Iowa Essays

 

 

 

 

It could have easily been a story overheard on the No. 4 bus to downtown.  One of countless tales that recycle themselves in the ears of strangers like the buses circle their routes: knocking loose new bits of gravel with every turn and return.  This particular story was related to me by a friend, but it is, for our purpose, an anonymous story – an anecdote that belongs to all of us and none of us at the same time.

 

It was night, or, more exactly, late evening.  She was cycling home from the climbing gym, where she had stopped after work to try and send a route that had been troubling her for a couple of weeks now.  She succeeded.  She left the gym.  She put her helmet on, turned on her headlight.  She smiled as her feet pumped the pedals – her cheeks were flushed.  The familiar rhythm comforted her, the familiar route home.  She was heading west on 20th Street toward Clinton, where she lives.  The occasional car or SUV sped by her on her left, their back draft billowing her blond curls behind her and drying the sweat on the back of her neck.  

 

It was late evening.  She was cycling home from the gym.  In front of her, about half a block up, a sedan swerved around something in the road.  She adjusted her headlight, furrowed her brow.  A glint of red reflective plastic, a patch of peach skin.  Her sweat glands kicked on again.  She broke her easy rhythm and pedaled fast for twenty feet before braking, hard.  She lifted her light, aluminum frame and dropped it curbside. It clattered, the chain rattled, but she didn’t hear a sound.

 

She knelt by the man, and here is where the details have gotten lost in the telling.  But I’ll tell it as I imagine it: His clothes were shredded from where his body had skidded across the ground.  His eyes were blue and slightly milky.  His helmet was still attached.  Blood dripped from both nostrils.  She took hold of his hand, which was trembling.  A glimpse of silver swerved around them.  No sound of brakes, no sign of slowing down.  Time took on the viscosity of syrup.  The young woman screamed.  The man tried to speak, but could not.  Her curls were soaked once more with sweat, stuck to the back of her neck.  She could think of nothing else to do but hold his hand.  She might have whispered, hold on, would like to imagine that she had, but she cannot remember.

 

Eventually, someone stopped and help arrived.  It was probably sooner than she thinks.  But all she remembers is the metal swerving past them, not slowing down.  His lips moving without making a sound.  The story speeds through my ears like those cars sped by the young woman and the dying man.  It travels the same streets as the car that hit him and left him there to die.  On the jog I take each morning, I pass by two trees with small signs attached to them: white wood with a date and name handwritten in black marker.  And on the ground, near the roots: a bunch of flowers in red, white and purple, that someone takes care to keep fresh. 

 

The flowers, like the stories, remain anonymous.  They could have been placed there by anyone: the driver, a friend, a lover.  A witness with blond curls.  It was late evening, she was cycling home.  It is morning.  My body wants to jog on past these sites; these places haunted by failed helmets and bent metal frames.  My feet want to continue in the familiar rhythm home, but I force myself to slow.

 

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Amy Clark is an MFA student at Iowa State University. As a born and bred Iowan, she is honored to have her work appear on this site. When not writing she can be seen serving friendly folks at the fabulous Stomping Grounds Cafe in Ames. Her work also appears in literary journals such as Mid-American Review and Cimarron Review.