Crying Man (F)

She did not think me a crying man, but she was wrong about that. Not that it matters. Nothing much does in the end. Most folks around here would have agreed. The clincher was when I had to put down a dachshund that had been run over by two college girls in a Volkswagen Beetle two years ago. I didn’t have a gun in the truck, and so once I saw the crushed back and heard the sickening cry from that little dog, I took a towel and as gentle as I could smothered the pitiful thing. Several kids were watching from across the street, and I hated that, but I had to end that poor animal’s suffering.

Martha Toffey came out of her house and screamed at me, telling me what a terrible man I had become. All I could do was look at her, tip my cap, and tell her to have a good afternoon. I was on my way home, and the two-mile drive went without a further incident. When I got home, I picked up the mail that had been delivered and was scattered on the foyer floor, walked into the kitchen and tossed the stack on the counter, and went on down to my bedroom.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and rested my head on my hands, elbows propped on my legs, and started crying. The first tears just sort of formed up in my eyes, and then they began rolling down my cheeks. Then I dropped my arms and the real crying began. My chest started heaving, and the tears and the snot ran down onto my jeans, and I just kept crying hard. Then I stopped. It was done.

Last time I cried like that over a dog, I wasn’t at home. I was delivering a bedload of gardenias to a man in Rayne, but just after I crossed the basin doing 80, a black lab jumped up from the ditch in the early morning light and I ran over him before I could touch the brakes. I looked back in the mirror and could see his body tumbling, over and over and over. Not a house around for miles. I kept driving, and I started crying by the time I got to the Breaux Bridge exit and I cried all the way to Lafayette. Man in Rayne asked me, when he got a look at my red eyes, whether I had been partying all night. I said, “Yes sir, partying hard.”

You might start to wonder if I only cry over animals, but not men.  Sometimes, it’s both. One night, four months after my divorce, I was headed up on the west side of the river near the first of the plantations south of Baton Rouge, when I saw a kid waving frantically from the side of the road. It was around 10:00 at night and too dark to make out much of anything, even though I had noticed a large dark shadow along the road about a quarter mile back. I stopped, and before I could get out of my truck the kid was talking, real fast like he couldn’t make whatever it was real until he said it.

“Mister, you gotta come. I think he’s dead. The man is dead. The car is real bad. He’s dead.”

“Who, son, who’s dead?”

“The man in the ditch. In the car.”

I grabbed a small flashlight, and he led me down a quick embankment toward the levee, and in the dimmest of light, I could see a Datsun mashed up against a fallen pine that looked to be about 40 inches or so in diameter. The car really was pulverized, all the glass out, the roof caved in, and the frame fractured.

“What happened?”

“I was right behind him and we were driving maybe 70 and he hit that horse back there and went off the road like a rocket.”

“He hit a damn horse?”

“Yes sir, he killed it too.”

I went around to the driver’s side but it was so badly twisted that I couldn’t make out anything, so I went around to the passenger side. Right then my flashlight went out. 

“Mister, I gotta get to work. I gotta go.”

“Son, you need to stay. You will have to explain to the sheriff or the highway patrol.”

“No sir, I can’t. I’m going. I’m sorry, but I gotta go.”  He scrambled up the slope and was gone even before I could start to ease myself through the open window. It was too dark to see much of anything other than maybe a vague shape, maybe the driver. 

I got my head and shoulders and arms into the car and started reaching out, and then I made contact. Everything I touched was wet and sticky and in the warm sluggish air, the smell had a meatiness to it. I found the driver’s head and located his neck and tried to keep my hand still enough to find a pulse.  Nothing I touched felt like anything I knew. 

I didn’t hear the parish sheriff, who was on his way home, pull up above me on the roadway. He came down with his big flashlight and grabbed me by my belt. 

“Get on out of there! What the hell is going on here?”

Once he got the light on me good, he dropped his voice. “Get up on the road and start stopping traffic coming up the river side.”

I climbed up to the roadbed, and soon a car was approaching. I waved at it, and when it got up close I could see it was another deputy. He gave me his flashlight and headed on down to the demolished car.

The next vehicle to come along was driven by a woman headed up to Baton Rouge. When I flagged her to a stop, she rolled down her window and called to me. “You all right?  You bad hurt?”

“No, m’am, I’m fine.”

“You sure? You look bad hurt.”

I looked down at myself and saw the blood down my t-shirt and down my arms, covering my hands and soaking the top of my jeans. 

“It’s on your face, too.”

“Okay. Thanks, M’am. I’m fine, really.”

After about fifteen minutes and stopping half a dozen cars and explaining each time that I was okay, the deputy came up and took a statement from me, and got my license number and phone number. He shook his head at me. “That was a bad one,” he said.

“Yep, seems so.”

“You need to go on home and get cleaned up.”

“Yep.”

Didn’t turn the radio on during the rest of the drive home. Just parked the truck and went inside and went straight back to the bathroom. I stripped off my clothes and shoes and threw them in the stall and turned on the water.  I stepped into the shower and watched the blood coming off my arms and hands and watched the blood mixing with the water and go washing down the drain. 

And then I started crying. I cried hard. I cried so hard that I had to lean down a bit and brace my hands on my thighs. Still blood came out of my hair and off my face, mixed with my tears. And I kept crying so that when there were no more tears, I just shuddered with wracking sobs that made my chest hurt. Then, it was over.

So, as a man, I can personally tell you, I cry. She was wrong about that, but she never knew. Ladson 2013