The Accident The AccidentONE SATURDAY AFTER LEAVING THE STARDUST TAVERN shortly after midnight, Okey went over a mountain.
They all knew it would happen sooner or later. They knew Okey would drink one glass of whiskey too many and not make it home some night.
But when it finally happened, when the call really came, telling them he was at the county hospital, telling Ellie’s mother to get there and quick, they knew they were none of them ready to lose Okey. Ellie most of all.
Okey’s red and white pickup lay over the side of a mountain, smashed and defeated, and Okey lay in a hospital bed in much the same condition.
They called a neighbor and the six of them went to him.
The nurses wouldn’t let the girls in to see him. Only Ellie’s mother. Ellie waited with her sisters in the glaring light of the waiting room, pacing around the leather couches, reading the names of the candy bars in the vending machine, wishing she smoked so she could have a cigarette or drank so she could have a drink.
Ellie had always thought Okey could never be hurt. He had survived tons of rock falling around him deep in the mines—there should not be anything else he couldn’t survive. Everyone worried about Okey driving drunk in his Chevy, even Ellie, but she was the one who was certain he would never die in it. Or because of it.
But when they had pulled in front of the doors of the hospital emergency room, when Ellie had seen the parked ambulances and the white shoes and had smelled the odor that belongs only to a place filled with the sick, she felt she had already lost him. She could not see Okey surviving in such a place.
When Ellie’s mother returned to the waiting room after seeing him, she was crying in great heavy sobs that seemed to drag their way up from the very center of her, and they escaped in sounds that made Ellie hurt inside. And she felt more certain she would lose her father.
Eunice and Wanda gathered their mother into their arms and the three of them collapsed on the couch, crying into each other’s necks and shoulders and bosoms. Martha slid down onto the floor beside their feet. Linda sat shivering in a nearby chair, with tears running down her cheeks and into the corners of her mouth. And Ellie stood staring at her own reflection in the glass of the vending machine.
Okey was not dead. He was unconscious, his condition was critical, he was fighting for his life, their mother said—but he was not dead.
Ellie stared at herself in the glass and remembered she had not thanked Okey yesterday morning for unscrewing a honey jar for her.
It had been hard for him, with his bad arm, but he had sat down in a chair, put the jar between his legs to hold it and had used his good strong arm to give it a determined twist.
She had taken it from him and not said thank you.
And now she could not tell him.
“Can’t I see him, Mama, please?”
Her mother stuck both her thumbs into the corners of her eyes as if to clog the tears that wanted to flow. She gave a ragged sigh.
“No, Ellie, they said nobody but me. You don’t want to see him, Ellie. You don’t want to see him.” She buried her face against Eunice.
Daddy, don’t you die on me, Ellie thought.
Don’t you die on me.
She left the vending machine and began pacing again, her fingers twisting in and out of each other, her eyes wide and wet.
And she thought, Must be something I can do. Must be something a girl could do for her daddy who might be dying.
Please Jesus don’t let him die.
Our Father don’t let him die.
None of it sounded good enough. It wouldn’t work. She wished she smoked. She wished it was yesterday. She wished … and she saw it.
On one of the coffee tables beside a green leather chair. A Bible. Not like her own, since it had somebody named Gideon on the front of it. But it was a Bible.
She dropped into the chair and picked it up. The pages were thin and slick.
Don’t die, Daddy.
Using her thumb to flip the pages, she searched. Something good to say to God. That’s what she wanted. What you are supposed to say when your daddy might be dying.
A page said: WHERE TO FIND HELP, WHEN.
Ellie slid her finger down the words on the page.
AFRAID. Yes.
ANXIOUS. Yes.
DEPRESSED. Don’t know.
DISASTER THREATENS. Yes.
FACING A CRISIS. Yes.
OVERCOME. Some.
SICK OR IN PAIN. Daddy is.
TROUBLE, IN. Maybe.
WORRIED. Yes.
And she wondered where to turn first, because under AFRAID there were four different chapters she’d have to look at.
But SICK OR IN PAIN made the best sense to her. So while her sisters and her mother huddled together in the middle of the room, Ellie stayed in her chair in the corner and read every verse for someone sick or in pain. She read in Psalms and in Matthew and in Romans and in both Corinthians and in First Peter.
And she didn’t understand any of it.
Daddy, don’t die.
The night passed. The girls, one by one, fell asleep on the couches in the waiting room. Ellie slept in her chair.
And in the morning, their mother woke them. She told them that Okey was stable.
Did that mean he would die, Ellie asked.
Her mother said no. He wasn’t going to die. At least not until he drove that blame fool truck over another mountain.