?  Why couldn’t he just get some sleep?  Peaceful sleep.