In the dark I saw the sharp bend to the left too late and drove into the turn too fast. I jammed on the brakes and jerked the steer­ing wheel to the left, but the road was slick from the pour­ing rain. The car went straight. The tires squealed and skid­ded off the asphalt. Sit­ting beside me, Randy grabbed the dash­board with both hands as we careened toward a three-rail fence.

Time seemed to shift into slow motion. The car’s hood dipped down as the front wheels plunged into a ditch. My chest slammed into the steer­ing wheel. The hood bounced sky­ward, throw­ing me back in the seat. The car soared out of the ditch, then crashed back down, still speed­ing forward.

The bumper struck the base of a fen­ce­post. With the soil soft­ened by a two-day rain, the blow uproot­ed the post and threw it up on the hood. It came at the wind­shield like a bat­ter­ing ram and hit the plate glass at eye lev­el. A gory image of my decap­i­ta­tion flashed through my mind, but the wind­shield held in place and the post launched into the air and flew over the roof. I watched the seams of wood­en planks sep­a­rate and slide across the wind­shield and heard the bro­ken boards scrape along the sides of the car as it sped through the fence.

The car zoomed over a lit­tle knoll, then pitched for­ward, and skat­ed down a steep slope of soft wet loam. The head­light beams bounced up and down over a green pas­ture that descend­ed to a tree-lined ravine a hun­dred feet below.

I stood on the brake, but it had no effect. The car raced down toward the trees like a sled on an icy hill­side. Twen­ty feet. Forty. Fifty. I put all my leg’s strength into the brake, my knee locked, my fists grind­ing the steer­ing wheel to dust, my jaw clenched so tight I couldn’t breathe.

Six­ty feet. Sev­en­ty. The head­lights fell on a big tree direct­ly in our path at the bot­tom of the slope. Out of the cor­ner of my eye, I saw Randy brace for the impact.

We’re going to die, I thought.

Then it came to me out of nowhere. I turned the steer­ing wheel as hard to the left as I could. The car kept going straight, but it slowed, then coast­ed to a full stop, and stalled out.

I leaned back in the seat and let out a heavy breath. Through sil­ver strings of rain, I stared at the broad trunk of the tree. We were so close I could see the tex­ture of its bark.

“You okay?” I asked Randy.

He lit a Marl­boro with a trem­bling hand and drew hard on it. “I’m alive,” he said quietly.

We sat for a long time with­out say­ing any­thing, the only sound the rain pound­ing on the car’s roof.

When the adren­a­line wore off, it sank into my con­scious­ness that I had wrecked my car, a gray Dodge Lancer my dad bought me for $350, a six-cylin­der stick shift I’d named the Bul­let as a joke because it didn’t go fast. I stared at the igni­tion key dan­gling from the steer­ing col­umn, think­ing about the Bul­let. Some­times, it seemed she almost had a per­son­al­i­ty. Reli­able. Deter­mined. Resilient. I ten­ta­tive­ly reached for the key and turned it. She start­ed right up. I gave her some gas, then eased off. She idled smoothly.

Randy shook his head and grinned.

We got out in the pour­ing rain, walked around to the front end, and stared at the mounds of mud that had piled up at the Bullet’s front wheels to scotch her momen­tum when I’d turned the steer­ing wheel to the left, almost too late.

The fen­ce­post had gouged a big gash in the Bullet’s grille and front bumper and the bust­ed planks had scratched her sides, but oth­er­wise, her exte­ri­or seemed okay. We looked under the hood. There was no vis­i­ble dam­age. I took a close look at the wind­shield. No cracks. Even the wipers still worked.

With Randy push­ing from the front, I backed the Bul­let out of the hole she had dug. Randy climbed in, and I drove her slow­ly up the slope. Halfway up, I heard a cow bawl and I saw ten or twelve dark fig­ures hulk­ing under trees on a ridge to my left. By the time I drove through the break in the fence and eased the Bul­let through the ditch, the rain had light­ened up.

I stopped on the side of the road and looked back at twin trench­es in the mud run­ning through the ditch and the fence and on over the knoll. “I didn’t think I was going that fast.”

“It wasn’t the speed,” Randy said. “You hit the brake too hard com­ing into the turn. It locked the wheels and we slid out of control.”

Randy would lat­er dri­ve heavy-duty trucks in the Army and pub­lic tran­sit bus­es in D.C. He knew what he was talk­ing about. The crash was my fault. The break in the fence was my responsibility.

“The cat­tle will get out,” I said. “We bet­ter tell someone.”

“I saw a farm­house back the way we came,” Randy said.

I turned the car around. We found a mud­dy dri­ve­way run­ning down a hill to the farm­house. The dri­ve­way took us around behind the house where I parked between a pick-up truck and a tractor.

It was past mid­night and pitch dark, no moon or stars in the driz­zling rain, no light in or around the house. Wak­ing up coun­try peo­ple in the mid­dle of the night is a risky propo­si­tion, but at six­teen I didn’t know enough to be afraid.

Randy and I were head­ed toward the back porch when the dis­tinc­tive sound of a shot­gun being racked pierced the silence and a blind­ing light hit us between the eyes.

I froze.

“Who are ya and whad­daya want?” A hoarse angry voice.

“Name’s Ken Oder,” I said, my voice shak­ing. “I ran my car through your fence. Your cat­tle can get out through the break.”

“He’s tellin the truth!” A high-pitched scratchy voice. “I heard the crash!”

The blind­ing light went off. A porch light came on. A bean pole dressed in long johns with a spot­light in one hand and a rifle in the oth­er stood beside a short stumpy woman wear­ing a flan­nel night­gown and armed with a pump-action shot­gun. “Put on your slick­er,” she barked at the old man. “Take ‘em up the hill and fix the fence ‘fore the cows run all over cre­ation.” They shuf­fled through a screen door and dis­ap­peared inside the house with­out anoth­er word.

“Damned if I go any­where with you again,” Randy mut­tered. “Sec­ond time tonight you almost got us killed.”

The old man came out wear­ing a rain­coat over his long johns and threw some planks in the truck bed. We rigged up a tem­po­rary fence that night. I went back in the morn­ing and helped him sink a new post and nail up rails. He wouldn’t let me pay for the dam­ages. “Crazy sumbitch­es run through this fence all a time in a big rain,” he said. “You the only one ever come and told me. We’re square.”

Dad took the Bul­let to a church mem­ber who was an auto mechan­ic. He adjust­ed the front end align­ment, removed a splin­ter from the radi­a­tor, and sealed up the pin­hole. Cost about thir­ty bucks. I nev­er fixed the big dent in the grille and bumper.

Sport­ing her bro­ken nose and bust­ed lip, the Bul­let clocked 100,000 miles after the wreck, tak­ing me every­where I want­ed to go from my high school years all the way through UVA, trips to Flori­da on spring breaks, out to Yel­low­stone Park, down through Wyoming, Col­orado, and Texas, all across the south­east, scores of runs to Mary Bald­win to court my auburn-haired blind date, and sev­er­al nerve-wrack­ing mis­sions to Aiken, South Car­oli­na, try­ing to con­vince her to mar­ry me.

They say a car is just a pile of met­al parts put togeth­er a cer­tain way. Gen­er­al­ly, that’s true, I guess. I’ve owned twen­ty-three cars over my long life. Twen­ty-two of them had no soul.

The Bul­let was dif­fer­ent. She was my steady com­pan­ion through sev­en of the best years of my life. I came of age with her, and I cried when I had to give her up. I loved that old car, and fifty years after we part­ed, I still miss her.

Fif­teen years ago Cindy and I were hav­ing break­fast at The Colo­nial Kitchen in San Mari­no when a short bone-thin old­er man with curly brown hair that fell to his shoul­ders and a pasty face stretched tight by too much plas­tic surgery led a stun­ning­ly beau­ti­ful young Asian woman wear­ing skin-tight black leather pants and high-heeled boots across the din­ing room to a booth direct­ly across from us. He sat down and scoot­ed over against the wall. She sat beside him, put her arm around him, nib­bled his ear, and rubbed his sunken chest while he ignored her and looked over the menu.

“Phil Spec­tor just walked in,” I said to Cindy.

Cindy’s pret­ty hazel eyes widened. She turned to look and we both stared at him. 

When you live in LA, you see a lot of celebri­ties. We stood on the side­walk with Jack Palance one night in Han­cock Park and watched a duplex burn to the ground. Lee Mar­vin shopped beside us in a depart­ment store on Wilshire Boule­vard. Elton John sat three tables away at L’Orangerie. The nov­el­ty wears off after a while, and you learn to respect their pri­va­cy. You take a quick look and move on. You nev­er stare. 

That sight­ing of Phil Spec­tor was dif­fer­ent, though. He was a glob­al­ly famous mul­ti-mil­lion­aire music pro­duc­er fac­ing a mur­der tri­al. The indict­ment alleged he shot a young woman late at night at his home, The Pyre­nees Cas­tle, a sprawl­ing man­sion locat­ed on a hill just a stone’s throw from The Colo­nial Kitchen, where we sat that morning.

The news reports said his behav­ior became unpre­dictable and vio­lent decades ear­li­er when his career began to fal­ter. His first song was a mega-hit way back in 1958 when he was only 19. He wrote, arranged, played gui­tar, sang, and pro­duced To Know Him is to Love Him with the group, The Ted­dy Bears. It soared to num­ber one on the charts and remained a top hit for six months, sell­ing over two and a half mil­lion copies. The Ted­dy Bears broke up. Spec­tor moved behind the scenes as a pro­duc­er and released a daz­zling string of hits in the ear­ly 1960’s. Dream Lover, Da Doo Ron Ron, Then He Kissed Me, Be My Baby, I Love the Way You Love Me. By the time he was 26, he had pro­duced more than two dozen songs that made the Bill­board Top 40, most of them char­ac­ter­ized by his sig­na­ture “wall of sound,” legions of musi­cal instru­ments and back­up singers that came togeth­er in a dynam­ic son­ic mass, prob­a­bly best exem­pli­fied by The Right­eous Broth­ers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feel­in’.

But in the late 1960’s his red-hot career sud­den­ly cooled off, and his per­son­al life fell apart. His first mar­riage blew up. His sec­ond wife, Veron­i­ca Ben­nett, lead singer of The Ronettes, said he impris­oned her in The Pyre­nees Cas­tle and abused her. After she divorced him in 1974, he hit the bot­tle hard and devel­oped a fond­ness for firearms. He spec­tac­u­lar­ly crashed his car, fly­ing through the wind­shield and almost dying from the head injuries. Even amidst the tur­moil, he man­aged to pro­duce sev­er­al albums in the 1970’s with John Lennon and George Har­ri­son, but his pro­fes­sion­al behav­ior became errat­ic and volatile. He famous­ly shot up the stu­dio ceil­ing while work­ing on a Lennon album and put a loaded revolver to singer Leonard Cohen’s head dur­ing a taping. 

In the 1980’s and 90’s, he pro­duced almost no music as his life tum­bled steadi­ly down­hill. On the night of Feb­ru­ary 2, 2003, about a month before Cindy and I saw him at The Colo­nial Kitchen, he hit rock bot­tom. He drank his way through Bev­er­ly Hills and Hol­ly­wood, fin­ish­ing up at the House of Blues on Sun­set Strip where he talked Lana Clark­son, a B‑movie actress less than half his age, into going back to the Cas­tle with him. Spector’s chauf­feur, Adri­ano de Souza, drove them there and watched them go inside the house. Sit­ting in the dri­ve­way, he heard a gun­shot, and Spec­tor came out the front door bran­dish­ing a revolver. “I think I killed some­body,” he said. De Souza found Clarkson’s corpse slumped in a chair, a gun­shot wound to the mouth, blood splat­tered on the chair and wall, bits of her teeth on the floor. When the police came, they had to taser Spec­tor to dis­arm him.

The LA Dis­trict Attor­ney charged him with sec­ond-degree mur­der, and he was out of jail on a one mil­lion dol­lar bail bond when Cindy and I saw him that morn­ing in The Colo­nial Kitchen.

So we couldn’t resist star­ing at Phil Spec­tor, but we gawked at him for too long. He looked up and caught us. A hard look came across his face. We turned away and resumed eat­ing break­fast, but he didn’t let it go. Every time I glanced at him, he was still glar­ing at us. This went on for five or ten min­utes. Spec­tor was a lit­tle guy, about five feet five, a hun­dred forty pounds, but he packed more malev­o­lence into his dark scowl than most any­one I’d encoun­tered. I don’t want to make too much of this. He didn’t move toward us or threat­en us in any way, but his men­ac­ing glow­er was unset­tling. We cut our break­fast short and he stared us down all the way out the door.

Years lat­er, his first tri­al end­ed in a hung jury, but the jury in the sec­ond tri­al found him guilty and the judge gave him 19 to life. I hadn’t thought much about him after that until two weeks ago when I learned he died on Jan­u­ary 14 of com­pli­ca­tions from Covid19 while serv­ing out his prison sentence.

When Cindy and I were watch­ing a tele­vi­sion show recap­ping his trou­bled life, I asked her if she remem­bered that day we saw him. “I’ll nev­er for­get it,” she said. She recalled his angry stare as vivid­ly as I did. “The face of evil,” she said.

Spec­tor lament­ed that he strug­gled with the “dev­ils inside me.” Men­tal ill­ness ran in his fam­i­ly. His father com­mit­ted sui­cide when Spec­tor was nine. Telling­ly, the inscrip­tion on his father’s grave­stone reads, “To know him was to love him.” Spec­tor, his moth­er, and sis­ter fought con­stant­ly, blam­ing one anoth­er for the sui­cide. His sis­ter was even­tu­al­ly com­mit­ted to a men­tal insti­tu­tion. In an inter­view a few months before he shot Lana Clark­son, Spec­tor said he was bi-polar and tak­ing med­ica­tion for schiz­o­phre­nia. “I’ve been a very tor­tured soul,” he said. “I have not been at peace. I have not been happy.”

In prepar­ing this post, I pulled up his top hits on the inter­net and lis­tened to them all in one sit­ting. It was an emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence. They take you back to your first slow dance, those sock-hops in the gym, the first big crush, the breakup that felt like the end of the world. Each song is a mag­i­cal mas­ter­piece, the pop music touch­stones of my generation’s ado­les­cence, “lit­tle sym­phonies for the kids,” Spec­tor called them, dec­la­ra­tions of teen love and heartache set to orches­tral explo­sions, drums pound­ing like heart­beats, strings swelling and reced­ing, thun­der­ous hand­claps, clat­ter­ing cas­tanets, blar­ing horns, and boom­ing cho­rus­es. They’re bril­liant and wonderful.

He want­ed this music to be his lega­cy. “I don’t want to be Elvis or Lenny Bruce,” he once said. “Do you think peo­ple will remem­ber their genius or the way they died on the bath­room floor?”

Spec­tor was a boy genius who rose above the mis­ery of his child­hood and shot the moon, but when he lost the mag­ic and couldn’t get it back, dev­ils breached his wall of sound and reclaimed their place inside him. His music will live on, as he hoped, but sad­ly for Spec­tor, most peo­ple will remem­ber the man he became. 

The tor­tured soul. 

The mur­der­er.

The face of evil.

2020 Pan­dem­ic – Day 339

The grand­fa­ther clock in the entry hall sounds West­min­ster chimes fol­lowed by six gongs. I roll over and sit up on the edge of the bed in the dark, scratch my head, and yawn. I turn on the light, stum­ble into the bath­room, and look in the mir­ror at an old guy. Mussed-up sil­ver hair, puffy eyes, sag­ging jowls. He is my grandchildren’s Papaw, and he looks the part. 

I take my blood pres­sure pill, shave, brush my teeth, floss, gar­gle, show­er, tow­el off, and step on the scales. Up anoth­er pound. I heave a sigh. 

I dress, go down­stairs, and open a can of dog food. When I set the bowls on the floor, Zoey and P.D. jump around, whip­ping my shins with their ropey tails, hap­py out of their minds about the same meal I’ve fed them twice a day for a decade. 

Cindy and I watch the Chan­nel 7 morn­ing news. Gov­er­nor New­som, his pale face smil­ing like it hurts, begs Cal­i­for­ni­ans to stay at home, then apol­o­gizes yet again for the pho­tos that caught him din­ing indoors at a pricey restau­rant with a dozen peo­ple, none of them masked. “I made a mis­take,” he says, just before he extends California’s stay-at-home order into late January. 

The news anchor reports that yesterday’s death toll in Los Ange­les broke the pre­vi­ous one-day record. She cuts to a clip of May­or Garcetti’s press con­fer­ence, broad­cast last night from his home where he is quar­an­tined because his daugh­ter test­ed pos­i­tive. “Our hos­pi­tals are over­run,” the may­or says with tears in his eyes. I feel sor­ry for him. The lock­down isn’t help­ing, but he doesn’t know what else to do so he dou­bles down. “Can­cel every­thing,” he tells us. 

We fin­ish break­fast. Cindy heads into the fam­i­ly room to work on her needle­point­ing project, a mul­ti­col­ored ele­phant for one of our grandsons. 

I read the news­pa­per. A front page arti­cle describes chaos at an east-side hos­pi­tal. With twelve patients in cri­sis mode, over­head speak­ers sound Code Blues con­tin­u­ous­ly. Sev­en die with­in a six hour shift, two in a hall­way because there was no ICU bed avail­able. Anoth­er arti­cle says 442 peo­ple died state-wide yes­ter­day, one every three and a half min­utes. Hos­pi­tal morgues are over­flow­ing; funer­al homes are turn­ing away corpses. I toss the news­pa­per in the trash and try to purge its dark images from my thoughts.

At eight, I put on my coat and boots for the main event of the day. “I’m leav­ing,” I shout to Cindy. 

“Have a good time.”

I dri­ve to the barn. When I come through the gate, Lily and Jack­son nick­er a greet­ing. I brush Lily’s mane and tail and groom her coat. My daugh­ter and six-year-old grand­daugh­ter lead Marge into the cor­ral from our oth­er barn, tie her up, and tack up Jack­son while I sad­dle Lily. The horse whis­per­er arrives on her geld­ing, Jesse. We’re masked and six feet apart as we mount up and ride out. My daugh­ter leads on Jack­son; I fol­low on Lily; the horse whis­per­er trails on Jesse, pony­ing Marge with my grand­daugh­ter up. 

“Hey, Papaw, what’s the ghost’s favorite plant?” she says. 

“I don’t know.”

“Bam­boooo!”

Our masks muf­fle our laughter. 

It’s a beau­ti­ful day, clear sky, fifty degrees, the air crisp and clean. We crest a hill. Below us, the val­ley floor stretch­es out to pur­ple moun­tains in the east. Lat­er, on flat­land, the horse whis­per­er schools my grand­daugh­ter on trot­ting. Her back is straight; her hands qui­et; her form per­fect. We end the ride with an easy walk down Long Val­ley Road to the barn. 

When the oth­ers leave, I fetch car­rots from the tack room and give one to Lily. She rif­fles my arm with her lips and rests her head on my shoul­der. Jack­son bangs around in the next stall, jeal­ous. I give him a car­rot, pet him, then dri­ve back home. 

Before the stay-at-home order I would meet my train­er at the gym for an hour’s work­out three days a week. Now I exer­cise at home with weights and an ath­let­ic ball. With­out the trainer’s encour­age­ment I give up after thir­ty minutes. 

Back in the house, Cindy shows me the morning’s hand­i­work. The vivid col­ors and intri­cate stitch­ing on a flat can­vass resem­ble an ana­con­da instead of an ele­phant, but when she con­verts her projects to three dimen­sions, they always mag­i­cal­ly trans­form into a stun­ning work of art. 

After lunch, I sit in my home office and work on my nov­el. Jer­ry Dade is 73, a life-long bank rob­ber who suf­fers from symp­toms of demen­tia. He’s ter­ri­fied, and I want to save him. All the main char­ac­ters in my nov­els came through dark caves into the light, but I can’t seem to find a cred­i­ble way out for Jerry. 

After a cou­ple hours of frus­tra­tion, I take a break, dri­ve to the oth­er barn, and hang out with Marge and Wil­son. Wilson’s a big old boy with a gen­tle dis­po­si­tion. Feel­ing bad that we left him behind today, I promise him I’ll ride him tomor­row. The break helps. I come up with an idea, go back home, and write it out. 

You can set your watch by the dogs’ inter­nal clocks. At four sharp they start danc­ing around my desk. There’s no deny­ing them. I grab their leash­es and dri­ve them to a trail head. We walk less than a mile in an hour as they pause over every scent. 

Back at home, the dogs’ evening meal pro­duces anoth­er fren­zied eupho­ria. Cindy and I grill chick­en and make a sal­ad. After din­ner we watch tele­vi­sion, then go to bed. Cindy falls asleep while I read. I’m in the mid­dle of Paris Trout by Pete Dex­ter. When the page blurs, I turn off the bed­side lamp. I brood about the spread of Covid and the stay-at-home order as I drift off to sleep.

Day 340

The grand­fa­ther clock in the entry hall sounds West­min­ster chimes fol­lowed by six gongs. I roll over and sit up on the edge of the bed in the dark, scratch my head, and yawn. I turn on the light, stum­ble into the bath­room, and look in the mir­ror at an old guy. 

Lat­er, stand­ing at the kitchen counter, I’m open­ing a can of dog food when a descrip­tion of a med­ical cri­sis in yesterday’s news­pa­per comes back to haunt me. A hos­pi­tal bed in an ICU. An endo­tra­cheal tube extends from a patient’s mouth to a gas­ket con­nect­ed to a ven­ti­la­tor. Exhaust­ed health care work­ers in haz­mat suits hov­er over him. His eyes widen with pan­ic. He gasps for breath. 

As I look out the win­dow at the amber glow of anoth­er pic­turesque sun­rise at the top of anoth­er per­fect day a sense of guilt wash­es over me. I’m quar­an­tined in a Gar­den of Eden with Cindy, the hors­es, and the dogs. As long as I keep my dis­tance, I can still see my chil­dren and grand­chil­dren. The rate of infec­tion in Hid­den Hills is among the low­est in the coun­ty, but in the unlike­ly event the virus finds us here, Cindy and I are healthy and we’ll beat it. I’ve got it made, but while oth­ers strug­gle just to sur­vive, I sulk about being locked down in Par­adise. My malaise is self­ish and friv­o­lous, and I’m ashamed of it. 

“You’d bet­ter feed them before they break your legs,” Cindy says, stand­ing beside me. 

I come out of my trance to the sting of ropey dog tails lash­ing my shins. I set the bowls on the floor, and Zoey and P.D. gob­ble up their stan­dard chow like it’s filet mignon. Cindy smiles. I do, too. 

In bed that night, I read Paris Trout. The page blurs. I turn off the light. The day has fol­lowed the pat­tern of all the pre­vi­ous days of the stay-at-home order, but this time as I drift off to sleep, instead of wor­ry­ing about Covid, I think about Cindy’s smile, Lily’s soul­ful eyes, and my grand­daugh­ter rid­ing Marge. 

Post Script: Appar­ent­ly, my sense of guilt is not unique. See The Para­dox of Priv­i­lege: Guilt Dur­ing Covid-19 at https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/the-paradox-of-privilege-guilt-during-covid19-65509/