About twenty-five years after the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde on a country road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, two boys were playing gangsters in their getaway car, a broken-down ‘55 Ford Crown Vic in the driveway at 266 North Campus Avenue in the City of Upland, County of San Bernardino, State of California. Every law enforcement group of those government entities was in pursuit, including perhaps the FBI.

The fugitives were speeding along at ninety miles per hour, bouncing in their seats along a bumpy country road, leaning with the treacherous curves. Several cop cars and state troopers were closing in, bullets piercing the heavy-gauge steel of the sedan. The driver revved the old V-8 in his throat, downshifting through the guttural gears on the steering-column shift (though his feet hardly touched the pedals) to take the curves and shredding rubber around high nasal squeals. His friend, a Hungarian outlaw called Joe Venator (aka The Ventilator) rode shotgun, hanging out the window and exchanging gunfire with the squad cars blaring sirens in the noonday glare. The sun beat down through the green-tinted moonroof, baking them like bugs under a magnifying glass. The glove compartment was full of loot: golden loquats and ruby-red pomegranates robbed from the neighbors’ trees.

They were almost home-free crossing the border between imagination and reality when something strange happened: the car began to move slowly forward.

Gradually the two boys took notice and looked at each other, not knowing what to do. Somehow in all the excitement of the chase the emergency brake had disengaged and the white wooden double doors of the garage at the end of the driveway inched ominously toward them.

The slight seven-year-old driver got out and, positioning himself between the car and the garage, leaned forward to keep the Crown Vic from crushing the doors. Because, oh boy, would he get in trouble if the car broke his father’s garage!

But the car was heavy and bullied him up against the doors, his hands on the ornate chrome grill and his elbows lodged against the wooden door, his arms the only thing keeping the car from crushing his chest. He could see his partner-in-crime through the windshield under the transparent green roof. Joe’s hands were on the dashboard, his eyes wide, his mouth open, like a startled fish in an aquarium.

Pinned against the door, he felt the bones in his wrist crack as his right hand was forced back at an unnatural angle so that his fingers were pointing at his shoulder. Strangely enough, he could not say that it hurt. He was mostly afraid of what his father would say when he got home from work. He tried calmly to call his mother out from the house, so as not to startle her, his voice tentative: “Mom?”

Joe’s high-pitched alarm was more convincing, as he got out of the car to fetch her: “Mrs. Collins! Mrs. Collins!” By the time she came out, the damage had been done. She flung the car away from his son like a Tonka Toy instead of a ton-and-a-half of Detroit steel. He emerged from between the car and the garage, but his wrist stayed where it was, in its awkward position, fingers pointing backward in the direction of his shoulder. The car then sank its nose into the garage doors, pushing them inward with a crunch.

Since the Crown Vic wasn’t running, they had to walk the several blocks downtown to Dr. Dight’s office. Normally, it was maybe a ten-minute walk, but when her son grew weak and woozy after a few steps, the pain beginning to shoot like electricity through the length of his arm, he sat down on the sidewalk with his good arm across his knees and lay his head on it. His mother picked him up like a doll and carried him the rest of the way.

The doctor was a calming force. Looking at the Xrays, he asked his ashen patient if he had eaten anything in the last couple of hours. Thinking that the good doctor was just making conversation, he shook his head, forgetting about the stash of jewels in the glovebox until the nurse administered the ether so that they could set the broken bones in his wrist. He promptly vomited a bitter but colorful loquat-and-pomegranate soup into a porcelain bowl the nurse had ready.

As he went under the anesthesia, the boy noted the fruity aroma and thought his mother must be making jam. He loved her apricot jam. He felt the operation as something distant and disconnected from him, something to observe, through a semi-consciousness, noting how the doctor carefully seemed to re-break the wrist and put it back together again, like a doll’s appendage. Then he swaddled his arm from above the elbow to his knuckles in warm white plaster wraps. When he woke up fully, he examined the bright cast on his arm and noticed the bowl of vanilla ice cream in front of him. It was awkward holding the spoon in his left hand and guiding it to his face. “You’ll get used to it,” said the nurse. “Plenty of time to practice your ambidexterity for at least the next six weeks.” Ambidexterity: that was a nice word, he thought. He might even have said so, grinned, and felt a flow of ice cream along his chin, having almost missed his mouth with the spoon.

That night, his grandparents invited themselves to dinner. His mother’s parents never came to their house, they always went to theirs, but he guessed his grandmother wanted to ogle the broken boy and gloat. No doubt she would find some way to blame his parents for his accident. He was ready to defend them. Grandad Tannehill would be sympathetic and bemused, holding his gray Stetson in his hand or on his lap. He rarely said a word, never an unkind one. Granny Tannehill, however, never had anything nice to say and she never shut up. Squawk, squawk, squawk, like some huge stuffed preaching hen. She shared a birthday with her son-in-law, which always made those celebrations awkward, since their ideas of a party could not have been more different. They also shared a love for the boy’s mother, which both of them found difficult to express, each in his or her own way. One-note Leos, they roared at each other and at her.

On this occasion, though, his father just beamed with pride. He didn’t scold his son for playing in the Crown Vic or for breaking the garage door. But the boy was not the object of his pride. All he could talk about was how the boy’s mother had pulled the car off of him like a toy. He was in awe of her. He described the scene as though he had been there.

“There was little Ricky pinned to the garage, and Reba up-and-pulls the car away! Just like that!” His cheeks were glowing, his eyes bulging, as they did when he was brimming with a good story: “Three thousand pounds!” He kept repeating, “Three thousand pounds of Dee-troit steel!” Adding, “And we could barely budge it, the three of us men, me and Darrell and Ernie!”

Granny Tannehill let out a gust of air full of p’s and f’s and put in, “It’s a miracle, that’s what it is, that’s all. God did it. God saved the little cuss.”

“Bullshi…” his father began before catching himself. “B.S.” he said, waving away his mother-in-law. “It’s a-drenalin, is what it is.” But the way he talked about it that night, and for years to come, you could tell he secretly agreed with his nemesis. He thought it was a miracle, if only the miracle of his beautiful wife’s adrenalin. The boy was more impressed that his mother had carried him all the way to the doctor’s office. That was not adrenalin, that was love.

– Richard Collins

Author’s Note: As a Zen monk, I am interested in the karma of the body, how memories and life lessons are inscribed in our scarred flesh and broken bones, but also how people rise to difficult occasions with “miraculous” results. “Miracle” is mostly autobiographical, facts merely heightened in tribute to my mother, who really did toss that Detroit machine off of her son who was pinned against the garage with a broken wrist.