COLLISION COURSE

Written by James D. Merrick, July 21, 2021

You may have heard that ignorance is bliss. So have I. This is a story of how such stupidness almost cost me my life.

My wife and I and our four kids had just moved into the concrete shell of our yet-to-be-finished home on the lower edge of the Puerto Rico rain forest. The site was about six-hundred feet above the Caribbean Sea. Our newly-bulldozed driveway was a half-mile long mountain steep. We had worked all summer with a crew of barrio men and a couple of friends to make our new “Camelot” suitable for camping until I could manage to put in the doors and windows. I was ignorant as to how the dirt roadway would become something else with the first rain of the approaching hurricane season. I lived to tell about it.

The first summer rainstorm caught me by surprise. It happened on a day when I was about to leave for the nearby town of Naguabo to run some errands. I was anxious to get it over with and return home.

The storm approached rapidly in a rolling bank of gray. It pushed aside the morning sunlight. My first warning of its strength came as I noticed the tree ferns alongside the house. Their lacey fronds had begun to swish in the wind. As a precaution against rain being blown onto the bed, I had previously nailed a “sandwich” of clear plastic sheeting and chicken wire across the opening that was planned for a plate glass window. It was meant to temporarily block the wind and rain. At the same time, the clear plastic provided a view of the valley and the Caribbean. I sat on the bed for a moment, mesmerized by the rapidly-changing sky. It grew black and angry. Torn and twisted clouds billowed toward me.

The leaves from distant yagrumo trees contorted in the wind and bowed down to the approaching storm. Their exposed underbellies signaled white across the hillsides. A damp breeze gushed past me and swirled about the room, swishing away the grocery receipts I had tossed on the dresser the day before, harbinger of my fate that day. The Caribbean, dressed in its darkest blue, lurked in vanishing sunlight. Towering cumulus clouds marched toward land like a regiment of soldiers. As I watched, the air chilled. The sky became a cauldron of blacks and grays. Curtains of wet crepe closed over the landscape, obliterating the view. The world below me turned black with rain. Clear plastic on the wire sandwich was sucked in and out, in and out by the changing air pressure. It rat-a-tat-tatted against the wire. A fleeting thought cautioned me: rain might enter through the still-unfinished side wall openings, places where screens would someday be installed to keep out unwanted leaves and errant birds, and where windows would someday block the rain. One corner of the plastic sandwich slapped against the stretched wire: “tlak, tlak, tlak, tlak, tlak.”

In my impatience to get to town and back, I was oblivious to the danger. I had not thought of the new roadway turning to mud! A rush of impatience shot through me. I headed for the Bronco. As I hurried, raindrops dampened my tee shirt. They splattered against the windshield. I pulled open the driver-side door and slid onto the seat. A first rush of relief surged through me as I turned the ignition key. I placed both hands firmly on the steering wheel, inhaled, and cautioned myself to take it easy: Keep your foot on the brake. Go slow. The tires gripped the pebbly surface of the parking spot. I pulled away.

Ahead of me lay the steepest part of the road. It was also a place where the surface was cheek smooth and free of tire-slowing rock or gravel. Only rain-dampened clay covered the surface. I slowed for the first turn and allowed the steering wheel to rotate against the palms of my hands. My foot tested the break. The Bronco slowed for the turn. Creeping ahead, we moved on and completed the first turn without slipping out of the tire grooves that had been created by dozens of previous comings and goings. We came to a standstill at the second turn. I stared downward. Memory took me back to the pinnacle of the roller-coaster tracks on the Cyclone Racer at the Long Beach amusement park. Chest muscles tightened around my lungs and held my breath prisoner as I gazed down the steep raceway. The wipers beat a steady cadence as they swished water back and forth across the windshield--swish, swish, swish. It was too late to back up: the roadway was too narrow and too steep. I had no choice but to proceed.

Like a ski run, the slick straightaway dropped out of sight in front of me. The foot resting on the brake pedal began to spasm. It bobbed uncontrollably. I couldn’t lift it. I couldn’t press down. My right hand grabbed the emergency brake handle and pulled hard. With a jolt, the Bronco’s all-weather tires dug into the clay. I released the hand brake one notch at a time. The Bronco slid foreword in six-inch spurts. Swollen with fear of slipping off the roadway, my brain searched for an escape. Remain in the ruts and coast, I whispered. Brake…slide. Brake… slide. Brake…slide. Brake.

Then it happened. The handbrake no longer slowed the turning of the wheels. Friction vanished. Bronco continued its methodical downward trajectory. My palsied foot was useless. Through the flapping wipers I could barely make out the roadway ahead, half the length of a football field. We slipped to the right and scraped along the bank. I steered us left--we centered in the ruts. Downward we eased… still on course. My fingers remained locked on the steering wheel.

Will I make it? raced through my thoughts. I brushed aside my panic as protrusions of tire-grabbing pebbles began to appear in the ruts in front of me. So far, on that unwanted journey, Bronco had managed to ride the ruts. In a spurt of hope, I yelled out: “Stay in the ruts, Bronco! Stay in the ruts!” My right foot came to life and shoved the brake pedal. The tires responded. Bronco coasted to a stop. Down the hillside on my left, the river rampaged. I heard its roar as it ravaged its way toward the sea. The mountainside trembled. The last approach to the bottom of the incline awaited us. I released the pressure on the brake pedal. We crept toward the final curve in the road. If we left the tire ruts and slipped to the right, we would drop into the deepening drainage ditch. If Bronco slid off the roadway to the left, we would slip over the edge and tumble down the embankment into the roiling river. If we were able to stay in the ruts, our best option, Bronco would be swamped by muddy rubble at the base of roadway.

I hadn’t expected the hillside to slough onto the road. But it happened. As we negotiated the last curve, we became trapped in a slow and steady mudslide. The hill above us was moving onto the roadway. The Bronco was buried to the hubs--trapped in the flow! I thought nothing could help us. There was no traction. I couldn’t drive forward. Backing up was impossible. I was afraid to leave the Bronco and strike out on my own for fear the flowing clay would wash my four by four over the edge to somewhere irretrievable. Waiting for the storm to quit wasn’t an option. I chose to ride the flow to the bottom of the hill. The Bronco and I coasted downward, downward, downward… inches at a time. Brake and coast…brake and coast…brake and coast.

At the end of the “ski slope,” rock, sand, and other debris had accumulated to create a hillock of solid rubble. Over the hillock we went and on to the road below. Safe…this time.