One evening when I was around sixteen, give or take a year, I was reading or watching something in my bedroom while my parents were out in the living room. Suddenly, we all heard a loud crash — clearly the sound of one automobile colliding with another. I leaped up and sprinted outside — at that age, I could still sprint — to see that one of the two cars was my father's Buick, which was parked in front of our house. The other was a later-model Cadillac. Its right front headlight had smashed into the left rear taillight of the Buick and more than just the lights had been destroyed. It was pretty much the left rear of the Buick and the right front of the Cadillac.
Running about, shrieking like panicked villagers in a doomsday movie, were three young girls aged 13-14. One of them was over on a neighbor's front lawn near some bushes. The other two were crying and pretty much running in crazed circles.
My father and mother followed me out, instantly concerned that someone had been injured. No one was. The squealing was all about how much trouble they were in.
My father gathered the three girls together and quizzed them as to what had happened. They all began talking at once, telling wildly-different tales that were obviously being invented on the spot. I yelled out, "Let's call the police!" and at the mention of the "P" word, their hysteria increased. "Please, please, please," one of them said. "Don't call the police!" The other two joined in, pleading.
We got them calmed down enough to tell us what seemed to be the truth. I do not recall the girls' names so we'll call them April, May and June.
The car belong to June's mother who was not at home. The three of them (friends unrelated to one another) had been at June's house and had decided to take Mom's car out and go for a drive. The destination was a party at the home of a boy they knew from school. All three were in the front seat. None of them, of course, had licenses.
June was driving — or trying to, at least. An older brother had once given her a few lessons, mostly for fun, and let her drive his car around a deserted parking lot. Somehow, that had wrongly convinced her she could take to the streets…and her lack of expertise had brought together Mom's Cadillac and my father's Buick.
All three girls begged my father not to call the police, not to call June's mother, not to do anything. "We'll pay you back, I swear to God," June said about thirty times.
My father was rather angry. "How?" he asked. "Out of your allowance? What do you get? Two dollars a week?" The Buick looked like it needed several hundred dollars worth of work. So did the Cadillac. He pointed at it and asked, "And how are you going to explain to your mother about that?"
April, May and June began concocting fibs on the spot. Someone stole the Cadillac. No, better still, it was just parked in the driveway and someone came by with a hammer and smashed in the right front section. No, we just say we don't know what happened. No…
My father said, "There will be no lying. Now, your mother's insurance may cover this, I don't know. I'll do you this favor, young ladies. I won't call the police…now. Give me your mother's number and I'll try to work something out with her so getting the car fixed doesn't cost me anything. She can decide what other punishment is in order."
"She'll kill us," June shrieked. May and April cried, "And tell our parents!"
I was still playing Bad Cop. I started heading for the house saying, "I'm going to call the police!"
"No," the three girls screamed. June, sobbing, pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. It was the phone number of where her mother was — a number and a room number. My father went in and dialed. The number turned out to be that of a hospital and the room number was the room in which June's mother was recovering from surgery. That was why the girls were alone. June's parents were divorced and her father was in another state, no longer involved in her life.
My father felt terrible about bothering a woman in a hospital bed but there didn't seem to be an alternative. He told her what had happened and it was, he later told me, the worst part of the whole thing: "She started crying when I told her what had happened. I made it clear when I told her that no one had been injured but she still started crying. There she was in that hospital bed, unable to do anything. She told me the operation had cleaned out her savings but she'd find some way to pay me back. She didn't want to put it through her insurance because she was sure they wouldn't cover it and it would maybe get her daughter in trouble with the law or something."
While he was making that call, I was outside with the girls. They were all pretty upset and they kept asking me if I could help them, even though they had no idea what it was they wanted me to do. "Didn't you ever get into trouble?" one of them asked me. I said no and they looked at me like I was not of this planet.
Finally, June's mother phoned a friend who came over with her husband. They gave my father all the necessary contact info and assured him that the mother, though nearly penniless from her medical bills, was good for the damages. They thanked him over and over for not calling the police and then the wife drove off with April, May and June while her husband drove the wounded Cadillac off to wherever.
I went back to my room to work and then I had a sudden thought. I remembered how when I first ran outside, one of the girls was up on a neighbor's lawn near some bushes. I got a flashlight, went out to check those bushes and in them I found a little baggie of marijuana. At least, I assume it was marijuana. Whatever it was, I took it inside and flushed it down the toilet.
We had the fairest, nicest auto mechanic in the world. He charged my father $350 to fix the car, which means another mechanic would have charged around $700. Still, $350 was a lot of money for my father and I assumed he was going to stay on the case and threaten legal action if necessary to get reimbursed.
A few months later, it occurred to me I'd never heard any resolution to the matter. I went to him and asked if he'd ever been repaid. He said, "No, I sent that woman a copy of the bill and spoke to her a few times after that. She kept saying she was going to pay me back but I'll believe it when it happens. I could call Howard [an attorney he knew] but I figured that woman has enough problems."
She never paid him back. In fact, I think she even stopped calling to assure him she was going to pay him back but he never went after her.
A lot of people would have given up on getting reimbursed because they'd decide the money was uncollectible or that getting it would involve too much time and expense. That's a perfectly valid, possibly-wise reason to just eat the loss. But if you knew my father, you'd know that's not why he decided not to pursue it. He decided not to pursue it because, like he said, that woman had enough problems. That was the kind of guy he was.
