Close calls

Julie was driving home from a birthday party with Lucas on Saturday, when she phoned me from the car. She said she'd just been motoring south on the expressway when she heard the screech of brakes behind her. When she glanced into the rearview mirror, she saw a truck spinning across the lanes, and several cars crashing. She punched the accelerator in case any cars spun her way, and exited quickly. A very close call.

I spoke to my father this past weekend, who reported on an extremely close call having to do with a tornado that passed through the other night. A twister was spotted on radar in Pointe Coupee parish, headed across the river to West Feliciana, where my folks live. The twister passed through the yard of their neighbor across the blacktop road, uprooting a pecan tree. It apparently lifted at just the moment when it came into my mom and dad's yard, but was close enough to the ground to destroy the crown of one of their ancient pecans. Then, judging by the evidence of limbs left on the ground, it passed in the next instant over my sister's house next door. She and her girls were sleeping soundly inside, and never knew that hovering briefly over their house was a tornado that, for whatever reason, had raised itself off the ground a moment before it arrived.

That's not the only spectacular close call my sister has had in her life. When she and her husband first married, he did shift work at a paper mill, which meant that she was sometimes at home alone at night. It so happened that a peeping tom appeared in the semi-secluded area in which they then lived, before they built their house near our parents' place. She'd call the police, but they never could catch the guy. She knows how to use a gun, and kept a loaded pistol near to hand when her husband was at work.

One night, when she was home alone, there was a knock at the door, very late. She refused to answer it, but got her gun ready. The knock came again, and a third time. I believe she'd called the cops by then, or perhaps my dad, who lived not far away. Anyway, by the time someone got there, the night visitor had departed. He never came back.

Well, years passed, and it happened that one of her high school classmates was arrested, charged and convicted as a serial killer. Derrick Todd Lee is now on Louisiana's death row for murdering seven women. It came out that Lee, who lived about two miles away, had a long history as a peeping tom, including multiple arrests. It was almost certainly him that night at her door. My sister said that Derrick was such a nice guy in school that if he had come to her door during the daylight, she would have let him in.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine learning in retrospect that a man who would go on to murder seven women was almost certainly knocking at your door one night, when you were at home alone? Police believe Lee's murder spree began at least as far back as 1992. This was around the time that my sister got her late-night knock at the door. Why didn't he force his way in? Why didn't he come back after that night? I don't suppose we'll ever know.

I suspect if any of us ever really knew how close death has passed close by at some point or another, we would find it hard to leave the house the next morning.