Crumpled

Sonnet P.

25 April 2014

Crumpled

She’d been thinking of Nathaniel, of course, of his perpetual deer-caught-in-headlights expression and his gently sloping, caramel-colored limbs. The bad posture thing was a real issue among her friends, but she secretly loved the way his long, spindly legs never really went all the way straight and his hands were somehow far too big for the rest of him. She imagined running her fingers through his hair, a dark heap that simultaneously framed and shrouded his sculpted face.

Windows slightly cracked and music soft, it was a quiet, relaxed night. Allie enjoyed being left alone to her thoughts--it was just her and the sleek black Audi, moving as one as they cruised the moody forest roads. She got into the car like it was a suit of clothes; it moved as fluidly under her touch as the fitted sleeve on her arm and the hem of the short skirt on her thighs.

But the two flashing pinpoints of reflection appeared too suddenly for her to react. A dull thud from her right front bumper, screeching tires as she tried to brake and skidded. Metal on her tongue. Both wheels on the right up and over the cruel bump. It was that or swerve into the path of oncoming traffic, traffic she couldn’t predict around the blind corner ahead. Or was it her vision clouding? A thrilling rush because she didn’t stop, didn’t slow down, could barely steer. The wheel slipped in her moistening hands, but her foot was leaden, dragging the car away and away from the scene--the scene of whatever’d just happened.

She wasn’t allowed to be out tonight. Something about grades, or attendance, or a call from some other parents about a party perhaps. But Jan and Stephen rarely stayed home to see their punishments through, and Allie could pretty much trust them not to return home from their “adult gathering” until 2 or 3 or so. Hypocrites. And they had left the new car--practically begging her to take it out for a spin. As any appropriately rebellious teenager would, she suited up.

Allie never really had a destination. Most of her friends went to the city every weekend and there weren’t many good parties--not ones that Nathaniel went to, anyway. So she usually just drove, memorizing the twists and turns of the silvery road slicing through the opaque forests. Feeling sorry for herself. But with the windows down--and driving significantly faster than the posted 55--she was simultaneously free, electric, caged, alive, bitten by the cold. That was how she liked her nights. It was reckless, yes, but the freshly laminated license card reminded her of her newly attained adulthood. Seventeen-year-old-hood, anyway. She owned the world.

Halfway to the next town limit, adrenaline’s grip on Allie’s heart loosened slightly and the mist in her vision started to dissipate. She pulled over abruptly.

Her shoulders slumped forward and her forehead rested on the steering wheel. The tears came suddenly, flooding her and leaving little room for anything else. She shook and the car shook with her, great sobs racking her little frame. Hands fumbling for the Kleenex, or the napkins from her vegetarian Chinese takeout… or her sweater, that’d do. The whole thing was soon drenched in snot and tears and sweat. Her tongue shrank back into her throat. She opened the door and vomited onto the concrete. Relief.

Wiping her mouth on a dry sleeve, Allie parked and got out, heart racing. She stumbled around the car to survey her right front bumper. A significant dent, but nothing Stephen’s generous salary wouldn’t cover. Plus the foot-long gash on the hood, presumably caused by a hard, sharp part of her victim’s anatomy. Her body felt cold all over, but she steadied herself, tugging on the bottom of her ridiculous skirt as she slid back into the driver’s seat and signaled to make a U-turn.

She drove slowly, by her standards at least, for the six or so miles it took her to make it back around that fateful bend. Here she slowed to a crawl, scanning the road through narrowed eyes. When she spotted what she was looking for, a mixture of horror and sick relief spread through her chest.

She reached for her phone, hesitated a moment, and dialed 911. “Hi...hello, officer. I’d like to… to report a deer in the middle of Blackwood Road near Redding. It looks like it was, uh, hit by a car and then… and then run over by a couple others. Yeah, yeah, it’s in the path of traffic, could be a concern. About a couple miles out from the fork with Poverty Hollow. Nope, just spotted it as I passed by. Few other cars out tonight. Yes sir. Okay… okay. Thank you, officer. Goodnight.”

Allie drove home, unable to rid herself of the image etched into her mind: the crumpled, caramel-colored deer in her rearview mirror, open eyes glowing with the eerie reflection, limbs splayed in perverted angles--limbs that would never go all the way straight. Headlights of a car approached on the opposite side of the road, throwing a crude shadow that seemed altogether too big for the dark little heap that lay motionless in the road.

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Thematic Analysis

This narrative explores the themes of moral challenges, honesty, and the abuse of power. My character Allie is faced with a moral challenge when she hits a deer with her car and has to figure out how to deal with what she’s done. She decides to call it in to the police in order to prevent any accidents the deer’s body could cause, but chooses to lie and say she encountered it on the road rather than admit to killing it herself. This reflects a moral compromise, a sort of middle path she has chosen in the spectrum of morality. The idea that morality can be viewed on a spectrum differs from Solzhenitsyn’s message, which regards many moral choices as either right or wrong, black or white. For example, his main character Shukhov remains staunchly committed to his principles and condemns anyone who strays from them. “Shukhov had been walking this earth for forty years. He’d lost half his teeth and he was getting bald. He’d never given or taken a bribe from anybody, and hadn’t learned that trick in the camp either” (34). For many in the camps, bribery is seen as a survival mechanism, something that can be morally overlooked, but for Shukhov, it is a crime equivalent to stealing, and he believes that “what you don’t pay for honestly, you don’t get good value for” (34).

Although Solzhenitsyn is adamant about sticking to one’s principles, he cedes the point that dishonesty is sometimes necessary for self-preservation. When Shukhov finds a little piece of metal in the work camps, he decides to try to sneak it past the guards because he knows it could be of value to him: “A knife like that could bring something in. It could mean more bread. He couldn’t stand throwing it away so he slipped it in one of his mittens” (105). Although this is dishonest, Shukhov is adhering to his principle of opportunism and chooses to take a risk in order to potentially gain something. Similarly, Allie justifies her dishonesty in taking the car out, late at night, against her parents’ orders, because they are out partying and she feels the need to rebel against their irresponsible attitude. This is her response to what she sees as an abuse of power, just as Shukhov thinks the prison guards are abusing their power. In this way, both characters are justifying their dishonesty to figures who exercise excessive power over them, even though Allie’s justification is much more trivial and childish, while Shukhov’s is survival-based.