If you live in Malibu, as I have for 25 years, driving Pacific Coast Highway at least twice a day is a necessity. It had to happen sooner or later-I’d seen enough of them to know.
Tonight, I was one of the “first on the scene” of an accidental death, a car crash that, if I’d been speeding, could literally have been me. Cresting the hill that drops down to Corral Beach, a mess of glass and plastic shards suddenly scattered everywhere. I pulled over. Most of me wanted to be brave; a small part, somewhere near the back of my heart, said, “This is gonna hurt.” When I got there, the wheels of the late-model silver van, flipped upside down and facing the wrong direction, were still turning. Devil winds whipped down Puerco Canyon; the full moon was the only thing lighting my way as I ran up the hill towards the mangled metal mess. It seemed to take days to reach him.
The first thing I looked for was leaking gasoline. I knew no one wanted to die in flames, and think of the hills igniting on such a dry night. But there was no noxious liquid, just a little water from the plastic Aquafina bottle he must have been sipping. It lay on the pavement near his dangling cell phone, still switched on, pulsing dark blue, blue like the sea before us. We’re drops in the ocean, all of us. Peering into the crushed driver’s side, I had a knowing fear nothing lived there. All I could see was straight, longish brown hair, caught by the dry wind, blowing. No body parts, no blood, no sound but the Santa Anas.
I started speaking: “Don’t worry, don’t move, they’re on their way. Help is coming. There’s no gas leaking. Don’t move. Can you hear me? It’s okay. It’s okay…” Other cars immediately began to pull over. 911 was, of course, called. The first by my side was another local, a soft-voiced woman about my age. She wanted to help too, but didn’t want to see what might be trapped. She hovered, hiding behind me as we watched the approaching lights of CHP, firemen, paramedics. Everything was silhouetted in red.
Two tiny teenage girls appeared, one in jeans, another in shorts and cowboy boots, their long brunette manes blowing across tear-stained faces. They’d been in the other car. Five minutes later, a taller weeping girl-child was found, in the early stages of shock. The scene became a surreal silent film. Even the hardened local officer with the bullet head that gives out all those speeding tickets was grim. Especially him.
“Don’t look,” I told the sensitive lady. “They’re removing the man’s body. They’re not rushing. He’s like a rag doll, really limp. They’re putting him on the grass, not the stretcher…” No reason to go on. His neck was probably broken. I saw his long hair again, swinging free now.
And the devil winds blew on.
Lisa Marlowe