Gambling can be a dangerous game, but never so dangerous as when you choose to gamble with a life. On that particular night, I gambled with three: my own, Ronaldo’s, and a complete stranger.
I was driving Ronaldo to see his sweetheart; if I had to put a timestamp on it, I would say that we were nineteen, or maybe even twenty. Ronaldo’s sweetheart was going to college some 50 miles or so away from where Ronaldo lived, so it was a bit of a drive. Due to the abrupt nature of this little trip, the hour was quite late when we set out, and as a result, I was more than a little irritated. Still, I ferried my friend to the object of his heart’s desire, as good friends are wont to do, and we were making excellent time due to my propensity for speeding.
There is something about the open road on a late summer night that pulses; if you listen close enough beneath the thrum of the engine and the braying of the wind, you can hear a heartbeat. It is slow at first, building in tempo rhythmically with the rising RPM’s. It is soothing in its trancelike melody, almost as if the highway had its own song to share, and as it beats against you while you pound atop it, you can feel it weave its way through the steel frame of the car, aching to burn within your veins. Yes, there is something about the open road on a late summer night that pulses. It is bound in asphalt like a blacktop bleached in blood, and in many ways, it feels like home. That pulsing synchronizes with your own heartbeat, and the road ceases to become a road; it remains a highway, but the concrete strips away, and a network of synapses take its place. You realize, in that moment, that this is where you were born to be.
My throat tightened with the feel of it. My fingers itched with the feel of it. My mind reeled with the feel of it.
It was a two lane highway at this stretch, with one lane for each way. I get this burning in my body that screams “faster, faster!” and so I speed up. Passing a car obeying the speed limit, I feel a momentary thrill that keeps me in the opposite lane. Even when I see headlights coming at us, that thrill keeps me in the opposite lane.
Even when Ronaldo cries out, that thrill keeps me in the opposite lane.
“Chicken” is a game that waxed and waned in popularity back in the fifties and sixties, but for those who may not have heard, the gist of the game is that you get two cars with one driver each speeding towards each other on a collision course, and the first one to swerve out of the way is the “chicken.” Variations exist where you drive the cars off a bluff, or towards a solid structure like a barricade or cement wall, but the theme remains the same.
Caged in the moment and enthralled by the thrill, I committed, without thought or care to Ronaldo’s safety, to an impromptu game of Chicken with the driver coming at us.
The distance between us disappeared quickly, evaporating beneath the passing glow of the headlights. Ronaldo was paler than the new moon when I cast a reckless glance his way, but he was speechless. Silently, we charged forth, and in that moment I knew with a grim certainty that I was not going to swerve. If we were to survive this night, it would be by the stranger’s efforts, not mine.
When we were close enough I could see the whites of the driver’s eyes, I knew we had reached that threshold, that point of no return. I had half expected time to slow down as it so often does before a tragedy, but it kept pace with the speeding cars hurtling towards each other. Just then, when you could no longer distinguish one car’s lights from the other, the stranger swerved sharply into the ditch as I sliced through the road he had occupied mere moments, before. Calmly, I used my blinker to signal a lane shift and merged back into the proper lane. Ronaldo and I maintained a strained silence for the rest of the drive.
We arrive at the college when Ronaldo makes a phone call and shakily exits the car. He gives me a look of complete disbelief, as if he cannot be sure if what had happened on the drive here were real, or something he remembered from a dream. Regardless, the fear and exhaustion on his face is palpable, as though he wore them like a scar. Perhaps, in some ways, he still does. It is a terrifying feeling to know that, if even for a moment, you do not have any control over your own life; that, for even the barest moment, someone else holds your fate in their hands.
In that moment, I should have said something to assure him. Even something flippant to make light of what had just happened would have been better than the silence I became lost in. No matter how hard I tried, I could not escape a truth I felt I discovered that night. It seems so simple a thing, but I imagine understanding it like I did that night requires a certain forfeiture of reason, a surrender to insanity that can only be achieved by reckless abandon. That truth was that you should never gamble against someone who has nothing to lose.
I took a step away from the car, and even though we were miles away from the ditch I chased that stranger into, a collision came. I was unprepared, completely caught unawares, and all I could do was open my mouth in shock and surprise. It hit me, then, crashing into me like it never really had a choice.
Hearing me cry out in surprise, Ronaldo called out, “are you okay?”
After regaining my composure, I spat venomously to the ground.
“Yeah,” I answered, “I just swallowed a fly.”
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