I think I was conscious of a piece of fence panel exploding at the side of the road before I understood there was something moving behind it. My passenger saw the falling tree before me and screamed, maybe that’s why I looked? It was only part of a second. Time though for memories of catching a tipping roof prop in a lakeside house thirty years back, I saw it tremble and begin to move, didn’t hesitate and was up and holding it firm in place while the host sat there wide-eyed and spilling his martini. I caught that one in a fingerclick, wouldn’t catch this, had to get rough with the little blue car’s pedals and slide to a stop with the branches scraping the roof and a hiss and crackle of twigs and bark. It was close. I turned us around with the tree still shuddering from the tarmac slap, didn’t want to get stuck there. There was another couple, coming the other way, they hit the gas to drive under it and it must have been even hairier for them. We saw them a few minutes later, compared notes, thanked the angels. And all around us the wind throbbing and filling the sky, the storm in charge of things. Was dumb to even venture out. A moment later we’d have been under it. If I hadn’t stopped to help a neighbour lift her bin rolling down the street in the gale we’d have been under it. You can go any second. And every choice, distraction, daydream plays its part in the mysterious alignment.
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