It was an accident, Steve

therapy session #2

  IT WAS AN ACCIDENT, STEVE.

Maybe the time has come for me to explain myself more fully, as my therapist said to me. I’ve had a couple of therapists over the last nine months; three, to be exact. I also have an Occupational Therapist who comes to the house once a week. She’s a wonderful woman who listens to me as I try to avoid talking about the issue at hand, because that’s what I do; I laugh at life, like Scaramouch, or maybe Porthos twirling the ends of his moustache and drinking a flagon of wine. (One can never have too much wine.)

I told you, my readers, a month or two ago about the events leading up to me being sent home from work, and not having returned yet. (I just didn’t go into it fully.) It’s not up to the Company to determine if I’m ready to come back to work, or not. I told them I wasn’t responsible for any of the decisions being made on my behalf, and I didn’t care how long it was going to take. I don’t know, I said, when I’ll be coming back to work, and to be honest, I didn’t want to go back. Most of the discussions I have now are with co-workers I’ve spoken to on the phone, or through Messenger.

I have a tentative date for my return to work, and it’s in late September. I don’t have a problem with the idea of going back to work…but there may be some underlying issues all the same. I don’t know how I’ll feel climbing back into the machine I was driving when I drove over my friend.

His name was Stephen E. Pearson. The E was for Emil. He was born April 2, 1957. He was thirteen months and two days older than me. We used to sing TAKE A LETTR MARIA driving the boom boat on our way to tie up boom-sticks. He died on January 10, 2022, slipping on a sheet of ice and sliding under my machine as I drove by—never knowing anything had happened until I heard someone call on the radio that there was a man down in the yard. Hearing that, I drove back toward the yard to see who it was.

I saw him laying there on the wet pavement, one hand on his forehead in that oh so familiar, woe-is-me pose. Seeing him like that, I assumed he was going to be all right. I had a truck to load and drove back to finish loading it. Five minutes work.

I went back to the yard only to see First Aid giving him CPR. What the fuck! He was fine when I left. And then Cody, his son, came running up the beach, searching, and I pointed out to the middle of the yard where his father lay dying. The First Aid responders told him to stay back, and he did, pulling out his phone and calling his sister to tell her the bad news. He also told them to phone my son because I looked like I might need help.

Watching Steve as he lay on the ground dying, I came to the realization that the only one who could have possibly been driving when it happened, was me. There are three machines in total, and one was a football field’s length away, while the other was feeding logs into the mill. I drive the bucket, and I’m constantly traveling in and out of the yard.

Realizing the man who’s been one of your best friends for forty-five years is laying in the middle of the log yard because you drove over him without even knowing it, is no easy thing to accept; watching his son kneeling on the ground fighting back his tears, was heart-wrenching. It’s the knowing that you did it that’s so hard to accept. And the second-guessing. If only I’d been five seconds sooner, or five seconds later; if only I’d gone right, instead of left; and what if he hadn’t been delayed after announcing he was coming out into the log yard…

The second guessing is what does you in, though. And when the Supervisor came to the machine and tried to reassure me by saying you can’t be sure it was you, I only had one question. If not me, then who? That’s when he told me to get off the machine and go to the office. It was doing me no good to sit and watch. No? I went to the office and stood at the small window beside the back door and stared outside. No one would come near me. No one wanted to talk to me. It wasn’t that they were blaming me for what happened, they weren’t, it’s just that they had to deal with it themselves, and talking to me wasn’t going to help them. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to talk to them, either. Still, I was thinking he’d be okay.

Finally, one of the Foremen approached me and I asked him how Steve was doing. Was he going to be okay, I said, wanting him to be okay. He said Steve didn’t make it, his injuries were too severe—and then my world came crashing down around me. I sunk to the floor and curled up into a ball. I tried to fight the tears, but you can’t do that any more than you can run through the rain and not get wet. I saw some of the other guys come around the corner, see me sitting on the floor, and quickly leave. What the hell are you going to say to someone who has just driven over his best friend and killed him? Nothing.

And then we all had to wait. The police will have to take a statement, we were told. And they did. A male and a female cop. There were tears in her eyes as I tried to explain what I thought had happened. You see, I didn’t even know how it happened. All I know is there was a huge sheet of ice and he was walking on it.

And when it was all said and done and his son Cody finally came into the office, he never even looked at me. We never spoke, or tried to console each other; I couldn’t look at him, and he wanted nothing to do with anyone. All I was thinking was that I’d killed his father. It was an accident, but all I could think of was that I’d killed him. It was an accident, and all I could think of was that his grandchildren are going to be waiting for him at his house, expecting to play with him when he gets home. It was an accident, and all I could think of was his daughter, and his wife, and how I’d taken him away from them because I went left instead of right; I left from where I was, to where I was going, too soon. It was an accident. But usually, with an accident, you get a second chance. Most people get a second chance. Some even get a third. So why not him?

When I finally did get home sometime after 5:00, I told my wife that I had to go to his house and tell them what happened. It was the most difficult thing I’ve had to do. And when his wife said she didn’t even know what happened and I told that it was me, that I did it, the look on her face was something I’ll never forget.  Blame.   

But his daughter sat beside me on the couch and held me, telling me it was all right. It was an accident.

And the next day when I woke up after three hours sleep I wept as I sat up in bed waiting for the world to come to an end. And I wanted it to end. It didn’t, but I wanted it to. I wasn’t suicidal, but morose. Despondent. There were no answers to the questions I had.

It was an accident, the kind of accident you couldn’t even write about in a story because people would say it was too far-fetched. The pain has subsided, but I still get emotional. It depends on who I’m talking to, of course; it always comes down to that, doesn’t it? And to be honest, it’s always the women who knew him; the wives of friends we worked with.

An accident.

And I have to live with it.

For the rest of my days.