The Death Car

When I was about five or six years old, I saw something horrible. We lived in Rocky River, Ohio at the time. It was probably late in 1957. Back when kids walked everywhere.

My brother, Frankie, 5 years my senior, and I were walking across the bridge into Cleveland to go see the Saturday matinee at one of the old movie houses. If I am remembering my time frame correctly, my mother was probably pregnant with my sister, Susan, and my dad was working, making hand poured peanut brittle in a little candy shop in downtown Cleveland.

I have seen pictures of myself from that time and, I swear to God, I looked like Beaver Cleaver and Frankie looked like Wally. So, in my mind's eye, I sort of picture that day as Frankie walking slightly ahead of me, wanting to get to the movie and me lagging behind, goofing around. I was probably bouncing a ball or kicking a stone or something. Or walking in a lurching gait, one foot on the sidewalk the other in the gutter. Sort of bouncing with every other step. I can almost hear the Toy Parade playing in the background.

As we came around a slight curve on the bridge, we could tell there was something going on up ahead. At first, our view was blocked by several cars parked on our side of the road. As we got closer, there were several men and women standing around an old dark green coupe from the late forties, doing that kind of out loud whispering reserved for funeral homes or adult talk after the kids were in bed.

I heard words like, "all dead", "drunk", "blood everywhere", and "middle of the night". My brother and I were able to walk up to the car pretty much unnoticed. The first thing I remember was that the front wheel was up on the sidewalk, the white wall tire was flat. As we made our way around the front fender I could see splotches of blood(?) on the inside of the split windshield. The side windows were rolled down and I could see more blood on the cloth upholstery. There were several empty bottles on the seats.

But the thing I will never forget was the smell. I know that I have never smelled that exact combination of odors since then, but when I concentrate on it, I can recall them clearly. It was a mix of some kind of cheap but strong booze, blood, perfume and burnt rubber or hot engine or something. Every now and then, I will get a strong whiff of just one of those scents and it is enough to send me back to that morning.

The other thing was the unreasoning fear that I felt. I knew that something very wrong and bad had happened. And that maybe it would somehow follow me home. When I started to cry, Frankie took me by the hand and pulled me away from the smell and the whispering people.

I don't remember if we went on to see the movie that day or not. And I don't remember talking to my parents about what I had seen. Maybe my brother did. I never found out what happened in that car, either. Was it somehow a drunken party gone horribly wrong? Was it a mob hit? A jealous spouse? An accident? And where were the police? And the bodies? Did anyone survive? I never found out any of that stuff.

I was just a kid and nobody talked to kids back then. But what I saw on the bridge that day had an affect on my life. It introduced me to a part of life I had never known about. A place where even adults can get into trouble. Where fun can become dangerous. And a knowledge that, just outside my bedroom window, things were going on... in the dark.

It's funny not being able to forget something I knew so little about. All I ever really knew for sure was that something very wrong and bad had happened and, as I had feared, it had somehow followed me home.

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