Manny Noshowvitz stumbled out of two bars and one pub on December 12, 2004.
By midnight, he had a five dollar bill in his right jeans pocket and a string of vomit hanging off of his three week old beard.
Manny knew about the vomit. If he realized he still had five dollars left he would have had another beer. Maybe he would have passed out. But that was unlikely since Manny was an alcoholic. Like most alcoholics, he thought he was an expert at handling how much he was able to drink.
So, in that state of mind, Manny got behind the wheel of his blue truck, a 1999 Ford 150, and drove away from Murphy’s Pub on Main Street and headed toward Route 18. He missed the entrance ramp and found himself heading down a rural back road leading to another bar he frequented so he didn’t fight fate.
“Sometimes the good Lord just leads you in the right direction,” he said, burping over the sound of Hotel California playing loudly. It drowned out the little muffler problem he kept putting off fixing.
The lyrics got him to thinking about Carly, not as in Simon, but his girlfriend, Carly Neidermayer from Englishtown New Jersey. Home of one of the biggest flea markets he’d ever seen, which was where he met her, at the fake watch stand. He was buying a fake Rolex and she was flirting with the stand owner, wearing a red halter top on a brisk fall day. When Manny asked her to have lunch with him, she took his arm and said “Sure, big boy.”
He missed her. They broke up around Easter, mostly because she wouldn’t stop nagging him about things. The nagging started after they were dating for about ten months, just when Carly began to feel comfortable with him. Manny hated that. Carly wasn’t the first woman – and probably wouldn’t be the last – to try to turn Manny into a responsible, productive and sober adult. A long line of women, beginning with his blessed mother, God rest her soul, had tried and failed to do so.
Carly’s favorite nagging line had been “Why don’t you take your talents and put them to good use instead of wasting your life drinking, Manny? “ followed closely by “Why are you so damn self destructive?” Manny didn’t miss the nagging, just Carly and the sex and the food. She was a good cook. Made a great pot roast.
He could smell it as he drove down the road toward Bossy’s Bar and for a moment he thought Carly was in the truck cab with him, stretched out in the passenger seat, her shoes off as usual, painting her toes pink while telling him how she was going to make him a happy man later that night when they got home, trying to talk him out of going to another bar.
Manny turned his head to look at her and the emptiness suddenly hit him. He felt it in his stomach, but was too drunk to realize that it was the steering wheel hitting him, not a sad memory and he was too drunk to make out the shape of the tractor trailer as it screeched its brakes trying to avoid his blue pickup that had wandered over the line on the narrow road.
“I have nowhere to go, you idiot!” the rig’s driver, whose real name was Hank but whose handle was Skank, was shouting into his CB radio. “Damnit! Call the cops! ” he screamed to his trucker buddies right before his rig inevitably sliced through the blue pickup truck, dividing it into two pieces. It sent the cab with Manny alone in it off the side of a road into a small cold pond and left the severed truck bed on the road.
As the rig came to a halt, Hank stopped cursing and jumped down from the tractor trailer onto the cold hard pavement. He ran toward the pond, his red Keds suddenly covered in muck as he waded through the water toward the smoking blue metal cab.
Manny’s head rested against the windshield, a pool of blood spreading crimson streaks that painted the spidered glass. His eyes were wide open.
“He’s dead,” Hank said, swallowing hard. “Damn you. Damn you- you left me nowhere to go.” He sank onto the ground, his head in his hands, crying. After ten years of driving, this was his first accident. A perfect record. Until that moment he never heard the sound of metal crushing, the smell of oil burning, or felt the powerlessness of brakes that could only work so fast. Not fast enough to save this poor bastard.
When the cops arrived, they put Hank into the back of a police car. He watched through the grilled windows as half a dozen uniformed cops moved silently through the cold December night air, until one tapped with his flashlight on the window, motioning him back from the door.
“It’s only Noshowvitz,” the cop said, waving him out of the car. “He’s drunk. You can go after we fill out a few papers.”
“But – is he okay?”
“Dead as a doornail,” the cop said. “It’s not your fault, buddy. This guy drove around drunk all the time. Nothing you could do.”
Somehow that didn’t make Hank feel any better, but he pulled himself out of the car. He was shaking, but felt relieved that at least he wasn’t going to jail and guilty at that relief.
“You need an ambulance, buddy?” a paramedic asked, shining a flashlight on his face.
“No, I’m not even hurt,” Hank replied.
“You sure?”
He nodded. Someone handed him a cup of coffee and a blanket and told him to go sit on the side of the road. Hank found a tree stump forty feet away from the pond and sat huddled over the coffee, shaking, watching as the coroner pulled up and cops took measurements.
About an hour later, a red Honda Civic pulled up and a woman got out. He heard a cop call her “Carly”. She screamed “Manny!” and tried to run toward the pickup cab, but the cop restrained her, holding her back, speaking to her gently but firmly, telling her it was over. “Nothing you can do,” the cop said. It was the same cop. Must be his standard line, Hank thought, sipping at the coffee that was now cold.
He saw Carly twirl around and look over at him, her face contorted in pain, her mascara running down her cheeks beneath a shock of curly red permed hair. Hank looked down at the ground, away from her grief. He didn’t see her approach him, run toward him on red high heels.
The high heels probably stopped her from doing any real damage because she was off balance as she started to pummel his face, screaming “You killed my Manny!” over and over again. Hank dropped the coffee cup and tried to put his hands up to protect himself, but he was wrapped like a mummy in the blanket and she split his lip before he could extricate himself and try to hold her back.
By then two cops were restraining her, pulling her away from him. They dragged her toward the patrol car and pushed her inside, telling her to calm down unless she wanted to go to headquarters, explaining that Manny was drunk and it wasn’t this guy’s fault.
Hank stood up, put a finger to his bleeding lip and saw Carly pointing her finger at him from the rear of the cop car. Her mouth was working, and he could see her still saying “You killed my Manny”.
“It’s okay, buddy,” the “nothing you could do” cop said to him.
“S’not okay,” Hank replied, tasting his own blood.
“You want to file assault charges? She’s upset, but-“
“No, no. No charges,” Hank said.
“Okay. Sit down. I’ll get you another coffee.”
“I gotta piss,” Hank mumbled.
“Go ahead, just stay out of the headlights. Don’t wander off on us. Got paperwork. I’ll be back with the coffee.”
Hank nodded numbly and started to walk away from the pond toward a clump of trees about twenty feet back from the road. He peed into a discarded pile of sticks and rocks probably left by kids or campers, then headed back to the tree stump.
The cop car with Carly in the back was already gone. He saw her red Honda Civic still sitting there on the road. He wondered if they were going to book her for something as he sat down on the stump.
“Where’s Carly?” he asked the cop as he took the coffee.
“Drove her home. She’ll be okay,” the cop said. “Don’t worry. They were bar friends, she and Noshowvitz.” He shrugged. “She came to court with him a few times, the judge sent him to AA when he got a couple of DWI’s but the guy didn’t know what was good for him. There was –“
“I know. Nothing anyone could do,” mumbled Hank.
“Right.”
The paperwork didn’t take too long once the detective arrived. By then the measurements were done and the coroner had placed Manny’s body on a rolling stretcher. Hank was told he could leave once he was done with the detective.
“We’re done. Won’t be any charges from this,” the detective said, shining his flashlight on the clipboard. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”
“He’s dead.”
“Well you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, buddy. Can’t blame yourself for an accident waiting to happen.” The detective shook his head. “We see this all the time. Try to get these folks out from behind the wheel but they still drive. His license was revoked for ten years last time he got a DWI, but he managed to register the truck in his girlfriend’s name and still drove around. If you weren’t in a rig, you could have been killed too.“
Somehow that didn’t make Hank feel any better. “Never had any accidents before. “
The detective nodded. “We checked. You’re totally clean. Damn shame you got mixed up in this.” He leaned toward Hank. “Matter of fact, make sure you tell your insurance company that this was ninety nine percent the other driver’s fault. The other one percent fault is just that you happened to be here at this time.”
“Right.”
“You can go now, buddy. Drive safely.”
Hank nodded. He started to walk toward his rig, then saw the stretcher. Manny’s body was under a dark thick tarp. He swallowed, then approached it.
“Hey! What are you doing?” a cop shouted.
“It’s okay,” the detective said, standing by the body.
“I want to look at him,” Hank said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I killed him! I killed him,” repeated Hank, “and I want to see what he looks like. I want to know.”
The detective waved away a few of the cops who headed over and looked Hank in the eyes. “This was not your fault. It was an accident.”
“I’ve got to live with this the rest of my life,” Hank said. “I got to remember this night, his girlfriend screaming at me, the sound of the wheels screeching, seeing his blood all over that windshield. I don’t want to remember him like that. I want to see him.”
“He’s not cleaned up or anything,” the detective said.
“Please. “
The detective lifted up the side of the tarp, then pulled it back. Manny’s head showed, his nose broken and his face covered with dark crimson blood. Someone had closed his eyes.
Hank nodded, tears streaming down his face. “I’m sorry, Manny,” he said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop my rig.” He put his hand on Manny’s forehead, patted it awkwardly. “Real sorry.” He stood there for some minutes, not realizing his tears fell onto Manny’s face, washing some of the blood away.
The detective said nothing, just stood a few feet away, his arms crossed as he held the clipboard tightly, taking a few more notes.
“Okay,” Hank said. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Hank walked away, feeling his feet hitting the cold hard pavement beneath him. He climbed wearily into the cab of his rig and watched as the stretcher was rolled, then folded up and placed in the back of the coroner’s vehicle.
He drove behind it all the way until the entrance ramp to Route 18, when he got back onto the highway.
Copyright 2007 Ruth Harrigan
