Empire Falls

“don’t you know how to drive at all?”
    Almost immediately Miles discovered himself to be speeding. Actually, it was one of his backseat drivers who noticed, since Miles, his eyes glued to the road ahead, did not dare risk a glance at the speedometer for fear of losing control of the vehicle, which Mr. Brown stressed was the cardinal sin. A good driver, Mr. Brown maintained, would never be in an accident, because a good driver was always in control, and if you were in control there was no such thing as an accident .
    “He’s going forty in a twenty-five,” a backseat driver pointed out .
    Mr. Brown would have noted this himself had he been facing front instead of searching for his seat belt. As a dutiful teacher, Mr. Brown always insisted that his student drivers buckle up before turning the key in the ignition, but he himself seldom wore a belt. His rationale was that he liked to be able to turn around and instruct those in the rear, should an opportunity arise to do so. This was especially true if the backseat happened to be occupied by boys who were members of his baseball team, as was presently the case. Learning that Miles had exactly no experience, however, caused Mr. Brown to reevaluate his position vis-à-vis the seat belt, which had slipped down between the upper and lower seat cushions. By the time one of his ballplayers reported that Miles was speeding, Mr. Brown’s forearm had disappeared up to the elbow in the seam, his hand actually emerging on the other side, where another of his ballplayers noticed it blindly groping for anything that felt like a seat-belt buckle. The boy leaned forward, took Mr. Brown’s hand, and shook it genially. “How you doin’, coach?” he said .
    Mr. Brown, sensing the potential for danger, said, “Pull over, Roby.” He’d managed to withdraw his hand from the handshake easily enough, but his wrist got stuck between the cushions and he had to peer over his shoulder to check on the progress of his driver. “I said, Pull over!”
    Miles did as instructed. Had he been told to slow down before pulling over, he’d have done that too, but unfortunately he hadn’t. Therefore, had anyone living on the quiet residential street they were traveling down picked that moment to step outside, he’d have been treated to a strange sight: the Empire High School driver’s education vehicle doing forty miles an hour mere inches from the curb, its instructor facing backward, as if his primary concern was the possibility of pursuit, its backseat passengers pressing back against their seats and its driver patiently awaiting further instructions. Meanwhile, only fifty yards ahead, a car sat parked at the curb .
    Mr. Brown had a brake on his side of the car, of course, but turned as he was, his right wrist still caught between the seat cushions, he seemed unable to determine its exact location, though he pumped vigorously at what he imagined to be the floorboard with his foot. Had the brake been attached to the underside of the glove box where he was pumping, that would’ve stopped the car, but of course it was not, and Mr. Brown’s inability to locate the pedal now threw him into blind panic. Unable to decide whether it was more important to free his wrist or locate the brake, he went frantically back and forth between the two, succeeding in neither, all the while yelling, “Roby! Roby! Goddamn it!”
    As Miles bore down on the parked car, it seemed to him that slowing the vehicle—indeed, stopping it—might be the most advisable course of action, but Mr. Brown’s gyrations confused him. Still unwilling to shift his gaze from the road, he assumed his instructor was in fact hitting the brake to no effect, which meant that the car was unaccountably without brakes, which in turn suggested there wasn’t much point in him hitting his, so he stayed his course alongside the curb until the last possible moment, hoping for further orders. When none came, he whipped the steering wheel to the right, bumped the car up onto the curb, over an aluminum garbage can and onto someone’s lawn. He noticed the address on the mailbox as they sailed by — 116 Spring Street—and further noticed that the garage door of 116 Spring Street happened to be open, its bay empty, seemingly in invitation .
    The sudden crash into and up over the curb had the salutary effect of painfully freeing Mr. Brown’s wrist from the seat, which in turn allowed him to be flung against the door, his bullet-shaped