“Suit yourself,” she sneered, looking at Mary as she spoke. “Drunk!” she said. “Let’s go shoot some more pool John-John.”

“You go; I’m going to sit here a little while too,” he said.

“You’re all a bunch of losers,” she said, and walked off.

“I didn’t mean to offend her,” I said.

“She called me a drunk,” Mary said. “She‘s the drunk.”

“Don’t take it personally padre,” John-John said. “Once she starts partying she doesn’t want to quit. I told you she’s a destructive force. It‘s good you got away from her before something you‘d regret happened.”

“It wouldn’t have.”

“But she mighta made an issue of it when you said no. A woman scorned -- that kinda thing. Not many guys like you come in here. She’s sweet on you.”

I was glad to be free of her. Maybe I was in over my head, out of my element, inadvertently making promises I didn’t intend.

Darkness crept up on us, fully eclipsing the long summer day. Mary was telling a story about the years after she and her husband first married … how he had worked in an auto repair shop and later bought the business himself; how it was never really as successful he had hoped but always gave them just enough to raise their daughter and have a little fun. “We always had each other; that was the main thing.” She did the books and learned to change oil when they got too busy for him to keep up. Then he got sick and slowly his strength faded. She hired a mechanic and tried to manage the shop but when his death looked inevitable, she sold out and started a cleaning business to make ends meet.

We drank through the entire telling. I had never been a drinker and kept saying this is my last one but each time they would order a round, I joined in. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t the sad story. As a pastor I was used to that. Mary was talking again about visiting her husband’s grave and I said we were all too far gone, but she and John-John said they were going to do it. The cemetery was on the other side of the county -- 20-25 miles she said. I agreed to go along.

We took John-John’s wagon. He was driving with Mary up front as “navigator.” I sat in the back and before long I fell asleep or passed out -- I‘m not sure which. I woke to a loud noise and a hard jolt and then was out again. When I came to once more, my head was throbbing and I felt a big lump on my forehead. The car was in the ditch, wedged against a tree, the front end pushed almost back to the passenger compartment. I was alone in the car.

I sat up and looked around. Both the front doors were open but I didn’t see anyone. Then I spotted John-John coming out of the woods which flanked the road just beyond the drainage ditch. I tried to open the back door on the driver’s side but it was jammed. I rolled down the window and looked out. All the damage was to the front but apparently the entire frame was collapsed so the doors wouldn’t swing free. I leaned back on the seat, lifted the door handle with my right foot and kicked hard with my left. The door flew open. I slid out. My whole body felt sore. I stepped around the door and almost tripped over Mary’s body lying in the grass. John-John was back from the woods.

“She’s dead,” he said.

“Are you … sure?”

“I checked her pulse. She’s dead alright.”

I knelt beside her. A wide gash had been opened on her forehead just at the hairline. Her face was covered with blood but the blood was no longer flowing. John-John’s face also was bleeding. He pressed a handkerchief between his eyebrows, just above his nose. Dry blood was visible on the side of his nose and on his cheek.

“How did she end up on this side?” I asked.

“She was driving.”

“She was driving? You were driving.”

“She said I was weaving. Said she was more sober than me.”

“Was she?”

“I don’t know. She said she was. I stopped and we switched. You were sleeping.”

“And how did we end up against the tree?”

“She was trying to find a radio station, a country station. She said what’s his name always listened to country music in the shop and she wanted to hear some. She was looking down at the dial and drifted off I guess.”

“Wasn’t wearing her seat belt?”

“No. The door sprung open and she flew out.” John-John touched his chest and winced. “I sorta braced myself so I guess I didn’t hit … you know … as hard.”

The windshield was shattered on both sides, the passenger side spreading out in a perfect web from a center impact point. The driver’s side appeared to have two centers of impact, one a few inches from the other. John-John saw me looking at it and said, “yea, she must have like whip-lashed, bounced back off the seat and flew up again. Tough.”

“You let her drive?”

“She insisted on it! I wish now I hadn’t”

“Have you called the police?”

“No,” he said. “Didn’t figure it was a big hurry, her being dead and all.”

I found my cell phone in my pocket and dialed 9-1-1. They were sending the police and an ambulance. I said I was going to call a tow truck but the dispatcher said the officer would call the service they used when there was an accident. They would need to impound the car. I folded the phone and dropped it back in my pocket. John-John had drifted off while I talked to the dispatcher, pacing back and forth from one side of the car to the other, looking down, looking troubled.

“It’s alright John-John. It’s not your fault; we shouldn’t have tried to drive over there. None of us was in any shape to be driving. If I blame anyone, I blame myself.”

“Yea, I mean no, it’s not either of our faults … I guess it’s not. Still …”

“I am kind of curious about one thing,” I said. “What were you doing in the woods?”

“Had to take a piss,” he said.

I nodded.

“That’s the end of my wagon. Totaled for sure.”

“Looks that way,” I said. “Here comes the police.”

We were in the unincorporated part of the county, so I figured the Sheriff’s Department would respond. But it was a Florida Highway Patrol car that rolled up, blue lights flashing. I didn’t recognize the trooper. He squatted next to Mary and put his fingers on her neck, moving them around several times before concluding, “She seems to be gone alright.” He glanced up at us, his face flushed. It’s my experience that no one is comfortable around death, especially sudden death, so it was no surprise to see his hands shake as he copied information from our I.D.

John-John sounded coherent as he told his story. I noticed he held his head at an angle so his breath wouldn’t flow directly into the officer‘s face. When he’d finished, the trooper looked up from his note pad and asked why Mary was driving, “since it’s your vehicle, Mr. Johnson?”

“I was feeling a little tired.”

“Not intoxicated?”

“Oh no,” John-John said. “Not at all.”

The two men looked silently into each other’s eyes. “Officer,” I said, extending my hand. “Reverend Dietrich Waymire. This … the deceased was part of my … flock, so to speak. As Mr. Johnson said, we were on our way to visit her late husband’s grave. When the ambulance arrives, where will they take the body?”

“To the hospital. In a case like this, with a fatality, the medical examiner will want to run some tests -- at least draw some blood.”

As he spoke, he circled the vehicle making notes and shining his light all around. He bent to check the area of impact, then continued his investigation by examining the front windshield, leaning into the front seat, where he collected Mary’s purse, the back seat, and finally the storage area where John-John’s gear had been scattered by the crash. John-John had stepped away a few yards, facing the woods with his head down, trying, it seemed to me, to be inconspicuous.

“And once they’ve completed the tests,” I asked, “who should I contact to take custody of the body?”

“Call the hospital,” he said.

I could hear the ambulance approaching. “One more thing,” I said. “Once they’ve taken her body, are we free to go? I’d like to go ahead and call someone … to come and get us.”

He stopped writing and raised his eyes from his report, hesitating as he leveled his gaze on John-John. “I guess so. Yea, you’re free to go.”

“Good,” I said. “It’s been a difficult night.”