Lech Blaine - Car Crash: A Memoir of the Aftermath

For Will, Hamish, and Henry

First published in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K.

by Greystone Books in 2022

Originally published in Australia as Car Crash: A Memoir

Copyright 2021 by Lech Blaine

Published by arrangement with Black Inc.

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Greystone Books Ltd.

greystonebooks.com

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN 978-1-77164-864-6 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-1-77164-865-3 (epub)

Edited by Julia Carlomagno

Copy editing for international edition by James Penco

Proofreading by Alison Strobel

Cover design by Jessica Sullivan

Text design by Fiona Siu

Greystone Books thanks the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada for supporting our publishing activities.

car crash

noun

a chaotic or disastrous situation that holds a

ghoulish fascination for observers

No matter how you twist it,

Life stays frozen in the headlights.

JOHN ASHBERY

THERE WERE SEVEN OF US: five in the car and two in the trunk. We were alive together for the final time. It was quarter to ten on a Saturday night, May 2009a long weekend.

I was riding shotgun in the gold 1989 Ford Fairlane. The trip kicked off in the sticks north of Toowoomba, ninety minutes west of Brisbane. We were at the heart of Australias Deep North. I was short and soft-bodied with a black mop, a poet moonlighting as a jock.

Tim sat back middle. He was broad-shouldered and short-haired like Will, back right. Henry was in the seat behind me, tall and thin. He had the same blond hair and blue eyes as Dom, the driver. Hamishpale and lanky, with thick black hairwas in the trunk with Nick, brown hair above a squat frame.

It was our final year of high school. Tim and I went to St. Marys, a Catholic factory of athletesboys onlyin the western suburbs. The others went to Downlands, an elite coed school on Toowoombas north side.

Up front there was nothing between the road and me except the windshield and thin air. The speakers blasted Wonderwall by Oasis, an elegy inside a sing-along. My memory is a blinking mix of lyrics belted out incoherently and the stink of alcohol, sweat, and cigarettesa million things and nothing in particular.

We stopped at a new set of traffic lights. To our left was the city. To our right was the town of Highfields, one of the fastest-growing subdivisions in a carved-up country. Nuclear families hid from chaos on quarter-acre sanctuaries, safe from talk-radio-fuelled rumours of refugee gangs and possible mosques.

When the lights blazed green, we turned left onto the New England Highway. The speedometer rose progressively towards high speed. Streetlamps streaked by. The road, half-lit and disappearing, burnt a blur into my brain.

My brand-new iPhone vibrated. A message from Frida. Our courtship was at a critical phasetomorrow afternoon, we were going to the movies before a party at a mansion on the Great Dividing Range.

There was a swift change in our direction. My gaze shifted between the competing sheets of glass. Wed drifted onto the shoulder of the highway. The back tire drifted from the road, spinning out in the mouth of a gravel driveway.

This was the split second of our unravelling.

Dom reefed on the steering wheel, a knee-jerk attempt to regain control. We slid in, out, and in again. Hed overcorrected an overcorrection. A stream of images flickered in the windshield. Road half-lit by headlights. Windshield filled with branches and leaves belonging to the median strip. A dark front yard at the start of a farm.

It took us three seconds to travel from the gravel back to the maze of nature. The Fairlane ploughed to the wrong side of the highway. By rights I shouldve been the bullseye, but the vehicle scraped a tree stump within the median strip, spinning us another ninety degrees.

Screams howled from the back seat as we flew into a flood of high beams. Im dead, I thought. Then it hit: another car, speed meeting speed, like two protons colliding.

I didnt get the luxury of a concussion. There was a glimpse of black as my head reeled from soft impact against the dashboard. After that, everything went berserk. Liquids pissed from engines. Radiators hissed with steam. Car alarms outscreamed one another. Wipers whipped across the shattered windshield.

The hood blocked vision of what wed hit. A sticky fluid pooled around my ankles. Ive pissed myself, I thought. My hairy toes floated in the foam from a six-pack of beers. I wiped blood that wasnt mine onto the sleeve of a new sweater and searched frantically for my iPhone, finding it down beside the seat adjuster.

Sick sounds issued from the lips of four friends in the grip of oblivion. Dom lay face-down on the steering wheel. The back seat was a mess of erect necks and flaccid limbs. I reached out and shook Tims arm, calmly and then much more urgently.

Oi! I yelled. Wake up!

This will go down as the loneliest moment of my life.

A heavy guy appeared at the drivers side window.

Shit! he said. What happened?

I dont know, I said.

Can you turn the car off?

I hadnt noticed the Fairlanes engine still revving. I reached for the keys, but the ignition was missing. It was hidden in the plastic mess where the steering wheel used to be.

I cant, I said.

The man fished under the hood and stilled the motor. HEY, CHAMP! Everythings gonna be fine!

The door handle had been obliterated. The window winder was gone. Mine was the only window still intact. I was trapped in a fast-moving disaster, each new fact more startling than the last.

A team of swift Samaritans assembled, divvying the injured between them. An off-duty nurse joined the man at the window.

Get me out of here! I screamed.

Sweetie, she said, I need you to sit still. Is that something you can do for me?

I nodded dishonestly, no intention of playing hero and staying inside a portable slaughterhouse. I scanned for an exit route and found one through the drivers window.

The womans eyes went wide. No! Dont!

I pitched my hands into the void across Dom. The first responders yanked me to safety. My feet hit the bitumen with relief. I scooted to the trunk of the crushed Fairlane.

Wait! said the man, or the woman, or maybe someone else.

The back cavity had been ripped open like a tin of tuna. Hamish reclined against the bumper, eyes closed. A woman rubbed my shoulder.

Hell be okay, she said.

I searched below, above, and beside the trunk.

Were missing someone, I shouted.

Another one?

I located Nick thirty feet away, lying parallel to the fog line, pupils facing up towards his brain. A crooked