Then, one day, I believe it was a Tuesday, Dan didn’t show up for work. In and of itself, this wasn’t such a big deal, except that Dan hadn’t called in sick, which struck anyone who heard it as unusual. Dan had earned a reputation as an especially conscientious worker. At his desk every morning by eight twenty at the latest, a good ten minutes ahead of the rest of us, he took no more than a fifteen-minute lunch — if he didn’t work right through it — and when the rest of us left at four thirty, we waved to him on our way out, knowing that it would probably be another half-hour before he followed us. He was dedicated, and he was talented enough that his dedication counted. I assumed he had his sights set on early and rapid promotion, which, with those twins at home, I could appreciate. All of this is to say that, when Dan wasn’t there and no one knew why, we were inclined to feel a bit more uneasy than we would have otherwise.
As we found out the following day, we’d had every right and reason for our concern. Some read it on the front page of The Poughkeepsie Journal with their morning coffee; others heard it on the radio as they drove to work; still others had it from Frank Block, who was a volunteer fireman and whose absence the previous day also had been noted, but not connected by anyone to Dan’s. There had been an accident. Dan was an early riser, you see, as were the twins. Sometimes his wife, Sophie, took the opportunity to sleep in a little, but yesterday, for whatever reason, she had risen with the rest of them. It was early enough, just a little past six, that when Dan suggested the four of them nip into town for a quick bite of breakfast before he left for work, the idea seemed reasonable. So they bundled the babies into their car seats, and set off. Dan drove, and he failed to fasten his seatbelt, which Sophie noticed. Dan shrugged. It was no big deal, they were only going a short way. It’s your ticket, Sophie said.
The Dreschers lived off South Morris Road, which intersects Route 299, the main road into Huguenot, about three miles east of town. 299’s a fast road, has been for as long as I’ve lived on this side of the Hudson. There should have been a traffic light where Morris crossed it, instead of a pair of stop signs. Maybe the light wouldn’t have made any difference. Maybe the fellow steering the big white eighteen-wheeler would’ve had it up around seventy anyway. Dan said he saw the truck approaching from his right as he turned left onto 299, but it didn’t look to be moving as fast as it was. He pulled out, and that great white beast slammed into his Subaru like a thunderbolt. Dan was thrown through the windshield to, as it turned out, safety. Crushed together, car and truck skidded along the road, jagged bits of metal showering sparks as they went. Before they’d stopped moving, the car erupted in a fireball that was answered, a second later, by an explosion from the truck. By the time the first police car raced to the scene, it was too late. It had been too late, I suppose, from the moment Dan’s foot pressed on the accelerator, the car swept out onto the road. Could be it’d been too late the moment the idiot driving that rig had glanced at his wristwatch, realized that, if his morning delivery was to arrive on schedule, he was going to have to make up some time, and stepped on the gas, shifting up as he did. The fire took his life, which I wish I could say I felt worse about, and it consumed Sophie and the twins. Two days later, the coroner told Dan that, in all likelihood, his wife and children had been killed in the impact, and most likely hadn’t suffered much if at all. I guess the man thought that he was giving what consolation he could.
Dan was polite enough to that coroner, but I think he still was wrapped in the same daze a cop had found him stumbling around the side of the road in. His face was bright with blood, as was the sweatshirt he’d pulled on for going out. At first, the officer wasn’t sure who this tall guy was. As he led Dan toward one of the ambulances that had arrived to find themselves useless, he assumed Dan was a bystander who’d been caught in the accident, an early-morning jogger hit by debris. It took a few minutes for him to sort out that this man had been the driver of the car that was so much fire and metal. When the lightbulb went off over his head, the cop tried to question Dan about the chain of events, but he couldn’t get much coherent out of him. Eventually, one of the EMTs told the guy that Dan was most likely in shock, and in need of the hospital.
The fire took the better part of an hour and three fire companies to extinguish. Traffic coming into and out of Huguenot was delayed and diverted until early afternoon. Two weeks after the accident, a traffic light was hung at that intersection, which I reckon is what four lives is worth these days. Too late for the Dreschers, it became their memorial.
A full six weeks passed before any of us saw Dan again. There was a memorial service for Sophie and the twins at the Huguenot Methodist Church, but it was small, for immediate family. By the time I walked in one Monday morning and, despite myself, jumped at the sight of Dan, back at his desk, his losses had faded from my mind, I’m ashamed to admit. I’d like to say this was because I’d been so busy in the interval, or because my own private life had been very good or even very bad, but I’m afraid none of that would be true. Not much more than out of sight, out of mind, I fear. It’s hard to hold onto any tragedies that aren’t your own for very long. That’s something I learned after Marie died. In the short term, folks can show compassion like you wouldn’t believe; wait a couple of weeks, though, a couple of months at the outside, and see how well their sympathy holds.
Dan returned to work bearing the scar from his trip through his car’s windshield. After his height, that scar became the thing about him that caught your notice. Threading out from among his red hair, which he kept longer now, the scar continued down the right side of his face, skirting the corner of his right eye, veering in at the corner of his mouth, winding down his neck to disappear beneath his shirt collar. You tried not to look, but of course you couldn’t help yourself. It was as if Dan’s face had been knitted together at that white line. I was reminded of the times my pa had taken me walking round the grounds at Penrose College, which he’d liked to do when I was a boy. Without fail, Pa would stop to point out to me a tree that had been struck by lightning. I don’t mean a tree that had had a branch blown off; I mean one that had acted as a living lightning rod, drawing the spark in at its crown and passing it down the length of its trunk to its roots. The lightning’s course had peeled and grooved out a line in the bark from top to bottom that Pa would stand and run his fingers over. “You know,” he’d say every time, “the ancient Greeks used to bury anyone struck by lightning apart from the rest. They knew such people’d had a tremendous experience — a sacred experience — but they weren’t sure if it was good or bad.”
“How could something sacred be bad?” I’d ask, but the only answer I ever received was a shake of his head as he ran his fingers over the channel a river of white fire had rushed through.
Everyone did their best to welcome Dan back to work; even so, a good few months passed before I thought to invite him to come fishing with me. You might expect I would’ve been one of the first people into Dan’s office to talk to him, but you’d be mistaken. If anything, I tended to avoid him. I know how that must sound: if not heartless, then at least weird. Who was in a better position to talk to him, to understand what he was going through and offer words of comfort? We’d both lost our wives, hadn’t we?