Closer than they appear

Clark set out from Kansas City going east and expected to be in St. Louis in four hours, and at his destination, slightly beyond, in about six. It was December 16, 2016, a busy time on the road, and was about eleven in the morning. Little did he know that a freak ice storm was hitting the state of Missouri at that moment, and causing multiple accidents all over the place, especially in Columbia, which is right in the middle of it. As he got close to Columbia, he saw ice on the trees, on the grass, on the woods on either side of the road, everywhere. The road itself was fairly clear, being almost bumper to bumper, as the drizzle, which was freezing as it landed, had nowhere to land except on the cars themselves. He stayed behind big trucks; when they slowed down, he slowed down. When he pulled off the road for gas the roads into the station were slick, and in the gas station convenience store, they gave him his coffee for free. In the bathroom a truck driver was telling another about the conditions, but he couldn’t quite make out what they were saying; he could only imagine driving a semi in this kind of icy condition. Columbia was a madhouse: cars wrecked on the side of the road, people unable to get on the interstate, or unable to get off, and that’s where the traffic stopped for a while, off and on, for many miles.

There was a frontage road, even in the city, but it was hilly, and this road was clearly covered with ice; several cars had wrecked trying to manage the hills, and others had stopped, where people had given up, trying to go up or down the icy hill. Wrecks were everywhere. One young woman with blue hair was totally distraught as she had skidded a new car into a guardrail. Cars’ flashing lights punctuated the drizzle. Ambulances could be heard in the distance. There was no sign of salt trucks anywhere.

As it got real slow Clark got solace from the radio, where they talked about people stranded in Columbia, trying to get across town; people cursed MO-DOT (the people who should have salted the roads, perhaps), but others defended them, saying that maybe they simply didn’t know it would happen. If a truck jackknifes, how does one know what to do? Or put it this way: with hundreds, if not thousands, of emergency calls, are they responsible for managing traffic as well as trying to salt roads, when it’s too late? It was clear that it had caught people by surprise. Some truckers had slowed down to a crawl on the steep hills before Columbia, but some simply hadn’t realized how fast it was freezing, or how quickly a clear road could turn to an icy one.

He mulled these questions over in his tiny car, glad that it handled well, and that he was comfortable; he had plenty of gas; he wasn’t hungry; he’d had plenty of coffee, and the Missouri countryside was actually quite beautiful, though mostly he was looking at these red-and-white barber pole bumpers of large trucks. It was not too scary, because the road itself was not icy. Once there was space between Clark and some other cars; this was near Columbia, and there, the road was quite slick, and he was afraid of sliding off like so many others had done. But mostly he was able to stick to the road, and the brakes worked fine. In his rearview mirror, which said “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear,” he noticed how close people got to him, and got nervous accordingly. He decided that that expression was kind of like the “feels like” and its relationship to the real temperature. Clark was a person who always was aware of the actual conditions: temperature, humidity, wind, even pressure. So he didn’t need to be told what it “feels like.” Similarly, if he saw something in the mirror, he was aware how far away it really was. So “closer than they appear” – what was that supposed to mean? He was annoyed whenever he was reminded of such things.

The drizzle continued right through Missouri, a fine rain being blown around by a gentle wind, and freezing the moment it landed, almost everywhere. It was not a strong rain; on the contrary, you hardly knew it was there, except that roads were unexpectedly slippery whenever they were empty for more than thirty seconds. Under those conditions, there was no point seeking shorter routes or back roads; according to the radio, all of Columbia was at a standstill. The interstate was clearly the best bet, and he stayed on it. Traffic remained touch-and-go, through the hills on the east of Columbia.

But at Wentzville, or just to the west of it, traffic stopped altogether, and didn’t start right up again. Now, it looked like everyone was going to just sit there, on the interstate, for a while. And, to his surprise, the westbound lanes were backed up too, and he could see that they were backed up at least ten miles, and probably much farther. In his own lanes, cars and trucks were going nowhere. Ahead of Clark was a truck; behind him a small red car; beside him, several pickups. It was now warmer; the fine drizzle was no longer freezing, and was even dying out altogether. He found another station on the radio. Hundreds of people were in a similar position, stuck, unable to get onto the frontage road (due to hills or ditches), in many cases afraid of the back roads, which were probably still frozen, and unable to get traffic moving in front of them. Clark at least was in no rush, though he had lost several hours, and it looked like he would be losing several more. He texted friends and family. He checked the news. He kept his eye on the bumper in front of him, which, like everything else, wasn’t moving.

There is a question of how far one should get from one’s car in this kind of situation. He was on the interstate, and it seemed reasonable to assume everyone would start up again, and would be going seventy at any minute, as soon as it all cleared up. On the other hand, they’d all been sitting there, what, an hour, two, three, going on four. As time went on, he saw people leaving their cars. In the red car behind him a young woman got out of the passenger seat, onto the side of the road, and started yelling back through what appeared to be an open window. She was an exotic woman, quite beautiful, wearing a red dress. She was angry at the driver and she even pounded on the car at one point. Clark heard her yell something about “Uber” and he thought, whoa, is she going to call one, in which case, good luck, OR, was this guy actually an Uber himself, in which case, he was out four hours for a simple fare? He tried to imagine being an Uber in this situation, and shuddered. But it wasn’t clear what she had yelled; it wasn’t his business either. His windows were rolled up. He avoided watching or getting involved.

Further back in the line people were standing and talking together, chatting or checking their phones. Occasionally cars, or in one case an ambulance, came up the shoulder. The shoulder was usually clear, it seemed, but Clark’s guess was that it wasn’t always clear. He considered using it himself. Shoot up the shoulder behind the ambulance and hope they let you off the road? People by and large weren’t even trying it.

Over in the westbound lanes, on the near side, a truck driver was talking on his phone in a very animated way. It even appeared as if he were quitting his job, saying he couldn’t take such a thing, couldn’t stand it another minute, but of course Clark couldn’t hear him, way over across the median where he was. Nevertheless, he was quite animated, and eventually walked around his truck and out of sight; Clark didn’t see him again.

Back to the “Uber” behind him: Now the guy got out. He wanted to protect his car, as she was hitting it hard enough to make actual dents, or it appeared that she might. She seemed to be trying to cause some damage. Now he was yelling at her too. He was heavy-set, not really a bad guy, Clark thought. He speculated about their relationship. Maybe they knew each other already, and it was over; one of them would run off into the night. But that wouldn’t really work. If they were from the area, they would probably know somebody; surely they had phones? But even if they could call, nobody could come. There were miles of woods in either direction, on the side of the road. Traffic was bottled up everywhere. Walking was the only way out. And there wasn’t much of anything, beyond the frontage road.

Clark chose to stay in the car, with it on, and listen to the radio, because he learned about the back roads and where things were worst, and in fact it was kind of a state-wide disaster. The MO-DOT was a kind of a bad word on this radio show, even though the radio host was trying to be fair and see both sides. The fact is, as someone pointed out, you can’t tell them what their priorities are, and if people are in ditches somewhere, with medical issues, that might be more important than all of these cars just standing out there on the open highway. But Clark soon realized, a lot of these drivers were pretty angry. It was warmer now. The roads were no longer frozen, at least not directly beneath them. He looked over at the frontage road, which appeared now to be not frozen at all; it had an occasional car that drove along just fine, unlike back in Columbia, where the frontage roads had many more accidents than the interstate. Here, it looked like clear sailing. But you couldn’t get over to it; the ditch between the interstate and the road was too steep. And where people had tried, clearly quite a few had failed. Best to sit still.

He thought for a while about those truckers, sitting there in traffic as he was, and staring at one of the barber-pole bumpers. Some, clearly, had jackknifed. Others had slowed to a crawl, lost the same amount of time that he did, and made it through. Quite a few, he could tell, had simply given up and pulled over for the night. Nobody wants to spend an extra six hours of overtime at any job, even one they like. But a big storm was coming, according to the radio, with more snow, and more ice; Clark stuck with the guy in front of him, who was at least still on the road, still pushing forward. Get where you’re going now. Choose to go south later. Clark vowed not to come back through Missouri if at all possible, and wished only to get through it this one time, or at least into St. Louis.

Clark had now spent some time staring outright at the couple behind him, and more time trying to avert his gaze, and find something else to look at. At one point the man had both the woman’s arms in his, trying to prevent her from pounding on the car. He pleaded with her. She was furious, even dressed up as she was, very animated, willing to fight, not afraid of anything. And she appeared to blame the guy for the mess she was in, unable to get somewhere, or stuck with a bad date, perhaps, in an endless traffic jam. That went on so long that Clark had looked away to avoid being the kind of neighbor that always watches a domestic quarrel. But now Clark looked back, and he didn’t see them anymore. Instead, the windows of the car were fogged up, and he couldn’t see anything. Perhaps they had made up when he wasn’t looking.

More surprisingly, the westbound lane cleared up; this was after about three and a half hours. The trucker who had walked around his truck had never reappeared, and that truck remained still, in its spot, and everyone had to go around it. Less than a half an hour later, Clark’s eastbound lanes, too, cleared up, and he went on his way, much to his own surprise. He glanced back at the red car, which did not start up right away. He sped up tentatively through Wentzville, and into St. Louis, which was wet, but smooth, certainly not dangerous roads. On the other side of the river, high on the bluffs on the Illinois side, there was more ice, but by now it was much later, and it was heavily salted. It was way past midnight. Clark remained confused about exactly why he’d lost six hours sitting on one of the busiest interstates in the Midwest, but he was sure it was jackknifes – he never did find out for sure, and he had never seen the MO-DOT, even once. But he was grateful he wasn’t dragging a semi-trailer around the corners, navigating the exits, or coming down the steep hills, or, God forbid, making right-angle turns to navigate around. The back roads, he was sure, were even worse than the ones he’d seen.

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