Well, today was the day. Tim's old car was showing signs of a definite transmission issue, and the decision was made that it wasn't worth putting the money into. A new transmission is a pricey fix. So, after some amount of talk, we wound up replacing his car with the Toyota Outback, which should be good to last for the next five years or more.
That means the Cadillac was headed to the scrap yard. It also means that the other Cadillac, the 'parts car' can go to the scrap yard as well. So yesterday, Tim spent a good portion of the day preparing it to be hauled up to Metalico, a scrap yard up in New York State. Before they take a car, the fluids have to be drained: gas, oil, transmission, radiator. There were parts that he wanted to save. (Short answer: I don't even know why), so he took those off.
This morning, he drove down to the new build to retrieve the car dolly. Once home, the car was loaded. I decided to follow him up in my car, which seems like a waste of gas, maybe, but I wanted to be sure that there was someone behind him if he ran into problems.
And...he did. The tire blew on the trailer and before he could get the rig off the road, the tire had shredded, hitting the fender of the dolly so hard that the tail light flew off and went into the brush at the side of the road. I made a mental note of the area it landed in, and then pulled up to help Tim. I had the good jack in the back of my car, and he had a spare tire in the back of his truck. It was if he knew this would happen.
We got there safely. We got about $500 for the car. I stopped on the way home and walked along the road when the light flew off. It wasn't even damaged, which was dandy news. Tim stopped into the the feed store in Sugar Grove to order a new tire for the car dolly. I met up with him there. Ruben, the Amish man who broke his leg so badly works there, so I asked the woman if he'd gotten home from the hospital. She said that he had, but that the leg was quite bad. He broke the femur, the tibia and the fibula. The lower leg fractures were compound and broken in multiple places. He can't put any weight at all on the leg for six weeks, and then they will begin physical therapy. It will be a pretty long convalescence for him.
She mentioned that the most miraculous thing to her thinking was that his small son was the one who sensed that his father was in trouble. He told his mother who went to make sure that things were okay. Of course they weren't. I agreed with her. In a worse case scenario, Ruben could have been stuck in the woods for a while.
She said, musingly, "It's like that Spartansburg case."
I said, "That was just unspeakably awful." I told her that when we'd run Levi 1 and Levi Too and Clara to Erie to see Ruben, we'd met some Amish from Spartansburg. "That poor four year old. I just can't stop thinking about that little boy."
She said, "It was that little boy that solved the case." She explained how the police had narrowed down the red jeep clue. Sounds as if maybe someone knew who it belonged to. The police sat down with the little boy and his father, and they showed him four pictures. Without hesitation, he was able to pick out the man that he saw slitting his mother's throat.
Imagine that. In the midst of all that horror, he had the presence of mind to memorize the man's face. The woman at the counter said she thought that was a miracle too. I could not disagree.
I said, "You know what doesn't make sense to me though?" At that point, a man walked in to buy feed, but he seemed interested to hear, so the woman said, "What's that?" I said, "Okay. According to his step daughter, or foster daughter, depending on what report you go by, he went to that house believing that the previous Amish owners still lived there. He was looking for his grandson, who'd been adopted by them. According to his daughter, he went there intending to get his grandson back. Now, let's say just for a minute, that the previous owners were still there, and he did find his grandson, how on earth did he think the crime would not be traced back to him? I mean, if he had gotten his grandson, it seems like he would have been the very first person on that suspect list."
The three of us nodded. It didn't make a bit of sense to any of us. I said, "Well. I guess if someone has that much ugliness inside him, that he would do something as awful as all that, we can only hope that he turns out to be as dumb as he is ugly."
And we all agreed on that.
I suppose the dolly doesn't get used much, which isn't good for tyres. It was very fortunate you went along.
ReplyDeleteGosh, what an awful thing for a four year old boy to go through, but we need to remind ourselves that children can be very resilient and hopefully it won't sit incurably in his memory.
Ding, ding, ding! You are a clever one, Andrew. That's exactly what Tim thought happened. Dry rotted tires from sitting. Driving behind him, I didn't see it that way at all. I watched that tire shred. When he put the new tire on, he noticed a bit of fender bent in, extremely close to the new tire. I think that metal piece hit the tire as he went over a bump. He got a sawzall out of the back of the truck and cut the piece off.
DeleteSo very fortunate that you followed.
ReplyDeleteA 4 year old will remember. And may very well need help.
I agree. Yes, children can be resilient but I think we are so very apt to use that phrase to make ourselves feel better. There is no doubt that a trauma like that will haunt the child all his days.
DeleteI can't imagine that he would ever outgrow the memory of that moment. But what I think is the worst part of it is that he was in that house for two hours after his mother was killed. There was another sibling there as well, younger. And there was nothing to do but wait.
DeleteHow terrible for that little child to have the face of a murderer indelibly fixed in his mind.
ReplyDeleteAs for tyres blowing, another adventure along the road of your lives. Hope you have bought a decent new car ;)
Some people have adventures that actually sound like fun. I'd like to have more of those kinds of adventures!
DeleteI can only imagine the intergenerational trauma of all the boys in your story and how very devastating the loss of one person's son has resulted in the loss of another son's mother. Well done on being in the right place at the right time for Tim's errands
ReplyDeleteThat is the sad thing right there. It is an obviously dysfunctional, chaotic family, so chaotic that the state had to remove a child from the home. And now that chaos and dysfunction has splashed outside the family to do irreparable damage to another family.
DeleteTwo little children helping the adults in their lives in the best way they could - that's quite amazing.
ReplyDeleteAmish children are raised to be helpful. Ruben's boy wanted desperately to go into the woods with him that day. Ruben decided that he should stay home. Lucky that he did. He might have been injured or killed. But...he knew. He heard the tree fall, and got excited about that. But then he did not hear any more noise, and that made him afraid that something had happened.
DeleteAs usual, you tell it well -- both parts. You've got the gift.
ReplyDeleteIt always makes me happy when you say that, although I'm never quite sure what it means. I like to write.
DeleteThanks for giving a better explanation then I gave the other day of the murder situation! It's horrific no matter who tells it!
ReplyDeleteYou gave a perfectly fine recounting of the story. But it is very likely that the younger child was in a crib and did not witness the event. And that is not a bad thing.
DeleteIt would be nice to have things calm down in your life, Debby. You handle it well, tho.
ReplyDeleteYou know that serenity prayer? "Give me the serenity to accept what I cannot change." That's most of what is going on here. Things that can't be changed. This could have been prevented but Tim is bound to push his luck. But he was prepared for this 'accident'.
DeleteI think I've said this on your blog before but you can never rationalize the insane. They just do things that never make sense to us sane folk.
ReplyDeleteCan't argue with it.
DeletePoor Reubens. What a thing to happen, and right before planting season. As for the murderer, I am glad he was caught, but that poor child. How will he ever recover from seeing such a thing.
ReplyDeleteI don't know. I can't stop thinking about those poor children.
DeleteSo that was the motive, huh? It's amazing how many terrible crimes happen to innocent people who have the bad luck to move into a property where the criminal's real targets used to live. I've heard variations on that scenario several times over the years.
ReplyDeleteThere has been no official word on the motive from the police, but a step (or foster) daughter was interviewed by a local television station. That is the motive she provided. She said that he went into the house and she yelled at him to get out and he "lost it". It sounds as if he's admitted it to his family. He will be arraigned on the 15th, so I imagine we will find out more about it then.
DeleteJust terrible. I read about it in a NY paper. Must be something terribly wrong in his thinking. Besides that, it was his grandson, not his son. The poor child will probably never ever be able to erase his face from his memory.
ReplyDeleteIt is a horrible, horrible thing to contemplate. I don't know how someone could do such a thing.
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