‘The Oldest Daughter Visits the Scene’ by D.L. Hall

A very unusual, but effective, example comes from D.L. Hall’s piece, “The Oldest Daughter Visits the Scene:” 

On State Road 715, between Pahokee and Belle Glade, a white Buick Regal and a green station wagon race toward each other like magnets on a collision course….

As this happens, high above this scene, beyond the moon and stars, a row of dominoes begins to teeter in a slow, deliberate motion….

The collision that day, Valentine’s Day, 1977, will become a moment the oldest daughter relives again and again in her head because she didn’t experience it properly. She needs minutia to mentally piece together detail by detail as she hears from others, reads the newspaper, and imagines. There is so much to explore she won’t know where to begin, so she’ll write what she knows. As that day becomes clearer, she and her mother, in spirit, will hold each other’s hand and squeeze tight each time they see the cars collide. And before they let go, they’ll visit the sleeping daughters and feel a tinge of pain for what they both know is ahead, for what the girls must learn on waking…..

The cars strike each other front to front, engine to engine, like the fists of a fighter, but there is no anger. There is simply a collision of fates. Freefalling dominoes echo through eleven children’s dreams as both cars collapse in and up; their hoods bend upward from the bottom like tin lids lifted from a can. The driver of the Regal is thrown forward first; the gearshift punctures her chest. When her last breath is punched out of her body, she is already above the scene. To her surprise and relief, the woman’s oldest daughter’s future spirit is there to hold her hand.

D.L. Hall, “The Oldest Daughter Visits the Scene.” River Teeth, April 2006, (unnumbered pages via High Beam Research, HighBeam.com).