I ran out to the garage, but he was already backing out, his car just making it under the rising garage door. The headlights were off and his car appeared as a black hole in the air, something dark and ominous that would suck the rest of our world into this furious place. The car careened toward the street in reverse, and then there was the squeal of tires as he turned sharply to be parallel to the street, driving forward. There was the quick thump-thump sound of something beneath his wheels and then the night filled with those sounds of darkness—crickets, a siren far off, the hum of the air-conditioning system—and then my voice calling his name. I sat on the driveway, the dew seeping through my skirt.

I saw then the source of the thumping noise—a chipmunk lay flattened and bloody at the end of our driveway. Sneaking through the yards in the middle of the night, this small animal could not have known the car would be backing up. How was he to know the danger in his usual safe darkness? How were any of us to know the danger in our safe darkness?

The next noise was the resonant but farraginous sound of twisted metal; a nightmare squeal followed by eerie silence, as if the night held its breath with me.

I ran while dialing 911 on my cell phone. I needed only to go a block before I saw Rusty’s car splattered like paint onto a tree. He climbed out of the driver’s seat and I stumbled to him; I didn’t feel the branches that scraped my face or the broken glass that sliced my feet. His car was embedded in a pine tree, as if it had grown from the trunk like an appendage.

He screamed into the night, “Shit. Shit.” His right arm dangled at an odd angle that made me dizzy. Together we stood in the middle of the suburban street with the sirens approaching and blood dripping from a cut in Rusty’s cheek.

“You called the police?” Rusty attempted to lift his hand and groaned, pulling it to his chest.

“Of course. God, you need an ambulance.”

He glanced down the street, where red lights flashed against trees like children playing ghost in the graveyard. He grabbed my hand. “You have to say you were driving. I’ve been drinking. You have to say you were driving.”

“Huh?”

“Ellie, listen to me. Carefully. I’m not drunk, but they’ll give me a breath test and I probably won’t pass. Just say you were driving.” He glanced at the police car now rounding the corner. “Please say you understand me.”

“Of course I understand you, Rusty. Of course I do.”