overheard the receptionist taking the call. I passed it on. We could all picture it from our centrally heated office at Hufford Scientific Instruments: his tiny Honda sideswiped by a semi, skidding off the icy north country road, flipping in the ditch, folding up like a paper cup.

Just envisioning it — 22 hours in the snow, limbs twisted into cruel positions, the baby wailing, the daughter hanging upside down in her seat belt, strangling — it was excruciating. Stuck there, captive, unable to excavate the metal clip from the seat's wreckage, unable to unstrap her. Unable to free himself to grab the Swiss army knife dangling from the house keys and cut her out. Unable to muffle his wife's keening, mourning for the child already dead, the others dying, her own blood unstaunchable, seeping out of the windshield-inflicted wound eviscerating her belly. Helpless, helpless.

We could nearly feel the explosive cold, their breath turning the atmosphere of the car's coffin-like remains into an eerie fog, like the mists that roll through cemeteries at night, camouflage for ghosts. Our bones ached at thoughts of the chill creeping into their legs, no blankets for warmth as their lives ebbed away, following the same trajectory as the evaporating heat. The dull comforts of every previous moment were eclipsed by frost homesteading their flesh, by fear, by crackling pain.

Alma, from Accounting, wept.

It almost seemed our own ordeal, those terrifying imagined memories. Even Tom didn't deserve that. To be tossed into the air, like a toy discarded by a petulant god, and to land, mangled, in a cold hell. And his small children, his wife Nola, they were innocent. I liked her. She was amiable, even kind, always bringing delicious tortes to the annual company picnic, and homemade Mexican wedding cookies — my favorites. After meeting her, I held him in less contempt. He had the sense to marry her.

She didn't deserve this.

And what had he done to earn it? Was it borrowing and biting my pens, taking three-hour lunches when we were on deadlines, deadlines he imposed himself? Yes, he left pornography on his desk, and would leer and pinch. He'd lean over me with his dank, humid breath, brandishing a newly designed test tube. "How'd you like to super-size this?" he'd ask.

Maybe he committed low-level embezzlement — filching post-its and legal pads, perhaps inadvertently. But those workplace transgressions were minor, not deadly sins.

Or now, at least, they seemed petty grievances, mere annoyances, and we were sorry for his fate, nearly felt we had endured it ourselves. It was unfair. The whole abstract idea of Tom would soon be gone, erased, like an equation on a chalk board that a janitor washed away. Eliminated out of habitual fastidiousness.

A relative would clear out his office. The sentimental items would fit in a box: the model airplane he built with his son, the felt Cubs pennant, the photograph with Nola squinting into the sun at the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

And I guessed he would be missed, that I might have liked him if I knew him better. That if he had a second chance I might treat him well, not gossip about his lechery over lunch, not complain about his laziness, his oniony smell, not gripe about him shirking tasks, forgive him for pressing up against me at the copier, perhaps accidentally, grazing his dick against my back.

I had overlooked his basic humanity, his flesh and blood vulnerability. He was dead and fellow feeling for him suffused my heart.

 

try not to dwell on The Hufford Scientific Instruments company picnic. I hadn't much minded Tom until then.

It was the last one, up at Kettle Moraine State Park. I was sharing a table with Nola and Tom, angling for an early crack at those buttery wedding cookies, rolled in confectioner's dust. Nola was juggling her brood's demands — for attention, napkins and sandwiches. Tom sat face out, back to his family, tossing stones at the woods.

At the edge of the clearing dragonflies dive-bombed a puddle of water, hunting bugs. I watched them dodge Tom's rocks, circle and drop. I admired their efficient aerodynamics. That's when the boy pushed one sister off the bench and into the gravel.

"Mommy, Josh pushed me," Maddy screeched. "I hate you, Josh."

"You liar," he barked back. "She was kicking me."

"Shut up, I did not."

They were loud and flailing, like small thunderstorms. I was glad they weren't mine.

Still, I was seized by a sisterly impulse toward Nola to intervene, to march Maddy into the woods, to captivate her with fern fronds and bird calls and divert her from bullying Josh.

"Hey, Maddy. Want to take a little hike? It'll be cookie time when we get back." I winked.

At the promise of sweets, she gave her mom a quick glance. Yes, Nola nodded and Maddy skipped to the trailhead at the edge of the lot, beyond the dragonflies' watery landing strip.

It wasn't a long hike, just a half mile loop with color-coded markers in front of virgin trees, for campers to reference their trail maps. We paused, mapless, before white and pin and red oaks, stretching our arms to measure their girth and craning up at their receding crowns.

I wasn't surprised to hear branches snapping behind us. I sensed that Tom might follow; he seemed restless on the bench. What did surprise me was a soft mewling up ahead, like a baby abandoned in the underbrush. Maddy pulled up short and grabbed my hand.

"Don't worry," I said. "Let's take a look."

Something about the rising pitch of the cries slowed our pace. We moved carefully, as if we might overlook or frighten a wounded creature in the camouflage of dappled light. We topped a rise, picking our way over thick tree roots which crossed the trail like a weathered, medieval staircase.

There it was, ahead of us, on a bed of leaves — a snake with a weeping frog in its jaws. The snake wove from side to side, as it gradually sucked the frog into its gullet. We stood, frozen, staring into the frog's eyes, listening to the imploring cries of its mysterious, amphibian tongue.

Maddy screamed, "Stop," as if the snake was just another bully. Then she turned into me, burying her face in my side.

"It's just nature, honey," I said in my gentlest tone. "That's how it works in the wild."

"That's right, babycakes." Tom chuckled as he drew up behind. "It's a dog-eat-dog, snake-eat-frog world."

He pulled close, reaching for Maddy's shoulder with one hand. I felt the heat of his other palm surreptitiously hovering over my ass.

I jolted away, repulsed, which twisted Maddy's arm. She scowled.

I gave Tom a disgusted smile. "Oh look, Maddy, it's your dad. He's come to get you for cookie time."

I knelt down, bringing my eyes to her level. "You two head back and I'll save the frog."

I spun her toward Tom. He spat in the leaves, took Maddy and turned. I listened for their rustling to fade and watched the distraught frog, with its mouth agape, its relentless cries. It was beyond rescue. As the snake swallowed, a lump bulged in its neck, like knots in a rope, like the breath tangling in my throat.

 

hich is how I feel later the day that Tom is dead, eating lunch with the whole grieving crew. Knotted up.

Then the phone rings and he's not dead anymore. They all survived with minor injuries. Tom wasn't even in the car; he went north the night before. His wife and kids drove alone on the slippery road, slid, and dove into a ditch. They waited in fatherless solitude for the Jaws of Life to bite into the Honda's hull like a can opener.

It was the near-deaf house-sitter who took the midnight call from the highway patrol and mistold the brother-in-law — who misled our receptionist in a vivid, grisly game of telephone.

Conversation dissipates like haze when we know that he'll be back. He will tell a courageous tale. We will send chocolates to Nola, Maddy, Josh and the baby.

We feel relieved and betrayed.

We refill our coffee cups and scuffle off to our desks.

I find a badly-chewed pen cap on my table. I examine it and my dread inflates. Dread for his oniony sweep through the halls, his laziness and petty thefts, the lewd stares and his boner at my back. His teeth marks and saliva on my pen.

I liked him better when he was dead.

 

[END]

© Gail Louise Chagall 2002