Bronco II

by Michael Patrick Vitale

I remember. You remember too. That one time. The memory you might be embarrassed by. The memory that could very well make you smile—if not blush as well, in the fraught of youthful naïveté—there might be a bit of shame mixed in there as well. A concoction of emotions that could very well string a few tears down a cheek, while recollecting—however, I do not think this is the intention of the memory. If anything, it was a deep lesson in a well of wisdom through mistakes hopefully never made again. I only had a few bruises—a few scratches on my back, and arms, and torso. I walked away with my life. I should be grateful. I should be on my hands and knees.

And I was that night, as I crawled from the indiscernible mangled confines of the cracked and destroyed windshield of a Bronco II that was totaled in the shape of a taco, along the side of a rural country road on the outskirts of my hometown of Visalia, California. I was just a kid. A kid who thought he knew it all, yet also had some small inkling that he was a fool—especially while on his hands in knees, crawling, in utter shock, through shattered glass, and dusty horizon of loose dirt sent arial by the bouncing spin, side-over-side of this Bronco II into an old oak tree, going Lord knows how fast. It made contact with that tree, so far up, it makes my stomach churn. The tree bark scrapped off, where the truck slid down the side of its wise and old trunk. It stood proudly, in the face of the ignorance of youth.

I was in the backseat. I didn’t have a seatbelt on. I was drunk. My friends were both intoxicated too. Coincidentally, both of those factors saved my life: being drunk, and having no seatbelt on. As the Bronco flipped side-over-side, I could feel myself bouncing from ceiling to seat, ceiling to seat, ceiling to seat… and I remained loose and an unconstricted bag of fleshy blood and water, from the alcohol, as if my friend did not just flip his car, swerving wildly and out of control, down this rural road that led away from his house—in pursuit of a pack of cigarettes no less. We were all out of cigarettes. We wanted cigarettes; we wanted to suck on the teat of nicotine like a bunch of stupid fucking infants.

My two friends who occupied the front seats, driving and as co-pilot—they had just dropped acid before we left. I opted out on that adventure on this occasion. I had done enough acid and mushrooms at that time in my life, albeit, in the humble pursuit of awareness in the spiritual. I did not require a spiritual journey that night. I had one well-enough without the assistance of psychedelics. That spiritual journey began with me rhythmically bouncing from seat to ceiling, for what seemed like an eternity. No seat belt. I survived.

We all survived. We all crawled out of the windshield, calling out for one another. Disoriented. Coughing from the dirt and debris. We all groggily walked back to his rural house, surrounded by orchards and farm land, to the driver’s parents’ house. They were out of town. We took advantage of this fact by sharing a fifth of Jack Daniels, and our thoughts and good company with one another, if I remember correctly. We might have smoked a few joints too. Loosened up our attitude. Became the warm campfire of friendship, providing heat for one another.

We got back to his house, and examined ourselves in the mirror of his lower bathroom in the downstairs quarter of his huge country house. I was in shock. My friends were in shock as well. There was some laughing and jubilee in the realization that we survived, with few things to remind us, aside from the damages inflicted on our persons. We showed each other these bruises and scratches. There was laughing involved, yes—but please take into account: we were all in shock—and that shock makes it difficult for me to remember much after this examination in the mirror of a downstairs bathroom.

What I do remember is being upstairs in his bedroom, trying to fall asleep on his cushioned bamboo chair, contorted into the shape of a question mark, listening to my two friends on acid, as they concocted a story to tell my friends’ parents. To explain how things came to pass. To explain how three youths nearly died that night, by the hand of their own ignorance—while also omitting those pertinent facts, in favor of some judicious half-truths and lies—if not to both help me, but to also help themselves. I slowly began to sober up, and become annoyed by the chatter of their acid-peaked thoughts, and to feel the full and fool weight of my own decisions—and to forgo my fingers, for counting the many blessings that appendages would never account for, because I will never have enough of them.

I remember waking up at one point, and seeing my friend through my drowsy and sleep starved eyes; he was languidly and contemplatively staring out the window, as his Bronco II was lifted onto a flatbed truck—it was during the sunrise of the next day. The light of the new day reflected across his face. I think his mind was also, where my mind was, while I tried to sleep. What have I done?