A Death in the Family - James Agee [62]
“Yes, some idea,” Andrew said. “They showed me. They found that a cotter pin had worked loose—that is, it had fallen all the way out—this cotter pin had fallen out, that held the steering mechanism together.”
“Hahh?”
“Like this, Mama—look,” he said sharply, thrusting his hands under her nose.
“Oh excuse me,” she said.
“See here,” he said; he had locked a bent knuckle between two bent knuckles of the other hand. “As if it were to hold these knuckles together—see?”
“Yes.”
“There would be a hole right through the knuckles and that’s where the cotter pin goes. It’s sort of like a very heavy hairpin. When you have it all the way through, you open the two ends flat—spread them—like this ...” he showed her his thumb and forefinger, together, then spread them as wide and flat as he could. “You understand?”
“No matter.”
“Let it go, son,” his father said.
“It’s all right, Mama,” Andrew said. “It’s just something that holds two parts together—in this case, his steering gear—what he guided the auto with. Th ...”
“I understand,” she said impatiently.
“Good, Mama. Well this cotter pin, that held the steering mechanism together down underneath the auto, where there was no chance of seeing it, had fallen out. They couldn’t find it anywhere, though they looked all over the place where it happened and went over the road for a couple of hundred yards with a fine-tooth comb. So they think it may have worked loose and fallen out quite a distance back—it could be, even miles, though probably not so far. Because they showed me,” again he put his knuckles where she could see, “even without the pin, those two parts might hang together,” he twisted them, “you might even steer with them, and not have the slightest suspicion there was anything wrong, if you were on fairly smooth road, or didn’t have to wrench the wheel, but if you hit a sharp bump or a rut or a loose rock, or had to twist the wheel very hard very suddenly, they’d come apart, and you’d have no control over anything.”
Mary put her hands over her face.
“What they think is that he must have hit a loose rock with one of the front wheels, and that gave everything a jolt and a terrific wrench at the same time. Because they found a rock, oh, half the size of my head, down in the ditch, very badly scraped and with tire marks on it. They showed me. They think it must have wrenched the wheel right out of his hands and thrown him forward very hard so that he struck his chin, just one sharp blow against the steering wheel. And that must have killed him on the spot. Because he was thrown absolutely clear of the car as it ran off the road—they showed me. I never saw anything to equal it. Do you know what happened? That auto threw him out on the ground as it careened down into that sort of flat, wide ditch, about five feet down from the road; then it went straight on up an eight-foot embankment. They showed me the marks where it went, almost to the top, and then toppled backward and fell bottom side up right beside him, without even grazing him!”
“Gracious,” Mary whispered. “Tst,” Hannah clucked.
“How are they so sure it was—instant, Andrew?” Hannah asked.
“Because if he’d been conscious they’re sure he wouldn’t have been thrown out of the auto, for one thing. He’d have grabbed the wheel, or the emergency brake, still trying to control it. There wasn’t time for that. There wasn’t any time at all. At the most there must have been just the tiniest fraction of a second when he felt the jolt and the wheel was twisted out of his hand, and he was thrown forward. The doctor says he probably never even knew what hit him—hardly even felt the impact, it was so hard and quick.”
“He may have just been unconscious,” Mary groaned through her hands. “Or conscious and—paratyzed; unable to speak or even seem to breathe. If only there’d been a doctor, right there, mayb ...”
Andrew reached across his mother and touched her knees. “No, Mary,” he said. “I have the doctor’s word for that.