They're Playing Our Song

Max adored his wife Mim but he left her two nights every week—usually Tuesday and Wednesday—and slept alone on a thin cotton mattress at the North Beach Volunteer Fire Department. He led an EMT response team, prying bodies out of crushed cars, transporting the injured and ill, dispensing oxygen and comfort to the frightened and infirm.

He liked the young guys on his team, Arnie and Vince. They’d sit around the fire house playing cards, watching the three ESPN stations and swapping stories about their romantic liaisons. At least Arnie and Vince would. Max and Mim had been married for almost thirty years. Their thirtieth anniversary was coming up soon and they already had tickets for a seven day Caribbean cruise to celebrate. A regular, church-going man, the business manager at West Marine in Annapolis, Max was the last person anyone would suspect of getting caught up in anything the least bit strange, yet he did.

It began innocently enough. His crew was called out one January night just after closing time for the bars along Route 261 to a crash in the middle of the bridge over Fishing Creek. A drunk ran his Charger over the sidewalk and into the railing. Steel and concrete kept the car from going into the water but the whole front of the car was smashed in. The collapsed steering wheel crushed the driver’s chest into his spine and he was DOA.

There was nothing they could do for him. So they pried the body out of the crumpled car, gathered it up and zipped it into a body bag. Since there was no urgency they stuck around directing traffic until the wrecker arrived. While they were waiting, Max noticed that the radio in the car was still playing. Playing a car crash song. “Hey guys,” Max called. “Listen to this.” Max didn’t recognize the song or the singer but he could tell it was “something something died at the wheel.” Arnie and Vince stood with him beside the opened driver’s door and listened to the song coming

out of the speakers. Their red and white truck lights flashed in sync with the music and reflected off the shiny black body bag lying on the asphalt beside their feet. “That’s ‘I Came Here to Live’,” Vince said. “Yeah,” Arnie said. “But he came here to die.” “Ironic for sure,” Vince said. “I don’t remember ever noticing that before. I mean, a car crash song playing in a crash,” Vince said. “Weird.”

Now that he had time, Max said his regular prayer for the soul of the victim. He always did that when he was called out to a Fatal. Didn’t matter if the vic was Catholic or Methodist or Muslim. They’d sort that out at the hospital, make sure the right priest or pastor or imam was called in. But all departed souls needed a prayer to ease their way along.

On the way back to the station it was all they could talk about. The car crash song. “I bet we’ve heard lots of things playing in the crashes and just haven’t been paying attention,” Max said. It was the oddest thing he could remember happening to him as an EMT. And it piqued his curiosity. Was this something he’d simply not noticed before or was it a strange new thing?

So the following Thursday in the office Max set up a spreadsheet to track whatever they heard playing when they were called out. If they heard a car crash song the row got red and bold text. His first entry was the kid in the Challenger and “I Came Here to Live.” Red and bold text.

After that it got to be a Thing for them. A semi flipped at the intersection of Routes 260 and 2. There wasn’t much damage to the cab and they were able to help the driver out no trouble. All the old guy had was a broken collar bone and bruises. He was about Max’s age, in his early 60s. NPR news was on the radio. The guys agreed that was all wrong but hey, it was Washington. Max added a row to his spreadsheet in black for “NPR News.”

Max wasn’t on duty over the weekends but Arnie and Vince sometimes took shifts depending on whether one or the other had a date lined up. So it came as no surprise to Max when a couple of weeks later on a Monday morning Arnie called him at work to report he’d been out on a call with the Assistant Chief’s team. At the crash

site the car’s sound system was playing David Bowie singing about an airbag. Max made a note to look up David Bowie songs about airbags, thanked Arnie and added a row to the spreadsheet for “David Bowie—Airbag.”

The fact that Arnie asked the Assistant Chief about the song alerted the whole department to the car crash spreadsheet and Max began getting calls from all the teams, fire, rescue, EMT, reporting what was playing when they were called out. As the hard winter progressed there were more accidents on the roads and there were more calls reporting more songs.

Even the Chief reported one to Max. He’d been called out to oversee an accident response. A girl on a motorcycle lost control on gravel going around a corner. Her bike went down, slid off the road and flipped into a ditch. The rider’s body was flung ten feet up into a pine tree, killing her instantly. They’d had to call in a bucket truck to lift a team into the tree to collect her. When they got the body into the bucket they could hear “Leader of the Pack” playing in her ear buds.

“Imagine that,” the Chief said to him, “Leader of the Pack vroom vroom.” Max waited until he’d hung up the phone before breaking out in wheezing laughter. It was hysterically funny. He laughed so hard tears ran down his face and he gasped for breath. It was terrible. Someone’s beloved daughter. But he couldn’t help himself. Leader of the pack, vroom vroom.

And then he felt deeply ashamed. Laughing about a victim’s death was terribly, terribly wrong. The next Sunday at Confession he admitted to Father DiPalma that he’d laughed about the rider’s death. The priest was confused at first but Max explained it all to him.

Father DiPalma had been a chaplain with the 7th Infantry in Kuwait and he’d heard a lot blacker humor than Max’s and he’d seen a lot more carnage than the NVFD saw on the roads of Calvert County, even in winter. “Max, you haven’t sinned in God’s eyes. So long as you never insult victims or relatives,” he said. “And we don’t, Father. That would be awful. Cruel. We would never—” Max said. Words failed him at even the idea.

They negotiated his usual penance (impatience with Mim’s infirmities, worry that daughter Maxine was a lesbian, disgust with son Billy for his racist Facebook

postings). But Max left the confessional unsatisfied. Despite the priest’s reassurance, it seemed to him there was something very wrong in what he’d done.

Thinking about it afterwards, Max decided that was the beginning of the curse. The following Tuesday night was awful. The weathermen called it ‘wintry mix’ but on the western shore of the Chesapeake it was solid sleet. Ice formed early on frozen asphalt and built invisible black pools in every depression in every road. Bricks of briny ice stacked up on the beach at water’s edge.

Inevitably Max’s team was called out. An F-150 going too fast hit a patch of black ice and slid sideways into a stand of trees. The whole right side of the cab folded around a thick Virginia pine. The driver wasn’t wearing a seat belt and the impact threw him into the sharp vee of the bent-in passenger door. His right side and head were crushed.

He was still breathing when Max got to him, pink foam bubbling out of his nostrils. There was nothing they could do for him. Nevertheless, Max called for a small ampule of morphine, enough to ease the pain but not enough to affect his labored breathing.

“We’re here to help, friend,” he whispered in the driver’s ear. Max slid the morphine into his shoulder. “Can you pray with me?” Receiving no reply, Max began reciting Psalm 23. He got to “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death--” when yelling from outside interrupted him. Followed instantly by the dull bang of steel on steel and the tinkling of glass breaking as another car slammed into the pickup.

The shock of the impact killed the driver instantly. Max was thrown into the padded dash and that probably saved his life. Still, half the ribs on his side were broken, his lower back was injured and his head banged against the dash hard enough to cause a concussion.

In the impossible silence after impact Max lay stunned, unable to move. The twice-smashed truck’s radio played “The Ballad of Thunder Road” over and over in the cab. Robert Mitchum’s raspy voice hammered at Max’s brain. Let me tell the story, I can tell it all, About the mountain boy who ran illegal alcohol.

His daddy made the whiskey, son he drove the load, When his engine roared, They called the highway Thunder Road. Max’s head hurt. He was sleepy and cold and clammy. He wanted to vomit and his mouth was dry. He began to cry. How could he leave Mim this way? He couldn’t get the words out of his mouth but he prayed to the Blessed Virgin for help. A needle went into his arm.

The Chief called Mim as soon as the word came in. “Mim, Max’s been hurt. They’re taking him to P.G. Hospital Center now.”

The long-expected call. Adrenalin pounded in her heart. Her head was filled with buzzing. She couldn’t feel the phone in her hand. “Where are they taking him?” she said. She hadn’t heard the Chief. Without thinking she grabbed her purse and started for the garage door in her nightgown.

He repeated, slowly, “Mim. They’re taking him to Prince George’s Hospital Center now. Mim? Mim! Stop!”

She stopped. No thought in her mind. Blank. “I’ll come over and get you,” the Chief said. “Inside an hour. Call the children.”

The children. Mim’s mind restarted. “Okay, Matt. Okay.” They’d launched three kids out into the world more or less successfully, John and Maxine and Billy. At least each was paying his or her own way and none lived at home with them. She called John and Maxine and let them know their father had been in an accident and was being taken to the hospital. Billy didn’t pick up so she left a voicemail message. He’d been out of touch since his arrest at the Charlottesville riots for attacking college kids.

Then she dressed and waited. Mim sat at the dining room table fully clothed in her warmest wool coat, rubber boots and the cashmere watch cap Maxine knitted for her last Christmas, ready to leave a half hour before the Chief’s unit pulled into the driveway.

They spoke little on the way. Driving safely took concentration. The storm was winding down, leaving behind freezing temperatures and icy roads. State and county

trucks were everywhere spraying rock salt. Vince radioed in that they were leaving the hospital to return to North Beach. He reported that Max was in serious but not critical condition and had been taken into surgery.

When they arrived at the hospital the Chief accompanied Mim inside. The information clerk in the lobby told them that Max was already out of surgery and in recovery. The Chief left Mim in the overheated Trauma Center waiting room. She stared at posters in English and Spanish advertising a range of social services until she fell asleep sitting up. At daylight they put Max in a private room and she was allowed to sit with him as he slept off the remains of the anesthetic.

She sat beside his bed, the man she’d lived with for more than half her life. A good boy grown into a good man. Lucky girl, her mother told her. Lucky girl. Mim shook her head and stretched upright, easing the ache between her shoulder blades. Almost thirty years. Where did they go? And how many more would they have?

She needed to call West Marine and let them know what happened. She needed to lose twenty pounds and get fit.

It was late morning before Max woke. His body ached. A cup covered his nose and mouth. The hiss of oxygen came from behind his head, which was raised slightly. His lips were cakey, his tongue sticky. The room was bright, too bright. He blinked his eyes slowly. He wished someone would wipe the sand from around his eyes. A white sheet covered him, smooth except for a wrinkle where a drain was attached to his side. His arms and hands lay atop the sheet to either side of him. A tube ran from somewhere behind his head to the back of his left hand.

Mim’s voice saying something. He licked his dry lips. A straw in his mouth. Max sucked tepid liquid. He turned his head away from the straw. Her hand wiping liquid from his cheek. Thoughts came slowly, dripping with the fluids running into his hand and bubbling out his side. Robert Mitchum’s voice droned in his head, Let me tell the story, I can tell it all… Max closed his eyes and slept. Max woke the next day, conscious but woozy with Percocet. The resident who came in to check on him assured Mim that Max was out of danger, then listed the issues, ticking them off one by one on his fingers: one, the concussion would resolve itself in a week or so; two, one of his cracked ribs had bruised his spleen so the drain

would have to stay in place until the inflammation calmed, probably within the next two days; three—here the resident paused—it was unclear how badly his spinal cord was injured; they’d have to wait and see. Max could have lost some function; how much—again—remained to be seen.

Mim put a hand on Max’s shoulder and said, “It could have been worse. He’s survived and that’s all that matters now.”

The resident agreed, smiled, and left the room. Maxine came to see him the next day and brought flowers along with a change of clothes for Mim. John stopped by two evenings later after work. Mim called Billy but again he didn’t answer his phone.

A few days later Max was much more alert so Mim called the firehouse and let it be known that Max could have visitors. Vince and Arnie were the first. The Chief and the Assistant Chief visited together. Flowers came from the office.

When everyone was gone and it was just Max and Mim in the room he told her he felt responsible for what happened to him. He explained the car crash songs and laughing at the death of the motorcycle driver and the song playing in her earbuds and how that brought a curse down on his head. Mim couldn’t work out how any of that meant Max was responsible for his injuries. And she didn’t believe in curses from the dead. It made sense to Max, though. Because “The Ballad of Thunder Road” kept playing over and over in his head. His belief that his injuries were punishment gnawed at him the whole time he was in the hospital.

Father DiPalma visited him in the hospital. Within the circle of the weightless white privacy curtain pulled around his bed Max raised the topic of curses. He hinted at an exorcism. Father DiPalma would have none of it. He could see that Max was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He suggested his colleague Dr. Rosenberg could help. Max didn’t see how Dr. Rosenberg, being Jewish, would be able to assist with an exorcism. But he said nothing.

After two weeks a resident removed the drain from his side and Max was discharged home. Using a walker he was able to make it from the wheelchair at the hospital entrance to Mim’s car without assistance. His spinal cord was still healing—to the extent it ever would—so his legs were weak and he placed them one at a time

carefully, still not sure where each was going nor feeling the ground surely with tingling feet.

He was still on Percocet. The drugs kept him comfortable but fuzzy. Nevertheless, as soon as he got home he told Mim he’d switch to ibuprofen and bourbon. Flush that evil stuff down the toilet before he became one more addict.

The trip from the hospital just about did Max in. Mim’s Caddy wallowed like a Zodiac in rough water every time she hit a pothole and she hit every pothole along the way, a consequence of her not seeing the road all that good. Between the ride and the Percocet he almost puked several times. Their Song, the one they danced to at their wedding, came up on the car radio: “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” the Platters’ version from 1958. Not such an odd choice for a firefighter. They looked at each other. Could there be a less romantic moment to hear it playing?

Since he wasn’t supposed to climb stairs yet Mim had the den set up as a bedroom for him. She’d opened up the sleep sofa and put on fresh linens. Max crawled onto it and sighed as he settled in to the sagging springs. Mim fussed over him, removing his shoes and placing an afghan over his legs.

Max slept through the afternoon. Mim woke him at five and at nine to give him his pills. Groggy, he didn’t notice what meds she was giving him and he lapsed back to sleep immediately. Mim slept in the rocker, unable to leave him.

The next morning Max shifted over to his alternate pain management plan, ibuprofen and Jack Daniel’s. The pain in his side and his back were worse, but he thought of the pain as penance. In his still-fuzzy mind he focused on the spreadsheet as the source of the curse. He considered deleting it but that would be like killing the victims a second time. Like murder.

After breakfast he called in to his office. Between sick leave and vacation leave he had the better part of a month before he had to go back to the office. His next call was to the firehouse; since he couldn’t bring himself to delete it, someone else needed to take over the car crash song spreadsheet if they wanted it continued. He’d had enough. He was done with it, with the guilt he felt and with the curse he was convinced the spreadsheet carried.

Later that day the Chief called back. Max took it on speakerphone so Mim could hear. The Mayor of North Beach was coming by with a reporter from the Calvert Recorder to award him a medal for heroism. “You’ve got to be kidding,” Max said. “The only thing I did was get hit by a car. I didn’t do anything heroic. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The Chief said, “I know, Max, and I know how much you don’t like the spotlight. But it’s really recognition for all us, not just you. Don’t we deserve a little recognition?”

“By giving me a medal for being a crash victim?” Max said. “And telling the story of how you all went out in deadly weather to help a dying man. And how Vince and Arnie risked their own lives to get you to P.G. in time to save your life.”

Max sighed. “As long as it’s not just about me then.” “Good man,” the Chief said. “And it better not take too long,” Mim said. “He’s just back from the hospital and he needs to rest.” And there was all that bourbon and ibuprofen he was taking to manage the pain.

“Understood, Mim. I’ll let them know,” the Chief said and hung up. Max shook his head in disbelief. “Must be election season,” he said. An hour later the Mayor of North Beach arrived with the reporter for the Recorder, who turned out to be the Mayor’s wife, and the Chief. Max and Mim exchanged glances. They sat around the dining room table since that was where Max’s injured back was most comfortable. Mim had made coffee.

The mayor handed Max the medal in a presentation box. Inside was an goldtone St. Florian’s cross hanging from a red ribbon. Crossed axes and a fire helmet were enameled in the center of the medal.

Max took the box and put it on the table without a second glance. The Mayor squeezed Max’s hand wordlessly with a politician’s sincerity. He let his wife do the talking.

“So glad you’re on the mend, er, Max,” she said. She plugged a tiny microphone into her phone and placed it on the table in front of him.

“Thank you. On behalf of my team and the whole fire department,” Max said. The Chief beamed.

She said, “Please describe what happened. I’ve read the reports so I know the general outline but it would help our readers if you could give me your impressions.” “The Ballad of Thunder Road” churned round in Max’s head. He could see she had no idea how disturbing it was for him to relive what had happened. Or she didn’t care. He said, “I don’t remember much. It just—happened. But what you need to know,” he said, pointing at the box, “is that Arnie Cooper and Vince Brown are the real heroes. They rushed me to P.G. in the heart of that storm. They saved my life.” She nodded her head and sipped coffee. “Do you remember any of the ride? That would help.”

She hadn’t taken down their names. Max shook his head. “Not a minute of it.” She nodded and unplugged the mic. “I understand. The shock and the drugs. I’ll have enough with a picture. Could I get one with you holding the medal, please?”

Max frowned. But Mim gave him a stern look so Max lifted the medal out of its box and held it up for her phone camera. “Smile, please,” she said. Max stared at her. She took photos anyway. That was the end of the interview. Two days later the Calvert Recorder published a version of the interview with a picture of Max holding the medal looking like he was struggling with a gas bubble. The piece was printed half way down page four. The article was headlined “Hero EMT Recovering.” It reported that his teammates rushed Max to Prince George’s Hospital to save his life. But it didn’t mention Arnie and Vince by name, which is what they deserved and what he’d asked Mrs. Mayor to do. Max read the article to Mim. What was written didn’t bear much resemblance to the interview, of course, but it was still disturbing. From the moment he’d laughed at the death of that young motorcyclist very little seemed to be going right in Max’s life.

One week later the Chief called again to tell him that The Washington Post picked up the Recorder’s article and was sending down an intern and a photographer to do a piece on him for their weekly Calvert County section.

“No way, Chief,” Max said. “Once was enough. Look what you got: two columns on page four under an ad for a sale on Depends. And a lousy picture of me holding a toy medal.”

“Yes, it was a pretty bad picture of you. Well, you think about it. We don’t get much attention in the Post,” the Chief said. “And if you agree to do this one I’ll make sure Arnie and Vince get their names in the paper.”

Max and Mim discussed it the rest of the morning. Seeing how the Reporter piece had turned out he didn’t see why he should bother. She hoped that seeing or hearing about his father’s injury in the larger circulation of the Post would spur Billy to get in touch, but she didn’t want to pressure Max one way or the other. Nevertheless, Max sensed that she wanted him to do the interview so he agreed. He called the Chief. “Okay, I’ll do it.” “Great. Just great. Thanks, Max. I knew you’d do it. The interview is scheduled for tomorrow since their editor is holding space and needs the copy right away.” Assuming that Max would eventually agree, or that Mim would talk him into it, he’d arranged the interview with the Post. The next day Max was still angry at the Chief for assuming he’d agree to the interview. But he was more angry with himself for doing so. Mim worked hard to cheer him up as she drove him over to the firehouse where a crowd was waiting for them. Everyone was smiles and handshakes over coffee and assorted pastries. The actual interview went about the same way as the first one. The picture was better, though: a group picture with the mayors of North Beach and Chesapeake Beach, the Chief, Vince, Arnie and Max, who had to wear the medal around his neck.

Nobody mentioned that Max still needed to use a walker, that he was still sleeping in the den because he couldn’t climb the stairs to his bedroom and that this might be as much mobility as he ever recovered. And that his days as a working EMT were over.

Because nobody thought to tell him not to, Arnie told the Post reporter about the car crash songs they collected. “Yeah. Max had the idea. He keeps a spreadsheet of all the stuff we hear when we go out on a call and we hear a lot,” Arnie said to the intern. “And you know what? That old actor, Robert Mitchum? His song ‘Ballad of

Thunder Road’ was playing in the wreck when Max took the hit! Ain’t that something?”

More than something, it was worth a whole paragraph that the Post’s Regional editor left in because Robert Mitchum had once had a home in Trappe over on the Eastern Shore and she’d grown up in Easton, just a few miles down Route 50 from Trappe.

The story ran as the lead in the Calvert County section the next day. To Max’s eye the group picture looked like a parody. But Mim liked it. She took a photo of it with her phone and posted it to her Instagram account. Almost immediately it went viral.

The day after the piece ran, car crash song reports began pouring in. The Post forwarded everything to the firehouse and they forwarded them to Max. It was a flood. Drunks killing themselves and others. Teens killing themselves and others. Drivers killed texting. Two hundred car pileups on the Indiana Toll Road. Long distance truckers dying in Oklahoma tornadoes that flipped their semis around like Hot Wheels. Cars and people washed away in river flooding in the Carolinas and the Dakotas.

Each report noted what was playing on radio or CD or pod or whatever. “Chapel Bells” and “Dead Man’s Curve” Max remembered from his childhood; “Come Back Jonee” he only knew from googling it. Maybe two dozen just called “Car Crash.” Tom Waits’ “A Sight for Sore Eyes” playing in the cab of a school bus that went off the road in a rainstorm killing six middle school children and the driver. Report after report of car crash songs sent along to Max to add to his spreadsheet of death. Max didn’t want them. Though he couldn’t bring himself to delete the spreadsheet, he couldn’t bring himself to add anything to it either. But the reports clogged up his email inbox regardless of whether he did anything with them. Piles of letters forwarded from the Post clogged up their mailbox out front. Max hobbled out every day with his walker and brought them in, dumping them unopened onto the dining room table. When the piles started falling over onto the floor he dumped them into the cold fireplace.

Among the accident and song reports there were ugly emails gloating over the deaths and threats from three separate cells of neo-Nazis in Idaho and one incoherent Alabama State Senator. The worst, though, were emails from relatives of victims cursing Max, threatening the fire department with lawsuits. And not only emails. Max’s Facebook page and Mim’s Instagram account were filled with attacks on him and his spreadsheet.

Despite Father DiPalma’s repeated assurances, Max became more convinced that he was being hit with a curse he’d called down on his own head. Hurt and angry, he shut down his email accounts and took down both his and Mim’s Facebook pages. Then he set up a new email account using an alias that only family would know.

While his body continued to heal, his spirit flagged. All his life he’d tried to do good for God, America and his community. In all his sixty-two years he’d never been a target of abuse. All because of those damn interviews that he didn’t want to do in the first place. So some of his anger he directed back at himself. And he wondered how long it would be before the online hatred would spill out onto his neighbors, how long before the Ladies of Charity snubbed Mim, how long before he was no longer welcome in the firehouse. Because that’s what mobs do.

That next Sunday Father DiPalma was waiting outside the church for Max and Mim. He escorted them to a pew in front and at Communion he brought wine and wafers to them while the assistant priest handled the rest of the congregation. His sermon was from James 4:11, “Speak not evil one of another, brethren.”

It was clear to everyone in the congregation that Father DiPalma was addressing the attacks on Max. But everyone in the congregation knew that Facebook and Twitter were more powerful than the Book of James. Nobody in the congregation spoke to Max and Mim when the service was over. Max recognized faces of people he’d helped out of smashed Toyotas, people he’d driven to the hospital in cardiac arrest, people he’d helped at the worst moments of their lives. All those faces averted, shamed and shaming.

Max and Mim made their way slowly out of church, heads held high. Father DiPalma walked out front in his white and gold vestments with them and waited with Max while Mim brought her car around. “Don’t judge them too harshly,” he said.

“These days everyone believes the worst of everyone. It seems to be baked into the social media. An internet of misanthropy. They’re only doing what they know how to do.”

“Doesn’t it make you despair?” Max said. Father DiPalma smiled weakly. “The Lord may be our Shepherd, Max, but people aren’t flocks of sheep. They’re packs of hyenas. In Iraq I saw men killing children and children killing men. I saw women stone other women to death. I believe it is a consequence of the Fall, of Original Sin. But it’s God’s love that is the way towards a better world, towards better men and women.” Max shook his head. Father DiPalma shook his hand. On the short ride home in Mim’s Cadillac he had to turn the radio off after “Teen Angel” came up on the Classic Rock station. Max thought about how far he was from the example Father DiPalma set, committed to wrestling the Devil, committed to turning hyenas into sheep. It was humbling.

The following day, feeling stronger, Max insisted on accompanying Mim to the CVS to pick up a refill of his antibiotics. Bending over his walker, Max pushed his way through the double doors. Immediately he felt uncomfortable. He felt the eyes of shoppers staring at them. There was no usual welcome greeting from the clerks at the registers up front. The people ahead of them and behind them in line ignored them. The pharmacy clerk barely acknowledged Max when he reached the counter. He didn’t reply to Max’s greeting. No “Glad to see you up” or “Hope you feel better” or any of the usual platitudes one expects from someone you’d known for years. The clerk didn’t meet Max’s eyes once as he retrieved the prescription and handed it to Max and took the five dollar bill in payment. Instead, he looked past Max to the next customer in line.

Max felt a flash of embarrassment, then anger. Real anger. It took an effort of will for him to clamp his jaws shut and turn away clutching his prescriptions. On the way home Max stared stonily out the windshield. Mim was tactfully silent. As was her car radio.

A voicemail notification from the firehouse was waiting at home. Max called. After a moment’s pleasantries the Chief said, “We’ve been receiving tons of angry

email here, you know, about you collecting those car crash songs. And some lawyer letters. A lawsuit filed by the family of the guy who died in the accident where you were hurt. Trying to help him.” Max said nothing. The Chief said, “So. Uh. Well, the town attorney said we need to let you go. I know that’s not fair and I don’t like it. But. You understand. With your mobility issues and your spine—I’m afraid I’m going to have to remove you from the roster. But understand. Every man and woman, the whole department, we’re all behind you, Max.”

Max said not a word. He simply hung up. Mim looked across the countertop at him with tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Max,” she said. “After all these years—.”

“Glad to know ‘they’re all behind me’,” he said. “But he’s right. What use can I be to them now that I need this to get around?” He nodded at the walker next to him.

Letters and cards continued to fill their mailbox. Each one reported a gruesome accident and accompanying car crash song. Each one was a record of someone’s last minutes of life. Each one felt like a threat of what would happen to him. Nevertheless, thinking of Father DiPalma, Max prayed daily for the souls of all the victims.

Cars cruised slowly past their house at all hours, people leaning out to take pictures as if their white colonial was an exotic artifact. One morning a black Dodge Challenger paraded back and forth in front of their house with “The Ballad of Thunder Road” blasting from its sound system, the bass notes shaking the house’s windows. It went on for at least ten minutes. Long enough for the neighbors to call the police.

Max felt like he and Mim were prisoners in their own home. It was finally clear to Max that the curse was anything but mystical. The curse was people. The hyenas had cut him and Mim out of the herd and they were circling for the kill. His thought was interrupted by the phone ringing.

It was the boss. “Max,” he said. “How’s it going? Coming along? Of course you are.”

“Bill,” Max said. “I was just thinking I could start working from home. I can sit at the computer for at least half a day now.”

Bill said, “Glad to hear you’re feeling better, Max. But. Uh. About corporate. There’s been a lot of complaints about you to corporate and, well, the word came down. They want you out. I told them they couldn’t do that to me. I mean, they couldn’t do that to you. So I got them to agree that you can retire on disability. Since your injuries are so severe and it isn’t clear when—or if—you can come back to work. So they’ve emailed a link to their system. You just click on it and fill out the form.” “But I can come back to work, Bill,” Max said. If they insisted that he come to the office Mim could drive him. It would be rough but he could do it.

“I’m sorry, Max. I truly am. But that ain’t going to happen. Take the retirement. You’ve earned it. Heck, you’re almost old enough for Medicare anyways. And you can start to collect Social Security in a couple of years.”

Max was stunned. He’d never thought about retirement, not even as his birthdays piled up.

“Max? Are you there?” He was so disposable that the accusations of unknown people who didn’t even know him were destroying his life. No matter how hard he fought, no matter what he did or said to defend himself, his reputation would be stained for the rest of his life. “Yes I’m here,” Max said. He could fight this. Hire a lawyer. Or he could just retire and let it all go. The people his EMT crew protected? His colleagues in the office? Even the folks in the pews on Sundays, let them all fend for themselves. He didn’t need to look after anyone except Mim and the children. And the children were grown and on their own.

In fact, he could be retired right now. His laptop was open and the browser was displaying the incoming email from Corporate already. It was the work of a handful of keystrokes between words on the phone for him to became a retiree.

“Good bye, Bill and good luck.” Max hung up on his former boss. Then Max stared at the piles of letters covering the table, spilling on the floor and stacked on the grate in the fireplace. Memorials to the dead from around the world. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to throw them out or to delete the

spreadsheet because that felt like killing the crash victims a second time. But now the piles and the spreadsheet felt like a crown of nettles digging into his head, each death a thorn jabbed into his brain.

Mim came into the room and watched, confused, as he gathered up the piles of paper and tottered across the floor to toss everything into the fireplace along with the newspaper issues of the Record and the Post about him. “Max, what are you doing?” “They just fired me,” he said, “Calls to corporate from the same ones responsible for all the hate mail. All those accusations. Corporate doesn’t care if it’s true or not. All they care about is the hit on their brand.” “What? Can they do that?” “Of course they can,” he said, arms full, struggling from dining room to living room without his walker. “Oh, I’m not ‘fired.’ I ‘retired.’” Forms were on the corporate website. So I filed. Just like that. Selfish, I know.” “Max, you’re walking without support,” Mim said. He stopped beside the living room sofa, swaying the slightest bit. Damn. So he was. He watched as she collected the remaining mail and loaded it into the fireplace. When she moved aside he set a match to them. It was a funeral pyre for all the dead. With the money from their canceled anniversary cruise they could fly down to Florida for a couple of weeks. Soon as his back healed a little more. Mim said something about real nice condos in Florida somewhere. Panama City. And if you paid a little more you could buy one with a view of the water. Just like here.

One thing left to do, though. Max pushed himself up, threaded his way to the dining room. She watched over his shoulder as he pulled up its file manager. It was the work of a minute to permanently delete all copies of the spreadsheet of car crash songs. Not just delete, every single one and zero wiped and recycled. Cloud backup, too. As if it had never existed.

The job done, he snapped the cover shut. And realized that he hadn’t heard The Ballad of Thunder Road inside his head all day. He was free. He didn’t have to do anything other than look into Mim’s steel blue eyes. He loved those eyes.

“So what about the curse?” Mim said, nodding her head at the laptop.

Max laughed. “Forget all that. The curse is people thinking the worst of everyone else. Our good neighbors at All Saints will continue to avoid us and the Ladies of Charity will cluck their tongues and pity poor you. You said something about Panama City a while back, didn’t you?”

“I did. Panama City Beach,” Mim said. “You know, people are going to be the same down there as they are here.”

He nodded. “But it’s all about us now, isn’t it. Not this place, not these people.”

She would miss the children and the grandchildren. But they could come down and visit. “I’m sure there’s a Florida song we could make ours,” she said. He grinned and tapped the closed laptop. “I can build a spreadsheet.”

Peter Alterman

for Don Bivens

I would sort the world into its people: The betrayers and the betrayed. The loved and the unremembered. But geography seeks higher truths than these.

Mere naming of places is not geography. Knowing the heart in those names and the lines drawn across lives serves the geographer of dreams.

I have driven the blue, red, and black, shifted gears up and down the contours, ridden across bridges over blue inkings, and stopped to address a myriad of the names.

Compare, generalize, ascend to higher ways of seeing the land and what you have done to it and each other by retiring to a monasteried bungalow.

Trace the laws of our nature with a hand that grows unsteady as second lives eat away the purpose of time. Mark the influences of hunger.

Geography is a word, an argument, a trial of life against inevitabilities debated in totems and yellowed letters, denied in a morning cup of black coffee.

I am a sorter of years and names, asking reasons, causes, effects here in my solitary silence, breathing through red lips and ghost-white beard.

I am a namer of more than mere places. She walked away without my name. He stopped writing sermons or praying. There is good in being the first to die.

David Anthony Sam

David Anthony Sam lives in Virginia with his wife, Linda. In addition to over ninety previous publications, his sixth collection, Dark Fathers, is forthcoming in 2020. Sam teaches creative writing at Germanna Community College and serves as Regional Vice President of the Virginia Poetry Society.