I don’t trust electric cars. And no, before you ask, it isn’t because of Musk and the endless litany of issues with Tesla. Fiat, Lotus, Hyundai, Kia, Volvo, Jeep, BMW, they’ve all got electric cars of their own. So ignore Tesla.
They’re irrelevant.
I’m not one of those people that think cleaner energy is the devil either.
Stick with me a few minutes and you’ll understand.
Note I said I don’t trust electric cars. It has nothing to do with my opinion on how cool they are, how environmentally friendly they are, or how they’re going to disrupt the oil industry.
I trust them about as much as a 3 am text from an ex. I have a good reason not to trust them.
I have Jeremy.
Though it would be more accurate to say I had Jeremy.
Jeremy, or Germ as he was known to his friends, was a cool dude. We went to high school together. Didn’t share any classes but spent every break hanging out. At one point we were as close as could be. He broke his leg doing a keg stand a week before prom, so he asked me to take his girlfriend for him. For guys raised when we were, that was about as close as two friends could be.
We fell out of touch for a while after high school. He went off to the big city to become a lawyer. The cool kind. He provided legal services to underprivileged clients. But I guess that shit can be pretty soul crushing cause he dropped it and moved back home after a decade.
We got back in touch. Started meeting up for beers to shoot the shit. He was a guarded guy. I got the feeling he didn’t have many friends. A real reversal from the kid he was in school.
He’d show up driving a Lexus. It was fifteen or twenty years old and beat all to hell. The furthest thing you could imagine from a prestigious luxury car.
But it was still a Lexus and he got so much shit from the locals about that.
We’re a small farming community. It literally says “The original farming community” on the sign coming into town. And no, before you ask, we’re nowhere close to the Euphrates or the Tigris. But we take farming seriously. Almost as seriously as drinking.
No farmer would be caught dead driving a Lexus.
The way the locals saw it, that Lexus was Germ’s way of telling them to go fuck themselves.
So imagine my complete lack of surprise when he pulls up in this little hatchback Prius-looking thing. Traded in the Lexus for a hybrid. And yeah, before you go running your mouth, I know a hybrid ain’t really an electric car. But you don’t get from monkey to human without a few steps in between.
Germ’s tells me he was originally going to get a truck. But he felt that would be like admitting that the farmers got under his skin. Like he was trying to play at being one of them. But a hybrid? If they tried to give him any crap then he could point out that he’s taking the environment into consideration. That same environment they use to make their living.
“Overall, I’m happy with it,” he said after a sip of his Heineken. “But want to know the damnest part? Wait, let me show you.” We settled the tab and went out to the parking lot. He tossed me the keys and told me to go ahead and start it. I put the key in and give it a turn.
It doesn’t start.
I give it another try and still nothing.
“I don’t want to be the one to tell you this but I think you’ve got a problem.”
Germ, he just starts laughing at me. I’ve got no idea what’s going on but he’s bent half over like his car not starting is the funniest thing in the world.
“I did the same thing,” he says once he’s caught his breath.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“It’s the quietest car I’ve ever driven. It’s on man.” I give the gas a little tap and sure enough the engine kicks into action.
Heading back into the bar he says, “You know though? I was driving over here and this bird just went right out in front of me. Like it didn’t know I was there. Smashes off the windshield. Blood everywhere. Hell, you can still see bits of it flaking on the wipers. Never hit an animal before but there was nothing I could do about it.”
Next week Germ shows up half an hour late. He looks shaken up so I order him a drink and wait for him to tell me what happened. He finishes and orders another before he starts talking.
“Remember that bird I hit last week? It’s the damnest thing but it happened again on my way over. Weird right?” He chugs the rest of his drink while holding up a finger to indicate he isn’t finished yet. “But get this. This isn’t the second time. It’s the third. I drove that Lexus for five years, the Neon for six before that, and I never hit a bloody thing. Now all of a sudden it’s like I can’t avoid them. Like this car’s a fucking magnet for them or something.”
“Maybe it’s just too quiet? The Neon had that busted up muffler and the Lexus was just plain loud.”
That perked him up a bit.
“You know, I bet you’re right. I bet that’s it.”
Germ didn’t show up the following week. That wasn’t unusual. It’s not like we’ve scheduled these sessions. It’s just one of those things you fall into. More routine than anything.
But later that night Germ texts me an apology and an explanation for why he didn’t show. Neither was necessary and I think Germ knew that. Looking back, I think he was just trying to sort things out.
I still have the texts on my phone. I could quote them verbatim but for a lawyer, that man couldn’t spell worth a shit. Let me save you the headache.
Germ was on his way to work when he got into an accident.
Germ still worked in the city so his commute started before the sun rose. And with our town being a small farming community, we don’t have that many street lights about. So he’s got to rely on his headlights and they’re pretty weak. He can only see a few feet in front of him and basically nothing to either side.
He’s just about to the highway when this raccoon dashes out in front of him. He only saw it for a split second before it smashed into the front right bumper and then went under the wheel.
Germ skids to a stop and gets out to look it. He’s worried he’s going to have to put it out of its misery. But it’s nowhere to be found. He gets back in the car and starts to drive off but it’s almost like the car’s limping. The right side’s lifting up every couple feet.
Took him nearly an hour to pull all the bits out from the wheel. Parts of it up in the well just dripping down.
Tells me he no longer feels comfortable driving.
In a few weeks he went from never hitting anything to hitting something pretty much every time he got behind the wheel.
I didn’t even learn about all the squirrels until I read the interviews his coworkers gave to the local paper after… well, we’re getting to that.
Here’s where the story gets a little hard to follow. Germ mostly fell out of my life. I’d see him around and he’d be friendly but there was this chasm between us. I couldn’t see what was causing it. I mean I didn’t tell him to trade the Lexus in. I kinda liked it, it gave him a unique flavor.
What I do know is that Germ was the last thing on my mind when I read about the hit-and-run death of Timothy Driscoll.
Timmy was riding a scooter home from a sleepover at a friend’s house. Him and his friend had gotten into a major argument over a video game. Timmy stormed out and headed home.
They found little Timmy’s body about fourteen hours later.
It was covered with leafs in a ditch along the path between the boy’s houses. His back was broken. Photos of his helmet went around social media. Apparently Zhao River Sports wasn’t the reliable, safety-first company it claimed to be on its product listings.
If the algorithm decides to show you the helmet, take a real close look at the crack. You can see bits of brain matter still stuck to it.
No sign of the scooter anywhere. Police figure whoever struck little Timmy must have taken it.
And, yeah, it did.
In the interviews with Germ’s co-workers, they describe a man who had grown distant from everything. He was missing deadlines, forgetting about meetings, turning in substandard work.
When he failed to show up to work the day Timothy Driscoll was killed, people were worried. Eventually somebody was able to get him on the phone. He said he was having car troubles.
You get the impression from those interviews that nobody really believed him. But nobody was willing to pry into it either. It was a slow day so they told him not to worry about coming in.
That would be the last time anybody that knew him spoke with him.
What follows is a description of the video the police released.
It was primarily recorded by a security camera owned by Nora’s Nutritional Nook. The camera in question is aimed to take in Nora’s parking lot but it also covers a pretty large stretch of Main Street.
At 11:08 pm two weak headlights appear from the bottom of the video and proceed up the street to the Shell station. Since the car is heading away from the camera, we can pause it to see the license plate. The police constantly seem to reference this fact as if it is the definitive proof that it’s Germ’s car. Yet we can clearly see it is Germ when he parks at the pump.
Here we cut to the gas station’s camera. Germ removes two gas canisters from the passenger seat. He fills them both then heads inside to pay. We cut to a camera inside the station to see his transaction.
He calmly pays for his purchase. There’s nothing to indicate what was to follow. Yet people online claim that he’s got a dead look in his eyes.
Flat.
The look of a man planning to kill himself.
But I knew Germ better than most people. I feel confident when I say that’s not what I see in that footage at all. I see my friend and he looks angry.
Determined.
The video cuts to the outside camera. There’s a moment here that nobody seems to mention. It’s only a moment. Forgive me the cliche, but if you blink you’d miss it. And if you didn’t, you may just think it’s a glitch in the video.
Germ reaches out for the driver seat handle, pulls his arm back, then reaches out again and opens the door.
It’s only a moment. But for that moment, he’s scared to touch the car.
Like he doesn’t trust it.
He pulls back onto the road and our view switches back to the camera at Nora’s. The car becomes smaller as it gets further away. Then it makes a right-hand turn and disappears completely.
The video keeps playing.
From the video, it’s hard to tell exactly where Germ pulled off the road. But you don’t need the video. All you gotta do is walk down Main Street until you hit the park and you’ll see the marks left in the parking lot. Maybe you’ll even find a piece of metal if you look long enough.
If it wasn’t for the time stamp in the corner, you’d think the video froze. But two minutes later, Germ comes back into view.
He’s on foot now and if you look closely you can tell he’s pouring out one of the cannisters of gasoline. Creating a little trail as he slowly walks backwards onto the sidewalk and across the street.
You can see when he runs out and casually tosses the cannister aside.
You can see when he reaches into his pocket and pulls something out.
When he bends over and puts both hands down to the ground.
How the gasoline catches fire, a snake of flame suddenly dashing across the road towards something off camera.
And if you squint real hard, you might even be able to see the smile on Germ’s face. But only for a moment. Blink and you’d miss it.
What you can’t miss is the explosion.
Orange light suddenly lashes out to encompass the street.
Bits of metal flies in every direction, which I assume is why Germ picked the park. There’s a lot of space around it before the next residential building.
Yet even as far away as it is, Nora’s camera shakes.
And it’s hard to see in that shaking footage exactly what happens next. But whoever edited together the footage was kind enough to slow it down and go frame by frame here so we can see Germ cover his head with his arms for protection.
Can see the scooter as it flies through the air, over the sidewalk, across the street, and straight through Germ’s chest.
See it smash into the storefront behind him.
We can see Germ collapse into a heap on the ground.
Dead on impact.
Another bird.
Another Timothy Driscoll.
That was enough proof for the police to hold a press conference and tell the world that Germ struck Timothy, hid the body, and stole the scooter for some reason.
A trophy, they reckon.
And maybe they’re right.
But not the way they lay it out.
I knew him better than they did. I can see how surprised he is in that final moment.
Sure, maybe he’s just surprised at the force of the explosion or the shrapnel coming his way.
But I don’t think so.
I think the scooter was a trophy.
But it wasn’t Germ that took it, just like it wasn’t Germ that hid the body.
It was the raccoon all over again.
And I think Germ knew. Somehow, he understood that the car wanted more.
In my books, he’s a hero.
So, yeah.
That’s the reason I don’t trust electric cars.
Hybrids either, for that matter.
And, yeah, maybe it doesn’t make as much sense to you as it does to me.
But I ain’t getting into your electric car when you pull up alongside me.
I know I must look silly getting startled like that, but I didn’t hear you coming.
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