Walking along the road, I was thinking about the car. I remembered the shock when I saw the Haywagon tip
and disappear. Would my stove still work when I pulled it from under the seat? How far did the car go?
I got a ride with the first car to come along. Maybe it was because people went slower on dirt roads.
Maybe they felt sorry for you, carrying a pack early in the morning and all. I wasn't sure which. It was
different from trying to get rides on the highway. I did not look threatening, at least I didn’t think so,
but sometimes I had gone for hours without a ride. Maybe it was something else. I was just glad to get a ride.
We reached the top of the valley. I saw the bridge approaching. The road leveled.
“I think, hmm . . .” I murmured.
“What's that?”
“This is where I get off.”
He stopped and I climbed out, got my pack from the back seat.
“Thanks,” I shut the door.
The sun peeked over the horizon.
I walked down the road, maybe a hundred yards, to the turnout. There was paint from the car streaked on the guardrail.
Thirty feet below, was the old road covered with rocks, grass growing in its cracks. The old guardrail was flattened downhill
of where the Haywagon had struck it. Its posts half-dragged out of the ground by the force of the impact.
I went below the old road, stashed my pack, started following the car's path downwards. I got down to where the trail
disappeared, perched on the hillside and looked down.
The slope approached vertical below me. My eyes followed a path of tire tracks, shredded plants, gouged earth, left behind
as the car tore past on its journey to oblivion. Somehow the vertical trail had missed most of the sparse trees, but the
rear-end, bent and broken, with tires still attached, was against a jagged, splintered stump, the tree laying downhill.
The Haywagon must have hit it square and cut through the trunk. Then the car flipped into the chasm, the bridge spanned and
started tumbling.
Way down the hill, perhaps fifteen hundred feet below me, lying in twisted metal ruin - the Haywagon. I could make out a
wheel in the wreckage.
“Jesus H. Christ.” I sat down feeling a little giddy, sort of like you feel when you've been on a merry-go-round and you suddenly get off.
I kept looking down at the car. After a while, I heard a noise behind and up from me. I turned and looked - it was Dave. He came down,
puffing and panting, walked up and looked over the edge.
“Quite a sight.”
“What're you doing here?” I said to Dave.
“The same thing you're doing.”
“I came to get my stove.”
He gestured. “Get it then.”
“Very funny.”
Dave stared downwards.
“I had no idea,” he said at last.
