Image provided by: Clackamas Community College; Oregon City, OR
About The print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1977-1989 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 22, 1989)
rwisted Road of Fate Myhusbandand Iwalknearly every day and we have a favorite route. It’s a wonderful road for gentle exercise, sometimes curv ing and gently undulating, and sometimes climbing steeply for a while before dropping back down again. In the summer, it is espe cially ideal, because it winds par allel to Kellogg Creek and mois ture from the creek dampens and freshens the air even on the warm est of days. There are houses on both sides of the winding road, upper-middle class, and widely separated. Most have a broad expanse of green lawn and tall fir trees. Quite a few combine elabo rate landscaping with natural woods. There are huge graceful willows too, thanks to the creek and the high water table. The green pungent scent of cedar is often strong, but when it isn’t I steal a piece, pinch it between my fingers, and inhale. This road can be dangerous and we stay alert when we walk it. It is so lovely and appears so quiet that it seems to give drivers, espe cially young drivers, the illusion that it is a lone country road. It is posted, and safe, at thirty-five miles per hour, but the urge to enjoy the narrow curves at much higher speeds has taken several young lives over the years. An owl swept down... Suburban wildlife is abundant along this stretch. Sometimes we see the small short eared owl. Sometimes we only know he is around because the robins make such a noisy fuss when they have found him hiding high and close to the trunk in a maple tree. One lucky evening, at dusk, a great horned owl swept down to the road only a few feet in front of us. We stopped short and strained to watch him in the fading light When he flew off with his prize, on wings spanning four feet, he was so si lent that I felt as though he was an illusion. I have seen the large pileated woodpecker (the one who looks like Woody Woodpecker), too, because there is still a generous sprinkling, of course, a little brown wild bunny now an then, and a striped chipmunk once. Even though the narrow twisted road and cars that move too fast, take their toll of the wild life, and the evidence is often on the road, it is hard to spoil this beautiful walk. Once we have reached the two mile mark on this road, there is a place where we can turn off and walk to a small bridge over the creek. It is a cool and green spot, where manicured lawns run right down to the edge of the creek and a few ducks swim lazily. A mo ment spent at the bridge, listening to the gentle music of the slow moving water, is our halfway point reward. After a moment or two, we turn around and retrace our steps toward home. One evening last August, we briefly debated taking an entirely different direction. We hadn’t varied our route for several weeks, but it was a hot day, and the call of this favorite cooling place was strong. On this day, three hawks flewoverhead. Iseea pair allyear, and always, by the end of summer, there is a third. Sometime during the month of September he disap pears, so that there is once more just the pair. The hawks take the miles we walk in a matter of a few soaring seconds, and David and I laugh at this; but, of course, they fly “as the crow flies”. This day, immediately before we turned down the road toward the creek, we walked right into the scene of recent carnage. Nei ther of u§ is the sort to slow down at highway accidents, but here we found ourselves abruptly jolted from our idyllic stroll into a night mare of police paint on the street, and red and white motorcycle parts that looked as though they could have come from my son’s bike. They were so numerous, so small, and scattered in such confusion along the side of the road, that it seemed the bike had simply disin tegrated. There were too many pieces to gather. A piece of faceplate from a helmet, badly smashed, lay at the base of a scarred maple tree. Too much blood... I have no idea why it should have been the last thing we no ticed, but it was. The painted green outline of a human form in the middle of the road. After sickening impact with the maple, he had been thrown back out onto the street. We didn’t understand what we were looking at until we nearly stepped in the long, nearly dried flow of brown coagulated blood coming out of the painted cartoon skull. Far too much blood There had been no traffic for several minutes, but as we turned to leave this terrible place, a light green sedan pulled up and parked at the side of the road. An attrac tive middle-aged couple and a young woman in her early twen ties got out of the car. He wore a jacket and tie, both women seemed oddly dressed for some occasion in slim skirts and high heels. I felt sure this was family. There was no other reason for such a gruop to be here, at this spot. We hurried down to the creek and the bridge because this was the only way to quickly give them their privacy. Now there was no road; so we planned to wait on the bridge. We were only a few hundred feet from the party or the road but there was no place else to go without intruding anc we were hidden from each othei be the dense brush. Halfway tc the bridge, I heard a sound, not i scream, something far more pri mal, a primitive, female roar. It was a sound so soul-rending that I was not sure at first if I felt it in my spine, or actually heard it, but the look on David’s face told me that he heard it too. We waited on the bridge for a while. Several cars passed by on the road above us and soon it seemed the family might have gone. I wanted to go home and so did David. I should have kept my back to that scene when we again reached the road, but I could not. I took one more glance backward. I did not see the man, or the young woman, but the older woman was still there. It was very quiet just then. She was kneeling on the pavement in the middle of the road. Her left palm was flat on the pavement in the street, directly over the heart of the painted out line of a young man. At first I felt her pain so strongly that I thought for a moment that I was actually her. A moment later, I was only sorry for her, and then I was so glad that it was her, not me. Four months before this, last April, on another warm and sunny day, I was enjoying an energetic afternoon working in the yard. At 3:30,1 heard sirens. Although I ignored them at first, they seemed to wail on and on and eventually I remember commenting on them to my daughter. A minute or so after the sirens stopped, the tele phone rang. It was the mother of my son’s friend telling me Marc had been in a motorcycle acci dent. She did not know how badly my son was hurt and had only heard it was Marc from a friend who lived on the street where it happened. Somehow I was able to drive the mile to the scene of the acci dent. Real terror is a mercifully numbing thing that allows you to do what you must. I passed the ambulance and did nor know whether to turn around and fol low it or continue to the scene. There was no siren but I could only guess at what that might mean. Do they forget the siren when it is too late? Was the ambulance not necessary after all? I pulled my station wagon to the side of the road and observed. There was a fire truck, two police cars, a twisted red and white bike beside the road, Marc’s helmet, Marc’s shoes, but no Marc. While my legs found their strength, I evaluated whether or not I would be able to get out of the car, walk through the crowd of people and talk to the police. I could. Perhaps miraculously, my son was eventually fine. After a few weeks of healing, the only remind ers werea few scars on his legs and his hand. On his forehead there is still a large ovalpatch of pale scar tissue. He had foolishly carried his helmet on his arm since he only planned to travel for two blocks. No more motorcycles... I love my son, but I know that God does not favor him over another woman’s son. Her son- wore a helmet and mine did not. Her son was travelling too fast at the time; mine was not. He cer tainly has. There are no more motorcycles at this house and that is an attempt to manipulate proba bilities and to control fate. I think we share a tremendous vulnera bility to the pure randomness of fate; and luck, whether good or bad, only reminds me that we have everything in common with each other. It was a week or two before we again walked past the figure on the pavement. The hawks were again only a pair that night. There was a bouquet of flowers at the base of the scarred maple, tied in blue ribbon, and long dead. It is still there. - by Susan Iwata
