Driving In Oklahoma [best] — Reckless

The sound was not a crash. It was a compression —a wet, metallic gasp as the engine block folded into the firewall. The windshield exploded into a constellation of safety glass. Colt’s forehead met the steering wheel. Jake’s unbelted body met the dashboard.

Colt crested a low hill at 102 miles per hour. Below, a quarter-mile ahead, the road did something unexpected: it T-boned into a stop sign. There was no cross street, just a sudden, absolute end and a sharp drop into a dry creek bed. In the daylight, it was clear as a dare. In the dusk, with beer-fuzzed vision, it was a death trap.

“Son, don’t move,” the trooper said. His nameplate read TROOPER HALE . “Ambulance is two minutes out. Your friend’s not waking up.” reckless driving in oklahoma

Colt woke to a flashlight beam in his eyes and the sharp smell of ozone and pinesol. A state trooper, hat on, face a mask of granite, was pulling the driver’s door open. It groaned like a wounded animal.

The red dirt road west of Stillwater was a ribbon of temptation under a bleached-out sky. For eighteen-year-old Colt Brewer, the straight, flat stretch of County Road 180 was his personal autobahn, his escape from a double-wide that felt smaller each day and a father who measured love in grunts. The sound was not a crash

The next hours were a blur of sirens, the cold steel of a backboard, and the white fluorescent glare of Stillwater Medical Center. A nurse with kind eyes and a sheriff’s deputy with none asked him the same questions over and over. How many beers? Why were you speeding? Do you understand how fast you were going?

He turned his back on the tree and started the long walk home. He had no car. He had no license. But for the first time in his life, he was going the speed limit. Colt’s forehead met the steering wheel

Time fractured. Colt wrenched the wheel left. The Charger didn’t turn; it suggested a turn. Physics, that unforgiving Oklahoma law, had other plans. The back end fishtailed, biting into the soft shoulder. The car launched off the gravel, sailed for a sickening second, then slammed nose-first into a post oak tree.