LITMIR.BIZ

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Sophie’s worried hovering to the relaxed nonchalance displayed by two women piling their plates with potato salad and chattering about film speeds. It was sort of like a car accident in that respect. Those who are directly involved stand or sit by the side of the road, gazing blankly at the scene, or they kneel beside the injured, giving and taking comfort. Passing motorists slow down to gawk, checking for bodies and perhaps for blood, wondering if the victim is somebody they know, then rejoicing that it’s not. Still others drive past quickly, eyes averted, cursing the slow-down in traffic.

      A fellow human being in distress is interesting, particularly if the situation is already being handled by an authoritative person, Becker in this case. There is no need to step in and do something. Everything that can be done is being done, so the natural adrenaline rush that turns some people into heroes isn’t a part of it. Morbid curiosity takes over, guilt dogging its heels. (Is your interest an intrusion? Is your gawking unwholesome? Sick? You’ll keep on gawking anyway, though. Betcha.)

      Disaster has been packaged as a form of entertainment since the television was invented, and we’ve learned to be fascinated by it. Action movies, war reports, true crime stories and slasher films have turned us all into cold spectators. When faced with personal horror, we are truly frightened and often traumatized, but when the stakes are lower—the collapse of a colleague, for example, or a roadside fender-bender, it’s just another video clip.

      The ambulance people arrived in fifteen, not twenty minutes, and quickly bundled Vic onto a wheeled stretcher and hauled him back along the trail. Some of us, including Sophie, followed.

      “I’m going in the ambulance to fill them in on Vic’s accident and make sure he’s okay,” Becker said to me. “You drive standard, right? Can you take Bryan back to my place? I’ll meet you there.”

      “Aww, Dad,” Bryan said. “I want to come in the ambulance too. I won’t touch anything.”

      “Not this time, kid.”

      “What about our hike?” Bryan said. If he hadn’t said it, I would have. I was as disappointed as he was.

      “There are a lot of neat trails around my cabin,” I said. “Mark, why don’t I take him back there and we can go for a walk in the woods and then have a barbecue?”

      “Cool. Can we?” Bryan said.

      “I guess so, if it’s not any trouble, but don’t you have a meeting later?” Becker said.

      “It’s barely past noon, and that’s not until six,” I said. “Plenty of time.”

      Bryan scrambled into the passenger seat of the Jeep, calling to the dogs, who piled in on top of him. Becker drew me aside for a whispered word. “You don’t have any pot plants growing around your place, do you?” he said, quite seriously. I shook my head, not daring to open my mouth for fear of what snappish remark might come out. “No rolling papers or hash pipes left out on your desk?”

      “Becker, give me a break,” I said. He usually completely avoided talking about that stuff. It was a silent agreement we had. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Now he was asking, and it made me very uncomfortable. I kept my stash hidden away at all times, and I bought my dope from a farmer friend. “Your son shall remain blissfully ignorant of my evil side,” I said. “I promise.”

      “I know he’s only eight,” Becker said, “but he’s no idiot. We teach them about this kind of thing in the schools now, you know.”

      “I know, Becker. Don’t worry. Bryan’s safe with me. Now go do your duty, Dudley-Do-Right. Oh, wait. How are you going to get down to Cedar Falls from the hospital? I’ll have your Jeep.”

      Becker grinned. “I’ll get Morrison to drive me. He’s working today,” he said, referring to his beefy partner, Earlie Morrison. Earlie was a close friend of my Aunt Susan’s, and of mine, actually. He didn’t approve of my relationship with Becker at all (Susan’s opinion didn’t help), and he’d be just tickled to be asked to drive Becker to my place.

      “I’m sure he’ll love that. Who’s his partner while you’re on vacation?”

      “Marie Lefevbre,” Becker said. “She’s new, and they seem to get along okay. I think Morrison has a crush on her.”

      “Marie? That’s not the young constable who was in charge of guarding us after the Steamboat episode, is it? The one who stood over us in the police station, writing down everything we said?” That had been some months ago, but the murder at Steamboat Theatre was still fresh in my mind.

      “That’s her,” Becker said. I was surprised to feel a certain twinge of sisterly concern about Morrison falling for Marie, whom I remembered to have been rather pretty. Morrison was a large man, and more vulnerable than most people gave him credit for. What if she broke his heart? Would Becker be there to pick up the pieces? I didn’t think so.

      “I’ve gotta get going,” Becker said. “I’ll see you back at your place in a while.” He gave me a quick peck on the cheek and climbed into the back of the ambulance, which accelerated out of the gravel parking lot with its lights flashing.

      Bryan was silent for some time after we hit the highway. I tried very hard not to say the kind of things that grown-ups blither at times like these, when they’re forced into close, exclusive association with a small person they don’t know very well. I didn’t say “So, what grade are you in?” or “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Neither did I ask the kind of questions I was really dying to ask, like “So, what’s your mother like?” and “What kind of person do you think your Dad is?” I think children are much more comfortable with silence than adults are.

      Finally, Bryan spoke. “Did that man die and then come back to life?” he said.

      “Well, sort of,” I said. “He wasn’t breathing when your Dad pulled him out of the water.”

      “What do you think about when you die?” he said. I immediately flashed on a moment the year before when someone had tried to shoot me. I had been so scared I’d wet myself. I wondered how much would be appropriate to share with an eight-year-old, precocious as he was.

      “I think that sometimes, in an accident, anyway, things happen so fast there isn’t time to think,” I said. “Your thoughts probably go sort of like ‘Uh-oh’ and then that’s it.”

      “Would you have time to pray?”

      “I guess, if that occurred to you.”

      “And then when you die, you get to see Jesus, right?” Yikes, I thought. I was not exactly the right kind of person to be getting into a theological discussion with an impressionable child.

      “Maybe,” I said. I wondered if Bryan’s Mom was a churchgoer. Did Bryan go to Sunday School? Was he a “Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep” kind of kid? I was out of my element, and strangely, rather frightened. If Bryan had started asking questions about my sex life, I would have been able to handle it. Religion, on the other hand, was a loaded issue for me. Coming from an adult, questions about faith were easy to blow off. Coming from a child, they were important, and I didn’t think it right to be flippant.

      “So, if you meet Jesus when you die, what happens when you’re brought back to life again?” Bryan said.

      Why can’t he be talking about Jeeps and computers and food? I asked myself. I could deal with those.

      “What do you think?” I said.

      “On the Internet, there’s this website about near-death experiences,” Bryan said, sounding efficient, informed and forty.

      “What does it say?”

      “Some people see a light, and when they come back, they’re really sad,” Bryan said.

      “Why sad?”

      “Maybe they were happy meeting Jesus and God, and they didn’t want to come back here at all,” Bryan said. Or maybe, I thought, they were sad because they got the news that heaven was

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