There is a pile of smoking ruin on the side of road. I slow down the car, engaging in that stranger-mode curiosity, turning down the volume of the pop song playing on the radio. I don't want to come off tactless.
I see a couple. The woman has her face buried in her hands, and I think she is crying. But I don't know, because there is too much smoke and greyness and I decide to turn the song off completely. Her husband stands next to her, one hand clenched at his side, the other on the woman's shoulder. His grip is white.
At first, I'm not sure what is going on. Then I see the tuft of blonde hair hanging out of the crushed, jagged window, and the hand, scraped and bloody, still holding a blinking cell phone. Rigor mortis, I remember.
Ah, now I know what happened. I pull over onto the shoulder of the road and take out my phone. The pop singer's voice and accompanying autotune still ring in my ears, a strange aftereffect, I suppose, of witnessing tragedy. I never have before.
Strangely, my fingers are shaking as they dial 911.