Mom e-mailed me this morning and told me that they took my brother’s dog, Nickel, to the vet, and both his back legs are shattered. This kind of blindsided me because she forgot to tell me Thursday that he had been hit by a car. The good news is that his functions are still functioning, and the doctor said he’s young (he was six weeks old or so when Evan’s girlfriend gave him to him for graduation in May) and tough and should heal and be basically okay. But for now, he’s bedbound and pitiful, having to be waited on by whatever two-legged creatures happen to pass.
This comes about a week and a half after my brother was sideswiped by a drunk driver in the middle of the night in Coffee Hills. (If you’re from Savannah, you know what a perilous place the hills are. If you’re from Nashville/Hendersonville and you’ve ridden with me to Savannah, you might recall the pitch black hilly terrain with blind curves, running alongside the river. If your name’s Patrick, you might recall it as the stretch of road where you cried like a little girl because you were so freaked out by the lack of street lamps. Maybe you didn’t cry. Who can remember that far back?)
Anyway, Evan was driving home from dropping his girlfriend, Nicole, off, and he noticed a car coming, driving sort of erratically and inching toward his own side of the road. So Evan, who is the most grounded, common sensical kid I know, started inching toward the shoulder and slowing down just in case the oncoming vehicle invaded his lane. Which it did. And the asshole clipped Evan’s mirror right off and kept going.
My brother called my mother and told her what had happened, and that she should call the cops because he was going after this guy. She tried to talk him out of it, but in my family, when you’re in a truck and you get the chance to chase somebody down, you have to do it. It’s a tradition.
It just happened to be the time of night that my dad was getting off work in Counce, heading toward my brother from the other side of Savannah. So my brother called and told him what had happened, and the trademark Turner tempers flared, and they decided to, together, track the idiot down in case the cops decided they couldn’t or wouldn’t.
And you know what? They did. The cops got in on the action too. And the asshole was completely slobbering drunk, and had a woman and a child in the vehicle with him. They booked him on a DUI, endangering a child, hit and run (or whatever its legal equivalent is called), driving with no insurance, and more, and threw his ass in jail.
But my brother’s truck, which he just now, after two years of work, got running, sustained $1,200 of damage.
The kid deserves a break. All he does is work. He stays out of trouble (as far as I know). I think I might take some beer in for Thanksgiving and sneak it to him if he’ll promise to drink it that day and stay off the road.