Neil Allen Smith died on September 18, 2010. He was biking back to his mobile home in Tampa from his dishwashing job at the Crab Shack. Somewhere along the highway, a white car swerved and clipped him. Neil crashed into lightpost, fell over, and never stood again. Three days later, he was dead.
Murder has its own unequal arithmetic. You could die for a fortune, for a cause, for an eightball jacket, or for a momentary distraction felt by the driver sharing your lane. The variables are incomprehensible in the inhuman algebra that finally solves for X.
So it must have been on that September night in Tampa. The driver felt something. A face flashed in the windscreen for a moment, and, from the corner of his eye, he saw the body fly. Insulated by its metal and protected by its speed, he asked himself, in an instant, if he should stop and leave the car. Then the instant passed, and he didn’t.
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On Nantucket, where I drive today, the night is full of bicycles. Men are pedaling in the dark, plastic bags tied to their handlebars, windbreakers zipped tight against the chill of the fall. Maybe, like Neil, they ride into town to cover their shifts, work hard and well with their coworkers, and then pedal home to a rented room in an overcrowded house.
In the right light, Neil lived an enviable life. He owed money to no one. He had no one hanging onto him. He had no answering machine, no Facebook account, no Post-its on the door. He took off like Huck Finn; he lit out for the territories. At the end of the night, he looked on shelves of clean pots and pans and felt the glow of a job well done.
I am not Neil Smith. I am in a web of people, debts, and commitments, dangling from a wire perched high above the ground. My disappointments sting and my victories flee. I spend my weeks waiting for the paycheck, avoiding the 888 phone calls, and regretting last night’s $10 margarita. On a good day like today, boredom trumps excitement, the bill collectors mutter, and the wire stays steady and firm.
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The father of one of my former students delivers newspapers. He had a career in banking that bounced him from three different companies before office doors just stopped opening for him. His fall from the wire began in haste. There were rumors of women, alcohol, horrendous loans. He is no working-class hero. He remains angry and upset at the unfairness of it all.
Once your career slips off the web, there isn’t much to put it back on track. A bad word, a black mark, and a few too many birthdays will slip your résumé down into the stack of thanks-but-no-thanks. You can pull yourself up, but odds are you can’t get back up on that wire.
And then there’s the speed of descent. How much did you put away, how much does your wife love you, how much money do your parents still have? What are you willing to put up with? Most of us aren’t all that lucky.
They can’t get back on the wire, so they make due in the mud. The past is a cliff and the future is a wall, but the present has a cold beer and the Patriots. They know Neil Smith, they know him well.
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The driver that killed Neil still lives. I imagine he told his wife and his insurance agent that he hit a deer. Someone collected a check; someone else swapped out the bumper, the panels, and the rest of the car-body plastic; the rest of the world went on ticking.
The criminal needs only answer to his conscience. Cruelly, terribly, we can understand how a doctor, a lawyer, or a professor, held aloft on his financial and familial high wire, could force himself to forget those incidents, those instants. That biker was probably fine. I just nicked him. I was late; I had to get home.
As for the victim, the nation will not long miss a dishwasher, a Red Sox fan, a cigarette smoker. He did not leave a wife or children or a fortune; he had fallen from the high wire long before. His death left only coworkers and housemates who, in a few weeks, will turn to their own affairs. They will remember him in stories and gestures—and then they won’t.
If Neil were alive, I wouldn’t want to trade lives with him. I wouldn’t want to have spent the last decade of my life as a dishwasher in Tampa.
But I could have. The variables that put me where I am today could have instead given me a four-mile bike ride to work, a $7.50-an-hour wage, and a shared mobile home in Hollywood park.
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But here I am. I drive home in my new Toyota, Jackson Browne on the stereo, air conditioning chilling the car. Today is a good day. Boredom trumps excitement.
Outside the car, dark figures on bicycles press on. From the protection of a steel frame and airtight glass, I peer at them, and I ponder.
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Thank you for this. Wow.
Wonderful.
The idea for this essay came from Neil Allen Smith’s obituary.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/obituaries/hit-and-run-victim-was-quiet-and-dependable-co-workers-say/1124721
I’ve had some of the same thoughts. But never in a million years could I have expressed them so poetically. That was a great piece of writing. Thank you.
What gorgeous writing, what a thought-provoking story. I disagree a bit with your premise that once a fall from grace takes place, it is nearly impossible to get back on the wire. Perhaps it’s just that we need to look for a different wire. Maybe a simpler life is better. Or maybe redemption does exist. I was talking to a formerly homeless drug addict who now sits on boards of tech companies in Silicon Valley. He says the reason such stories don’t seem to exist is because he’s afraid that the information will be used against him. To me, that… Read more »
Thank you Mr Barsanti.
Nice piece. I too peer and ponder at the passing cyclists. Here in bike-friendly Portland we have an incident like this every couple of weeks, often fatal. In my opinion, urban cycling is unwise. I worry every time my son takes off, not about his decisions, but because I know what kind of people are out there driving. I try to be careful around cyclists, though I think they’re often carrying a deathwish in their knapsacks. I hope others will consider my boy’s safety. For the record, there is a vehicle available for his use, he chooses to bike. The… Read more »
How the mention of an everyday tragedy far away can set the heart and mind of a writer/poet on fire is revealed in this highly original piece. The disparity, the disjunction in all of our lives coalesces here—once again making a point that we are all on the precipice of both daily joy and daily sorrow together. You really can write. And you make any man proud to call you a good man.
Very moving. Well done, sir.
I truly believe we planned most of the significant things that happen in our lives before we arrived to Earth. While it looks like unfortunate accidents to us, our souls chose these karmic paths to learn lessons and balance out energies. We all came here to do different tasks and have specific experiences.
Well-written piece, by the way.
David, I once believed what you believe. In a way, it was because of my privileges; my life was lucky enough, I didn’t have anything horrible happening to me. Because when something truly horrible and colossal happens to you, it’s pretty hard still believing you chose it. I began discarding that belief when I considered the 2010 Haiti earthquake: I decided it couldn’t be that over 300.000 people choose their horrible death, and many more their suffering and misery, all together. It just doesn’t make sense. And when you think about events like black plague (75.000.000 death in 1300’s Europe),… Read more »
Yes, what is the price of a human life? What happens when compassion pushes you from your own isolated spot in the world to someone else’s? That is the fundamental question that The Good Man Project asks. For me going into prison has been the most rewarding experience of this variety. When I talked to men locked up in Sing Sing for life, looked into their eyes, accepted their hugs, watched them shed tears of pain, I couldn’t help asking myself what if that was me instead of him?