~ from OCTOBER 2004 ~
In the harsh fluorescence of the office, Dee has tears in her eyes as she recounts the scene: driving towards the toll booth, she saw a goose and a line of goslings walking and stopping the traffic. All the cars were driving around the birds, swerving in large and small arcs to avoid the family. Some laughed and pointed, others looked up, annoyed, but all respected the creatures.
A truck driver barged through, beeping his horn and running over the mother goose and babies, wheel after wheel after wheel.
“I wanted to fucking kill him. He sped up and ran right over her. All the other cars were turning to get around her, and he just drove right over them.”
I don’t know which is more moving – the story of the murdered goose family or Dee’s heartbreak at telling it. Mother to mother, she shared a heartache and pain unites motherhood, something that I will never fully understand.
“He did it on purpose,” she said.
Neither of us knows why. We cannot access that kind of evil. It is a small comfort.
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