American Pitchfork Manifesto: Tipping Point on the Road to Amarabia?

A Fictional Retrospective From the Great Beyond

By Pitchfork © 2009-2012
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Freely quote with attribution

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There are stories aplenty of divine intervention during the Founding.  Pitchfork and his granddaughter have one, too.

In the spring of last year in midafternoon, I was driving back home after having picked up our granddaughter at the school bus stop in her nearby neighborhood a few miles distant.  Dear granddaughter stayed with us grandparents until her mom, our elder daughter, came home each weekday from the work that mostly supports her family.

The road the two of us traveled is of two lanes – an old horse path that rose and fell in twisting and turning along low-laying fields to the right and inclines – gentle to not-so-gentle – to the left.  Clear weather, sunny, warmish.

Around the bend to a roadbed ahead stretching a visible 400 feet or so uphill 5 degrees to us, I saw what was all but impossible to recognize as real right away: just at that next road bend ahead, two small, dark colored cars about the same size as ours – a Camry – had just made the curve and right behind them a big, white SUV was pulling into our lane . . . on-coming.

This road is posted at 35mph, most travel 45+.  We were at 35mph.  The on-comer showed no sign of relenting; passing the two in the other lane was woefully slow-going.  Small 6, maybe a 4 on the rise was of no major benefit to the SUV’s progress.

Pitchfork warned loudly about that which the granddaughter already saw.

Pitchfork's sense of it:  To the right, a wee bit of soft shoulder and a pitch down into pasture – seemed perfect for a rollover.  To the left, a hillside too close to miss taking the lead car on our back half where the 10-year old sat buckled in.  Braking hard was ever too little-too late, and a fishtail would have likely worsened the evil-looking outcome.

The SUV gained nearly abreast of the lead car, about 3 car lengths in front of us, with no chance of missing us or even trying.  Estimate:  we were closing at around 100fps – less than a second before impact.

I had warned loudly about that which the granddaughter already saw.

My last view of the hideous caravan from hell:  the uptilted, bug-eyed, mouth agaping face of the lead car driver sharply turned toward the SUV just to the left. 

From a high angle, something fell, landed, dropped onto the front left of our car.  One thump with a noticeable dip forward, its meeting up with our hood was akin to a large bag of cement wrapped in several comforters and plopped on our car hood.

        Instantly, we were in twilight to the sides, near darkness forward that, from my driver’s seat, covered up in length from the top of the windshield to the front of the hood and in width from the a-frame to my left on across to my line of sight roughly forward of the steering wheel’s right edge. 

From the sides, light was akin to being inside a heavy canvas tent in the light of day.  Clear out most of the back window.

Silence, except for the sound of rushing wind and one intermittently, semi-screaming child who admitted later on as did I, that the sound of ‘its’ arrival should have been of metal cruching and the feel of a huge impact . . . and neither happened.  Thump.

These sudden moments were peaceful, safe, protected – without collision’s crunching, no wrenching change of pace, no shrieking brakes, no squealing tires, no honking horns, and no sound of passing vehicles.  None of that.

It was the two of us and a big bird.

Why a bird?  Why big?  Well, there was the size of it covering and cloaking better than half the car – wider than all but something like a cow.

Looking forward in near darkness there barely appeared saucer-sized rows of fine feathers fluttering.  Looking left, more feathers, larger feathers mostly creamy white with beautiful, butterscotch shading and lines nearly tight to the side windows and on down to within inches of the black roadbed and back around a foot or so of the rear window.

Looking right, a distinctive view of a large winglike structure of regularly arranged feathers, some of which feathers – beautifully sculpted – with sunlight glowing through from the other side, were as big as big canoe paddles.  The wing wrapped around the right side of the car more loosely than on the left and trailed straight back.  The coloring was the same – creamy white and beautifully trimmed brushes and fine lines of butterscotch.

I stared hard at the feathers close by on the right.  The wing stretched, as you would stretch a hand after too long working a computer mouse or when fitting into tight gloves; and I could hear the rubbing of the wing on the car top sounding like a slow polishing from a quilt.  A little scratchy, not silky smooth.  The closest I could come to describing that sound:  a great wad of fine steel wool on the end of pitchfork tines.  With each rhythmic stretching, the softish, scratching sound kept track.

Forever passed in seconds.

Big bird lifted off as quickly as it arrived, again, at high angle to our car.  Looking up, I saw one huge wing way high above, and lost it past the upper edge of the windshield.  Looking in the rearview mirror, there was the very backside of a dark car.  Looking forward, we were in the right lane at moderate speed with plenty of time to correct for the next turn to the left and down.  And the curvy road before us was straight this one time.  Straight.

It took days to reckon with the incident.  Unexpected.  Unimaginable.  The memories – over and over.

She said nothing.  Not to anyone, including her mom and grandmother.

Some time passed. 

Studying next to me in the afternoon, I asked, “Do you remember being on that road coming back from the bus stop a couple weeks back?”

“Yes, papa.  What was it?”

“What was what?”

“The thing that fell on the car and made it dark.”

“What did you see?”

“The big, white SUV was going to hit us.”

“Anything else?”

“The dark.  I was busy covering my eyes and screaming.  I’m only 10 years old, you know.”

“Hear anything?”

“Thump.  What was that?”

“It landed on the car.”

“Anything else?”

“Another sound.  Definitely another sound.  Above.   I don’t know.”

“Like rubbing or scratching?”

“Yes, soft rubbing . . . with a hard, scraping edge to it.”

“It was rubbing on the top of the car.”

“Is that what it was?  Yes, like that.”

“First, I couldn’t understand why that thump was not crunching metal.  What happened?  What did not happen?  And then I worried about not being able to see to make the next turn.”

So was I.  “Anything else?”

"The wing.  I saw the wing just when it went away.  And when it was gone, I couldn’t understand how we were not way farther down the road.”  I couldn’t either.  And I couldn’t understand how that stretch of road was straight just this one time – no need to correct steering until the turn

“What was it, papa?”

“Sweet pea, that was an angel.”

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Morals:  It ain’t over when it’s over; there is overwhelming sufficiency in the faith of a child, because getting a grip on God is like hugging the universe and expecting your fingertips to touch; we are not alone.

Postscript:  This experience is one of several otherworldliness moments in my days of late, none so dramatic as was this.

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