Ron Waller looked up from the stick he was whittling and eyed the kid as he navigated around a transmission that had become half buried in the soft ground of his yard.
“Is this your bedpan, old man?” the kid joked as he paused and kicked at what looked like a rusty, overturned metal mixing bowl.
“It’s an oil pan, wise guy.”
Ron had the appearance of an older man, and his approaching friend never missed a chance to tease him about it. In actuality he wasn’t that old, but a freak accident two years earlier had taken its toll, and the pint of Southern Comfort he consumed daily to kill the snakes in his head didn’t help. Ron was in his mid-twenties but looked about 50.
Sitting on a tiny metal chair and wearing an oil-stained white tank undershirt, Ron smiled broadly and shook the kid’s hand. What was left of his teeth were stained whiskey brown, and when he smiled his eyes would almost close, a permanent effect of the injuries he suffered in the accident.
It was a story the kid had heard a hundred times.
On a cool, moonless night in 1975, Ron had left a friend’s house and pulled his bright yellow Volkswagen onto the highway to Warsaw. As he began the 10 minute drive, he rolled down the window to enjoy the early summer air, unaware that that decision would be the difference between life and death.
It was a new moon, and as he approached the bridge into town, Ron saw that the river was shrouded in fog. With only one working headlight, he barely noticed when he started crossing the Osage river bridge. He could only see about 20 feet in front of him, just able to make out the artificial horizon formed by the curved floor of the old suspension bridge.
Ron had no idea that two minutes earlier, the driver of a tractor trailer loaded with 35 tons of grain had decided to ignore the bridge’s posted 5-ton weight limit, and about halfway across, crashed through the wooden floor and plunged into the river below, leaving a gaping hole that Ron failed to see on that dark June night.
The fall from the bridge felt like an eternity to him. Luckily it was at least long enough to formulate a plan, in case he survived the impact. Most Beetles float pretty well, but the floorboard of Ron’s car was rusted enough that he could see the road from the driver’s seat, so it immediately took on water and sank. That open window allowed him to exit the car as it slipped beneath the surface of the diesel fuel-covered water, and he was able to swim to shore.
That was nearly two years ago, and every night since, Ron relived the event in his sleep. And, every night he awakened in a cold sweat and headed to the rickety porch and his unsteady little chair, to medicate himself with cigarettes and Southern Comfort.
Now, as he greeted the kid coming toward him, it occurred to Ron that this unkempt 13-year-old boy might be his only friend. Visits weren’t frequent, but Ron used them as therapy, telling him repeatedly about the accident, and how he couldn’t cross a bridge any more without stopping to gather courage first, and how all of the life plans he had made had washed away with his little yellow Beetle.
And then he would listen as the young man told stories of his own. Ron knew he had found an empathetic friend in this skinny kid from down the street, whose last name he didn’t even know, and who had experienced more adventures and travails in his 13 years than most people see in a lifetime. Their chats were therapy for him as well.
“You really need to write a book someday,” Ron told him.
"Maybe I will."