The balmy night air was in that perfectly comfortable range
that feels like silk on bare skin and a happy little breeze flipped playfully
at the hem of my sundress and fanned errant wisps of hair against my neck.
Our fleet manager had scheduled us in to pickup a coil of steel just as
Weirton Steel was ready to close up loading operations for the night, so there
hadn't been time to process paperwork that would have allowed me to stay in
the cab of the semi during loading. The folks in the shipping office suggested
an appropriate ribs restaurant, Happy's in the 4000 block of Main Street, where I could have a bite and wait
for Critter to come back and retrieve me before starting the drive to our
delivery point.
I placed my order and a go order for Critter and prepared to wait the hour it
would take for him to come back. Happy's was a lovely, comfortable restaurant
and the manager and servers were very pleasant. I knew he would come in and
find me, so for the life of me, I can't tell you why it was I got so antsy to
go back outside and wait for him, but after only a few bites, I asked the
server to bring Critter's order and a go box for mine as well, bagged it all
up, hung the bag on my arm and went outside to pace the sidewalk in front of
the restaurant like some local color. I kept watching the bend in the street
at the top of a rise where I knew the big truck would appear. Mostly I ignored
the buzz of light traffic and flow of patrons in and out of the restaurant
parking lot. Even a few catcalls and wolf whistles didn't persuade me to go
back inside and wait.
By now I had been standing up long enough that my legs and hip joints were
hurting and I bumped my elbow on the big wooden light pole there beside me. I
looked at the light pole and thought briefly of stepping a half step out
toward the curb and leaning my back against it. It flitted through my head
again that I could go back inside and wait, he'd come find me, but some
irrational doubt lingered and I entertained the notion again of leaning
up against this street light pole at my side. Only the thought that I might
truly be mistaken for a prostitute stopped me. I was thinking that some of the
local hookers and pimps might think I was intruding on their territory. I took
a moment to be irritated that JT would cause me to be in this situation. A
sharp sting on the back of my upper right arm got my attention and I batted
the insect away, but not before it stung me even harder. I wondered that there
weren't any mosquitoes as I looked again longingly up the block, hoping this
time to see the big red Freightliner rounding the bend.
Suddenly my eyes were tightly
closed and there was this sense of something huge hurtling violently toward
me, whoosh!, as though deliberately directed right at me! And incredibly, a
sense it was immediately blocked by an angel, just quietly slipping
between me and approaching danger . The sound was so huge that I felt the
sound wave pound my forehead and it gave me a headache.
Standing there, unmoving and with my
eyes still closed, I understood I had been protected from death, a horribly
painful death, by an angel sent by God. At the same time, I knew the angel was
already gone. I had this mental picture of a robed, burly angel
swooping low to my left and then up, up and away to my right; kinda like
Superman, ya know? And still I didn't have a clue as to what the
catastrophe was. Amid an explosion of pencil-size splinters, sugar-fine
crystals of glass, syrupy slings of motor oil, misting slaw dressing, iced
tea and windshield washer fluid, I contemplated these things. I know I
screamed, but I didn't hear it.
Without moving, I opened my eyes. I was still standing next to the huge wooden
light pole, but now the pole was leaning and there was this ruined
Toyoto Tacoma right in front of me. The pole had
buried itself two feet into the front of the grill, rumpled the hood into a
tent and the impact flipped the wiper blades straight out so they waved
ineffectually as washer fluid sprayed into the air. The SUV had bounced back
from the pole and still the passenger side front tire was up on the curb. I
looked immediately to the driver's side and saw the driver moving
around. Taking mental inventory to double check what I already knew, I
affirmed I wasn't hurt. There wasn't any physical, earthly way that SUV could
have wrapped its front end so far around that pole without touching me where I
stood, but that's exactly what it did. The bag hanging on my arm looked like
some wild animal had stretched and gnawed through it and cracked the food
cartons and tossed the coleslaw container behind me into the grass between the
sidewalk and the restaurant, but miraculously I wasn't touched.
Still I stood there and finally the driver opened his door and stepped out. He
looked over at me and asked, "Are you all right?" I answered,
"I think so, but are YOU alright? You were behind the wheel when it hit
and I'm worried you might be hurt. Come on out of there, I see smoke."
He stepped from behind the driver's door and closed it. He moved closer
to the front of the SUV and bent over, putting his hands on his knees and
said, "I'm pretty shook up." Then he straightened up and walked
around the SUV and the pole and I turned and moved back from the pole.
He asked again if I was alright and I assured him I seemed to be fine and was
he sure he was ok. Then he leaned his head close to mine and confided
sheepishly, "Actually, I'm a little drunk and I really need to get out of
here." People were starting to gather and someone had said they
were going to call the police as they went back into the restaurant. So
I looked at him and said, "Honey, (he's 6 weeks younger than my own son) come here." Stepping back over in
front of the SUV, I pointed to the huge pool of spreading motor oil.
"This car isn't going to make it out of here under its own steam, so if
you leave, they will find you and they'll heap a bunch more charges against
you for hit and run or leaving the scene."
He looked at me blankly for a few seconds and then walked around to the
drivers door. He started the car, then shut if off and reached down under the
seat and fished around for a bit. Then he got back out and started dialing a
cellular phone. We both walked back to the restaurant front where most of the
crowd was gathering. I asked his name and told him mine. He gave me only his
first name, Tom. So I asked for his last name, which he grudgingly muttered
and I couldn't understand, so I asked him to spell it, which he did; G-U-I-O. He
said he was trying to call his wife. When he finally got an answer, it sounded
like he said into the phone, "Ken, ..." and I turned away to talk to
someone who wanted to know what happened.
I kept asking everyone if they'd seen the guardian angel and everyone said I
was lucky. I told them I guessed God wasn't done with me yet or I hadn't yet
done whatever He put me here to do.
Patrolman R. Grishkevich of the Weirton Police Department arrived and took a statement from me. Though I was covered in
glittering glass, I declined to be checked out by squad or transported to the
emergency room. I stepped over to Tom then and put my arms around his
shoulders. I whispered, "Can you hear the angel talking to you? Do you
hear God's message he's trying to deliver? Do you KNOW how bad you'd have felt
if you'd killed me? Do you have ANY idea? Do you hear what the angel is trying
to tell you? You need to stop what you're doing, Tom." He
responded, "Yeh, I would have been real upset."
Then, I talked to T.J. Chaney who had been sitting in the center turn lane of the five
lane street waiting for the SUV to pass so he could make a left turn into the
restaurant parking lot. While he was waiting for the SUV to pass by in the
inside lane, he saw it suddenly veer toward the curb lane directly toward
where I was standing next to the pole and thought to himself, "Oh,
he's going to hit that lady!"
Now Patrolman Grishkevich started saying, "Since this is a one car accident,
..." Then he glanced somewhere over my head and behind me where other officers were talking
to the some of the crowd and he turned to the driver of the SUV, saying,
"Where were you coming from?" Tom named a restaurant. The officer
looked at his watch and asked, Were you just eating a meal or ..."
Tom finished it for him, saying, "...drinking. I had a few drinks."
The officer asked Tom to step over to the side and began administering a
sobriety test.
Meanwhile, I walked back over to the crowd and stopped by a lady who worked at
the jail and lived in an apartment near Happy's restaurant. She said she had
heard the impact from the south side of the block and stepped out on her patio to
see what happened. She saw me still standing by the pole in front of the wrecked
SUV. Then she directed me to look over where the officer was testing Tom and
said, "Look, he can't even pass the sobriety tests! Somebody said they
thought he might also be high." Then she pointed to a recent arrival, a
slender fella watching the sobriety tests somberly, and pointed to his car
parked askew in a parking slot in the restaurant parking lot. She said he
was evidently a friend of the driver of the SUV and he had arrived and gone up
to Tom before the sobriety tests started.
All this time, I had been walking around with the ruined bag of takeout on my
right arm. Then, I saw the big red Freightliner round the bend and I started
toward him, then turned around and sat my ruined bag of takeout down. Someone
assured me they'd take care of it. After I went to the truck and told da Critter
and went back to get my bag, someone had disposed of it for me. Some details
escaped me at this point, but someone said they searched inside the SUV,
appeared to have found something of interest. Then they patted Tom down,
handcuffed him and put him in a cruiser and took him downtown.
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