Brother Broken
Alf Reads the story of the windshield:
When Mitch was six years old, he got us all into trouble
with Dad. It happened at my grandparents’ farm. A few of us were sitting on the
trunk of the car, waiting to leave for home. Mitch ran a toy tractor down the
surface of the rear windshield.
One moment, the windshield was in perfect condition and the
next, it had morphed into a mosaic pattern of splintered glass. I watched,
dumbstruck, as a star burst emerged from the centre of the windshield outward.
It looked like a spider had webbed a silica net. Dad was pissed, but the
windshield held.
As we ventured home that day, all of us in the back seat
exhibited forward-focused, model behaviour for a change. We sat quietly so as
to not bring attention to ourselves. We tried communicating with hand signals,
but the messages were too cryptic to decipher.
Dad drove the car down the six-mile stretch of road going
home. We rode in silence except for the sound of the motor and the crunch of
tire against gravel. Fields and ditches rushed past our view. The ride was
relatively smooth, until we hit a bump.
A sound like a gunshot went off behind us. The windshield
imploded. Projectiles struck the backs of our heads. Glass shards rained down
on us, dropping like ice chips into our shirt collars and onto our laps. I let
out a shriek because I didn’t know what was happening.
Dad stopped the car on the side of the road. It took a
minute for me to realize we hadn’t hit the rhubarb. No one was hurt, but my
nerves were frayed by the close call.
We climbed out of the car, shaking off bits of glass. It
took a while to clean the debris out of the back seat, and our trip home
resumed with the added feature of rear hatch ventilation.
We remained sheepish for a time, until the memory of the
incident faded. Dad had a new windshield installed, and life went back to
normal.
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