To the Artist's Page     To our home page

To Leah Presser's previous piece

What's in the Ditch

On a rainy afternoon in early December, thirty-two year old Christy Adams, a nurse, and thirty-six year old Dale Egan, a construction worker, lost their lives in a muddy drainage ditch along a flat stretch of rural Hwy. 17. To be more specific, the actual losses of life occurred the instant their speeding, southbound Corvette hydroplaned into the grill of a northbound semi. Only the front of their car spun off into the ditch, dragging along their bodies. The rear end went skipping northbound down the highway.

Christy and Dale have an eight-year-old son, also named Dale, and now when you ask, "How is Dale doing?" you feel like clarifying, "I mean Little Dale, not the dead Dale." Young Dale will forever be known as Little Dale, so as not to confuse him with dead, Big Dale, though the distinction was bound to be made whether Big Dale died or not.

I drive past the ditch every day to pick up my son from elementary school. Little Dale attends the same school. I wonder if Little Dale looks out the window of the bus as it carries him past the ditch on Hwy. 17, or if, after that first time, he learned to take an aisle seat.

After the torn car, wrecked semi and dead bodies were hauled away, all that was left was an ugly gash scoring the ditch and thousands of shards of glass littering the side of the road. A couple of days later, three of Dale's brothers were out combing the side of the highway and poking around in the ditch. I slowed to a crawl as I drove by, trying to see their faces. But they never looked up as they scanned the ground looking for - what? Wallets? Jewelry? Body parts?

Then one day a man in a yellow digger machine came and smoothed out the churned ground so the ditch would drain properly again. After that, the glass washed away and now you would never guess what happened there from the looks of it. A lone skid mark mars the asphalt, but that could have been there long before Christy and Dale's accident.

I hold my breath every time I drive southbound past the ditch. I crane my neck to search for any signs of the tragedy - torn metal, bits of clothing, a severed finger, perhaps? Is there a strand of her long blonde hair remaining, maybe caught on a stick and wedged in the ground? Would the earth glow fluorescent green in the dark if sprinkled with special powder, like in crime movies? I can never go slow enough to get a real good, thorough look and I am always fearful of what may be coming northbound while my head is turned.

To the top of this page