Death at Ten

Perhaps by some innocuous sound or smell, maybe something I saw, or my subconscious was simply bored and began thumbing through memories like the pages of a photo album, it opened event that I hadn’t thought of in years. But there it was as unannounced as a door-to-door salesman. No doubt faded by time, it nonetheless retained it’s essence.

To the best of my recollection, it was July, 2012. At the time, we were living on a four acre plot of land with the house having been built next to a main county road. The only thing separating us from the farm equipment thoroughfare (and illegal drag strip during summer months) was a lateral ditch, strip of grass, and six-foot wooden fence. With all the elbow room of living in the country, neighbors closely bordered us on both the left and right.

Per our routine, my wife and I sat peacefully watching the nightly news, which made the time around ten o’clock or a little thereafter. Our three older dogs were lounging with us in the living room while our two pups were outside doing whatever it was that pups do at night. We didn’t hear the impact, although neighbors farther from the road did. No, the first indication that something was wrong came when pups erupted in a barking frenzy. As I rose to see what the commotion was all about, they rocketed through the dog door and raced to the front door, barking the entire way. Then whirling around, raced back outside, now followed the three seniors who had joined in on the barking.

Stepping out onto the back steps, I saw a car parked on the side of the road directly across from our house. It’s headlights silhouetted a person running towards the neighbor’s house screaming something unintelligible. My first thought was that someone had hit a dog, which was unfortunately a too-common occurrence.

“Something happened,” I said as I headed for the front door with all five barking dogs crowding me. Pushing my way past them, I went outside to find the car driverless but idling. Not far away lay a dark, crumpled mass centered in the road.

They said the boy was 16, but upon approaching him, my guess was closer to ten. He looked so small, so young, as he lay on his back, arms and legs splayed, his head resting in a large pool of blood. I had no doubt that he was dead, this not being my first encounter with a corpse. Looking down upon him, I could feel the body empty and lifeless. Even had he been alive, his condition was well beyond what my basic first aid training equipped me to deal with.

Assuming that a 911 call had been made, I stood over the body to - hopefully - ward off any oncoming traffic. Our neighbor on the opposite side had a beautiful pit bull who trotted over to investigate, and was quickly retrieved by his owner who carried him back home. Neither of us spoke.

Within a couple of minutes came the wailing siren and flashing lights of the responding Sheriff deputy. I flagged him down, and no sooner did he begin working on the body than an ambulance arrived and EMTs began their futile attempts to resuscitate the boy. After giving my statement, I was returning to the house when a gut-wrenching shriek stopped me.

Yeah, the boy’s girlfriend. Or ex-girlfriend, as they had broken up just minutes before, running hell-bent down the middle of the road screaming the entire way. The victim and his friend had left her house just minutes before. Originally investigated as a homicide, the friend was initially suspected of pushing him in front of the car; it was later determined a suicide.

The blood stain remained for weeks as a grim reminder, and neighboring dogs attracted to the scent, investigated. The following month, a car pulled up to the spot where the boy had been killed and I watched as parents, and probably friends or family, reverently nailed a white cross to the nearby power pole. Each year, a bouquet of flowers would be placed at the foot of the cross commemorating that tragic night.