Watson I am not

One of my days off eclipses the school week, and I get to play kid chauffeur while my mother roars to work on her motorcycle. This is something she needs to do once a week, like a church service. "It's spiritual," she says. "In the mornings, you can smell the rice and bacon." This is the kind of spiritualism you can't argue with.

So in the afternoon, I drove up the coast to the little school to pick up the boys. As I passed the sewage plant, there was a man sprawled flat on his face by the side of the road, as if he had been dropped from the sky. I looked in the rear view mirror as I passed, and saw his leg lift briefly. Not dead, then. Homeless? Hit by a car? Drunk? There hadn't been any blood that I could see. I was far enough away by then that I would have had to leave the baby in the car and jog back to check on him if I pulled over, so I decided it wasn't worth getting stabbed by someone pretending to be asleep and being late to pick up the kids. A few minutes later, a cop car and an ambulance blared by. If they weren't sent specifically for the not-quite-dead man, they would probably spot him on their way by. My duty was done.

The next morning, our local officer stopped by on his patrol to chat with my co-workers. I overheard, "... fell out of a truck. Had to go to the hospital." I skidded into the room. "Where? Where?" They shrugged. "Someplace on this side." Shit. It could have been the man I saw splatted on the side of the road. Am a terrible, terrible person, and a worse detective. I specifically asked the cosmos to deliver mystery and adventure, then drove right by the body it threw at me. There have probably been feet sticking out from under bushes all over the place that I haven't even noticed, and this was an act of exasperation. Try leaving the body by the road where she can't miss it. WHERE IS SHE GOING? If one of the yard men keels over right on our door step, I accept cosmic responsibility for this.