When Angels Sing by Turk Pipkin

Author:Turk Pipkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

IN THE NORTHERN REACHES OF NEW MEXICO, THERE IS A Christmas tree farm where some of the most beautiful trees in the world are grown. Standing tall and spreading their branches wide, these lush blue spruces are pruned into perfect shapes not just for the harvest, but frequently in their span of years from sapling to tannenbaum.

About the time that the Colonel and Claire were filling their big Suburban for the drive to L.A., the loaders at the Blue Spruce Christmas Tree Farm were piling some of their finest trees onto an eighteen-wheeler bound for Los Angeles.

In the back of the Suburban, the Colonel stacked box after box of Christmas lights and decorations, spangles and bangles, and even that idiotic singing Christmas tree that blared “Jingle Bells” to every unsuspecting person who dared step on his porch between the twenty-sixth of November and the second of January. Knowing the old man and his military efficiency, the boxes were wedged in tight and strapped down against any chance of a shifting load.

As David climbed onto the spacious front seat between his grandparents and fastened his safety belt, I imagine that Raoul Mendoza, the truck driver at the Blue Spruce Christmas Tree Farm, was also checking his load. Perhaps the trees were stacked too high for his preference, but I feel sure that they were tied down as tightly as humanly possible, prepared for gusting winds in the canyons and high passes of the Southern Rockies.

No doubt the Colonel, who didn’t leave the bedroom without first checking the weather forecast, knew full well that an Arctic cold front was gathering its swirling strength in the northern reaches of our hemisphere. Likewise, Raoul Mendoza would have heard the forecast on the radio in his truck. Both men must have known—just as I did in L.A.—that the front was not due in Arizona or New Mexico for thirty-six hours. By then, both drivers would have safely delivered their precious cargoes to sunny Southern California.

But weather forecasting is an imperfect science. Twenty-four hours later, after stopping for the night in Las Cruces, the Colonel was pointed west on I-10 with his speedometer needle pegged exactly on 70, controlled as precisely as the throttle on any plane or jet he’d flown, not by automatic speed control but by his near-perfect sense of unity between man and machine.

“Cruise control!” he humphed when I once suggested he use his. “Lemme tell you something, Mike. Never trust your life to machinery made out of plastic!”

Having lost his favorite son in an accident that could only have seemed preventable, the Colonel was not a man who believed in taking unnecessary chances.

Fast asleep, David was snuggled in the front seat between his grandparents as the Colonel came closer to Raoul Mendoza and his towering load of blue spruces. There was no way for either man to know that as the two vehicles drew abreast the first blast of icy air from that North Pole Express would slam into the semitrailer, no way to know that fifty tons of truck and trees would lurch sideways into the Suburban.

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