Someone got too drunk one morning and drove their truck into the side of my car by Charles Michael Pawluk

No, that’s not what happened — what happened was I drove my car into the side of the truck of someone who got too drunk one morning, a man, a man who took an unprotected left turn across three lanes of traffic — that’s when I hit him, going seventy — and it’s easier to say that he hit me than I hit him because he was at fault, and he was at fault, the state of Texas reasoned, because his BAC was point-two-two, and what that means is that his blood was two percent of one percent alcohol when the police drew it, possibly without his consent, at the hospital two hours after he had hit me or rather after I had hit him, and what that means is that it was even higher when he turned the key in the ignition of his silver Silverado that morning and took the left onto the county road wherein the accident occurred, and anyway, as far as the district attorney who prosecuted the case was concerned, it didn’t matter who made the mistake on the road, because any person who almost killed a kid while drunk on the road was in the wrong by default, especially if the person in question couldn’t speak too much English — though “almost killed” was perhaps a stretch, even for someone less sanctimonious, which the district attorney was not — so they gave him sixty years in prison, the man, after half a year of waiting and witness testimony wherein I was the witness — I held a shaking hand up in the courtroom to identify the driver, though I would have preferred to forget the matter entirely, like the man who had hit me or rather whom I had hit — who after the collision staggered up to me as I stood next to my crumpled green sedan, its front end having more or less ceased to exist, my hands involuntarily on my head after I had used them to claw my way out of the ruined car, frantic, certain it would explode because of the smoke and metal and bits of glass everywhere — he had approached me and asked if I wanted to forget about it and I did not understand the question — maybe he wasn’t thinking clearly, this already-old man, already so tired of life, who in the courtroom could not watch with the jury the dashcam footage of the police discovering our ruined cars, could not look at me — indeed could not look at anyone, his head down for shame — but it would have been easier for me if he had, because I wanted to apologize, because in a certain sense it was my fault he was there, maybe not the right sense but a sense nonetheless — and because sixty years is a long time, especially for a man already sixty, and for whom twenty of those years had already been spent in prison for doing some pretty awful things; still that is forever time — with his head down it was hard to tell if it was him, it could have been anyone, it had to be him but I could barely see his face — it wouldn’t have taken much to say No, or even to say I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know if that man is the man who drove the truck that hit me or rather that I hit — I sometimes wonder about that, because the funny thing is that the district attorney who sent my would-be killer to prison for sixty years ended up having his license to practice law revoked, even went to jail himself for ten days — was in fact the only prosecutor in the history of our country to be imprisoned for what is called misconduct that led to a wrongful conviction, the misconduct in question being that he willfully concealed evidence in another case that convicted and incarcerated a different man for twenty-five years — and while surely nobody is arguing for compassion for a man who after getting too drunk and driving his truck, after three previous arrests for the same, who in driving said truck drunk almost killed a kid because he hit him or rather was hit — nonetheless perhaps such an argument would have made a difference, albeit a small and perhaps insignificant one, given the general disregard for human life that seemed to be heavy in the air on those stiff cold Texas mornings, when someone got too drunk and drove their truck into the side of my car.

Image Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/Evonne