A Car Swerves Off the Road
September 30, 2011
YEARS AGO, when I was in my twenties, I was driving one winter night along a four-lane highway near the city of Camden, New Jersey. It was bitter cold, windy and it had snowed the day before. The city of Camden, for those who are not familiar with it, is one of the most dangerous cities in America. I had spent time there. As a newspaper reporter, I had walked its streets during the daytime, visited its courtrooms and talked to its police officers. I had been in schools, I had interviewed teenage mothers and I had gone to the wretched home of the relatives of a murder victim. I spent time in the rectory of a group of priests who worked with the poor. I knew the area where several prostitutes had had their throats slit and were dumped in a ditch.
Anyway, on this winter night, as I was driving along at about 60 mph, I saw the car in front of me suddenly swerve off the road and roll into an embankment. It was a horrific sight because the car spun around before it came to a rest. I pulled over immediately. I got out of my car, leaving the door open and the engine running. No one else had seen the accident and the highway was deserted. A black man who was about 30 stumbled out of the vehicle that had lost control. He fell down and sat stunned on the side of the embankment.
I called out to him, “Are you okay?”
He looked up at me and said, somewhat angrily, “Why did you do that?”
At first, I wasn’t sure what he meant. Then it occurred to me that he thought I had somehow hit his car. I didn’t answer his question because I realized he was confused and upset. It didn’t matter to me that he was confused. It didn’t matter if he believed that I had hit him. I was only concerned that he was alright.
“Are you okay?” I said again.
He said, yes, he thought he was not hurt.
I went to him on the embankment and, though I am a small woman and he was quite large, I helped him up. Miraculously, he did seem okay. After a few minutes, we walked back to his car, which also somehow had not been damaged. It had lost control after hitting a patch of black ice. He was still shaken, but he thanked me. He then got inside his car and drove away.
