I'll Be Seeing You

Sunday, October 13

Prologue: Dead Man’s Curve
(Jan and Dean)

Stephen woke late in the night needing to empty his bladder. He was surprised he’d rested so well given the motion of the commercial bus. Doug Nicholas snored softly in the seat beside him. Stephen smiled. Now he had something else to tease Doug about!
The two student conductors of the Clarkstowne High School Orchestra were returning home; they’d visited Philadelphia as guest “instructors” at a music clinic for the Patriots High School orchestra. They were invited because one member, Andrew Thompson, attended a music conservatory with them the previous summer. Andrew had convinced his program director that members of his orchestra would appreciate Stephen’s and Doug’s perspective on music.
The clinic was a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend Saturday; Stephen thought the rest of the orchestra didn’t mind giving up their Saturday, either. A smile crossed his face. Andrew still surprised him!
Stephen quietly rose from his seat beside Doug on the left side of the aisle, slipped to the restroom in the rear of the bus, and then went forward to speak with the driver. The bus run from Philadelphia to Clarkstowne was part of a much longer route, but even that stretch took about eight hours to make because of the mountain roads...and the stop with layover in Harrisburg...and another layover in Pittsburgh...before they turned south toward West Virginia. The bus departed Philadelphia around ten PM Saturday; glancing at his watch, Stephen saw it was just after four in the morning.
“Hi, there,” the driver said as Stephen eased into the area clearly marked AREA MUST REMAIN CLEAR WHILE VEHICLE IS MOVING. “This is the strangest run in a long time for me,” the driver told him as he guided the bus around a curve on the mountain road. “I’ve never had the bus so empty. Having only eight passengers from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh just doesn’t happen. Then, we only pick up a total of three more passengers in Pittsburgh.” The driver shook his head. “Eleven passengers on this route. Who’d have thunk it?”
“Where are we now?”
“Just about to cross into West Virginia,” the driver replied. Ahead, Stephen saw the West Virginia state sign as the bus rapidly approached; it flashed past as they crossed the border. “We should get into Clarkstowne a few minutes before six. We’re on schedule, almost to the minute.”
“Sounds good,” Stephen agreed.
“I truly enjoyed your entertaining the little girl right after we started out,” the driver told him. “It was a real treat to see her so excited.”
“Thanks,” Stephen grinned. “I met her earlier this year during a concert performance at her elementary in Clarkstowne. It’s been great to see her again.”
“Why don’t you go on back and get some more shut-eye?” the driver suggested with a grin.
“Who could pass up an offer like that?” Stephen rose, returned to his seat beside Doug, refastened his seat belt almost without thinking about it, and leaned back. He needed just a moment to start another journey to slumber land.
Unfortunately, he never made it back to sleep.
Beneath their feet disaster unfolded.
A flaw in the metal of the drive shaft, invisible by visual inspection, was geometrically spiraling toward failure. An irregularity in the special alloy resulted in the metal becoming brittle with repeated heating and cooling. The irregularity, located just where the head of the shaft joined the engine drive train, had been heated and cooled too many times. Now at its maximum temperature during the trip, the brittle strength of the alloy failed, turning the shaft’s head into a cloud of shards in a split second. The pieces flew into the drive train gears, where they jammed everything tight. The sudden cessation of movement converted mechanical energy into heat, superheating the mechanism, fusing it solid. In less than one second, the engine and drive train became one huge hunk of useless, red-hot metal. The failure activated an emergency shut-off valve on the fuel line.
The bus’ rear axles locked, freezing the rear wheels, leaving only the front two wheels free to move.
“Mechanical failure!” The driver’s scream vibrated over the sudden screech of rubber against pavement as the bus started to slide on the left hand curve he was negotiating at the instant of failure.
Knowing he had mere seconds, Stephen whipped the pillow from behind his head, wrapped it around his face, and curled himself into a ball.
The driver struggled to keep control of the vehicle, but had nothing to help him—not even brakes as the bus skidded across the outer right climbing lane of roadway and narrow shoulder. He tried to shift into neutral and free up the rear wheels, but the transmission wouldn’t move. He couldn’t budge the lever. Everything was locked—except the steering wheel. He used that, doing his best to recover from the skid.
The driver almost had control when the rear tires started blowing. The explosive shove contributed by each bursting tire destroyed any chance of recovering the skid. The road wasn’t wide enough.
The rear wheels left the asphalt.
The right side of the bus crashed into and through a huge section of guardrail and passed over the edge of a steep embankment. With nothing but air beneath it, the rear of the bus pulled the front over the edge and the bus started to roll.
During the roll, the front end of the bus, still moving forward, slammed squarely into a very large tree, sending it spiraling at a different angle.
Stephen knew the bus completely rolled over at least three times before he felt an enormous impact from the right side, heard the tortured scream of tearing metal, and the bus finally came to rest upright, yet nearly wrapped around another ancient tree.