Turning the Corner

Just about dusk.  Headed home from the grocery store.  Considering too many things and listening to All Things Considered on the car radio.  All of a sudden, as I turn our corner a car races around me, doesn’t get the car straightened out and wham!  Right into the sign to our sub-division.  Big cement square post crashes.  It was too large to get my arms around if I had tried, but then, why would I want to?  The crash can be heard all over the neighborhood, but nobody bothers to investigate the noise.

The driver is gone.  But soon he’s back with a tow truck and the wrecked car is gone.  All that remains to show what happened is the crumbled post, and the big sign leaning against a tree.  The other post still stands, supporting nothing but air.  “Forest Edge,” the sign says, an address which seems pointless now that the streets are paved and houses sit on the many lots along the way.  I go home.

Next morning I see a police car at the scene.  An officer is writing in a book.  Another person, likely a detective, stands beside her, in civilian clothes, then walks the tire lines in the pavement.  And back again. What’s he trying to figure, I wonder, as he traces the pattern several times.  I  stop my car to watch this crime scene.  It’s better than half the plots on TV, at least during summer re-runs.

The plainclothesman talks with the police officer.  I watch her reaction: concentrated listening and then she nods her head in understanding.  The research is over.  They’ve come to some sort of conclusion about who did it, the reason, and how to resolve the situation.  I don’t know what decisions they made because they spoke quietly, eyeing me every now and then as I tried to eavesdrop.  Then the officer got in her police car and the detective heads for his car.  I overhear his parting comment:  “Yep.  I’ve think we’ve turned the corner on this one.”