How many monotonous miles had my father driven that night? A long slash from Texas across Arkansas. Texarkana, Little Rock, Searcy, Walnut Ridge, Poplar Bluff. The rest of us - my mother and eight kids - were asleep. Lucky us. I wonder what it was like for him. Did he believe his eyes were playing tricks when that pair of headlights drifted across the center line?
It was a two-lane bridge. There was no place to swerve even if there had been time. Nine times out of ten it would have ended with our van upside down in the St. Francis River. But this was the tenth time. Lucky us.
Safely on the shoulder on the far side of the bridge we piled out, wondering what had happened. Soon there were red and blue lights. The other driver wandered, befuddled, his wrecked car still blocking the bridge.
If it were today, we would all be checked out at the hospital to make sure we were okay. Maybe some time the next morning we would be on the road again. But that was a different time. My father had a side of beef on ice in the back of the van and by morning that ice would be melting. The van could still roll, so roll it did to Sikeston, up to St. Louis and across Illinois.
By the time he pulled up to our house in Terre Haute he couldn't turn his neck. To change the direction of his gaze he had to turn his whole body. But his wife and his children were home and they were safe. He spent the next week in the hospital.
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