Broken People - Idaho 2003
When Jonathan Cole accidentally ran over his six-year-old boy with the carbine harvester, it was the worst day of his life — one that was quickly followed by a procession of runners-up for this honor in rapid succession.
There was the divorce. There was the custody battle over their three surviving girls. There was the loss of 980 acres, two-thirds of his original farm, to buy out what the court decreed to his wife as alimony. There were the hundreds of days he would come home to an empty house, each of them part of his penance to reflect on all that he lost.
The most difficult days were in November after all the winter wheat was planted. Once sown, the crop would go through cold acclimation to survive winter and mature for a spring harvest. This year, planting had gotten off to a late start because of an unexpected rainy season, one that Jonathan knew would likely delay harvesting next year. But as long as frost didn't plague the fields before the plants flowered, the yield and head quality wouldn't be much different from the year before.
Knowing that, Jonathan had started to think of the late planting as a blessing. It meant fewer idle days looking for things to do in an effort to ward off what had become a seasonal depression.
Even today, he found himself looking for something to do. So he spent a good portion of it walking the property’s fence line with a crowbar in hand and an assortment of tools hanging off a well-worn construction belt, stopping here and there to bang in a nail or tighten an unraveling piece of wire.
With the better part of the day behind him, he walked toward the house. There was still an hour before dinner — he had concocted a slow-cook chicken chili recipe before leaving early in the day — so Jonathan stopped at the front porch to look back upon the low hanging sun. It wouldn’t be long before the clouds would flush and turn crimson, a sight he had never grown tired of when he had someone to share it with.
Life was different when he had a family. His wife always referred to him as her rock, strong and determined. His four children loved him because he was funny, often bursting through the door singing the Mighty Mouse song that he was home to save the day. He considered himself lucky, not at all overwhelmed by the kind of large debts that many family farms had faced over the years, some of them succumbing to pressure and selling out to larger operations. Or worse, as in the case of one Jacob Peters, added to an uptick in farmer suicides over four decades.
Despite his personal misfortune, Jonathan wasn’t susceptible to either. While his farm was no longer profitable enough to buy back the acres he lost, he couldn’t see himself doing anything different. As for suicide, it wasn’t viable as a Christian, even if he had stopped going to church to avoid the quiet discomfort that seemed to follow him like a personal storm with queries of how he was getting along or if he wanted to talk. He would never burden his girls or their future children with such a deeply haunted legacy.
So he suffered alone, as safe from prying eyes as possible. Nobody came around anymore, not after he sent the last funeral casserole dish back without even a spoonful taken from its ceramic and tinfoil-topped shell. Nobody came around anymore, except today.
What started as a small dust plume on the horizon quickly took shape as a silver Outback racing down the road that led to his front door. He walked down to meet the driver as she circled around and rolled down the window.
“You lost?” he asked, tilting his tall frame to get a better look.
“There’s been an accident,” she said, dismissing his question. “On the highway, about a mile from your property.”
“Did you call it in?”
“No, I mean yes, but there’s two people — a woman and a boy — trapped in the car,” she said. “I don’t think they can wait.”
“All right,” Jonathan said. “Let me get my keys, and I’ll follow you back.”
“I don’t think there’s any time to spare,” she insisted. “I’ll take you. Get in.”
“All right,” he said, opening the door and climbing into the passenger seat.
As soon as he was in, she stepped on the gas and headed toward the highway. The fasten safety belt warning rose up and broke the awkward silence of two strangers sitting side by side. He reached back, pulled the seatbelt forward, and clicked it in place.
“It was terrible,” she said. “The car that was hit was in front of me, slowing and pulling off along the side of the road. I slowed down with it until it made an abrupt U-turn, accelerating and expecting to be in the clear since I had slowed. They never saw the truck behind me, also gunning the gas to get around me. Then it struck them, sending the car spinning, glass shattering, and something — their dog — flying out the back window.”
Jonathan noticed a faint column of black smoke rising up as they cleared the ridge that separated his farm from the highway. She had made the right decision to go for additional help after making the emergency call.
“After the collision, there was nothing. The whole world had gone unnaturally silent, no sound at all until I rolled down the window,” she said, seeing her memory of the accident superimposed on the road in front of her. “I could hear her after that. The lady who was driving the white car started wailing in uneven, pain-fueled sobs.”
“Any sign of a fire?” Jonathan asked, considering the smoke as they approached.
“Not when I left,” she said with a sob. “Just broken people everywhere. Three in the car. Two in the truck. The man in the car crawled out of a window to check their dog, then he collapsed on the side of the road. The other two are trapped. The woman who was the passenger in the truck seemed to be in shock or something, and her husband, the driver, was unconscious. I didn’t know what to do. I called, but you know how it is. It could be a half-hour out here.”
“You did the right thing,” he said. “I’ll figure it.”
As they pulled up, he assessed the scene. The truck rested at an awkward angle across the southbound lane, the cab hanging over the soft shoulder. The driver’s side door was open; the older man who was driving still leaned into the airbag that had knocked him unconscious. The broken front grill foreshadowed the damage done to the smaller, sportier white sedan.
It had spun completely around, perhaps several times, and now sat askew in the northbound lane with a trail of debris in its wake. Everything was as she had said, frozen in a horrid aftermath of an accident, except for a growing trail of smoke rising up from somewhere toward the back of the vehicle. Freeing the two trapped in the car would have to be his priority.
“What’s your name?”
“Jessica,” she said.
“Nice to meet you, Jessica. See how the man is doing,” Jonathan said, motioning to the car’s passenger who was sitting quietly, drawing in slow, steady breaths and stroking the fur of the family’s unmoving dog. “I’ll work on getting them out.”
He circled the car, checking the door handles. None of them worked, apparently damaged in the collision. Peering in at the woman through the passenger side window, he could see where he needed to start. Her left foot was pinned by the twisted interior. He would have to free her in order to reach the boy, who was struggling against the safety belt and angle of the encroaching driver’s seat.
He moved over to the driver’s door, pushing the crowbar into the seam that divided the door from the front quarter panel, hoping to release some of the pressure off her foot. As he did, she began to wail again, pleading with him to leave her alone and free her boy first, who was now complaining that the back seat was growing hotter. Ignoring her, he worked his way down one side and then inserted the crowbar in between the two doors, directly adjacent to the lock. He pushed, snapping the lock and giving himself just enough room nudge the door open one inch at a time.
When he managed a large enough opening, he climbed into the cab to reach her broken foot, removing the jagged edges of plastic and metal that pinned it. Once clear, he maneuvered her through the opening, and handed her off into the waiting arms of those who had stopped to lend more help and direct traffic.
When she was out, Jonathan climbed into the driver’s seat and worked his way over the center console between the front seats. He was young, maybe six years old, red specks of blood sprinkled across his face where the glass shards had cut him. He was crying, pulling desperately at the frozen safety belt. The back seat was warm, smoke creeping into the cab.
Jonathan started to choke, the acrid smell of burning rubber, plastic, and engine oils rolling into the cab making his eyes water. The boy was crying, breathing in the toxic mixture, and then erupting into deep coughs.
“Hey, hush now,” he said, seeing his own boy laying in the field and covered in blood, trapped in the blades of the carbine. “I’m going to get you out. You’re going to be all right.”
As he cut at the safety belt, he could feel the growing heat of the fire from somewhere behind the back window, a red glow and muffled crackling noise that bore down on him and the boy. Jonathan knew that the chance of an explosion was slim, but there would be a point when the gases and oils would ignite and fire would engulf the car.
He cut through the belt and pulled the kid toward him, but the boy only cried out. His knee was still stuck between the back seat and the driver’s seat. Jonathan began working his knife on the back seat, patiently cutting the fabric in an attempt to create more space between to free the boy’s leg and ignoring the growing heat inside the cab.
When a section of the seat fell away, he pulled at the boy’s leg at the knee and slid out, giving him just enough room to pick up the kid, twist around, and pass him out the door. Once the boy was clear, Jonathan had to work himself out of the cab, climbing out head-first as someone yelled at him to get out. As he pushed past the door, kicking to free his foot from the wreckage, the back seat erupted with flames.
He stumbled away from the heat, cradling his left arm. It had been burned while freeing the boy. Even before he heard the sirens in the distance, Jessica had come to him with something cold to drape over his arm.
“You’re a hero.” She smiled at him.
“I’m no hero,” he said. “I’m as broken as the rest of them.”
"We’re all broken, Jonathan,” she said. “But some of us push past the pain of it so others don’t have to feel our hurt.”
Her words left him speechless, his thoughts slipping away toward the boy he couldn’t save — his own son all those years ago. These people would never have to know the pain of losing a son like he had.
Hours later, after Jonathan was treated for second-degree burns and Jessica had given her statements, she asked him to join her for a drink before taking him home. Surprising himself, Jonathan agreed, allowing the pain of his past to burn away with the remnants of the white sedan even if his grief for having lost a son would never fade away. He agreed because of the way she smiled at him. It was the first one given to him freely in more than five years.
