He’d put the throttle to the floor like rushed masonry. He’d simply drive through. When I was a child I watched a man lie dying in the street—the crowd orbiting bloodshed like a solar system taking shape. And now I am leaning to my left because the corner ahead is acute. That we will take a sharp turn and somehow keep on moving. The man in the street was doing nothing but dying, and back then I was doing nothing but not dying. These are thinner lines than we’d like to imagine, as if we could welcome a blown tire or flipping the car into a tall tree. There are ends all around us: Each drive is like a fish gasping for water—lessons not about how to turn the car, but how to brace for an unexpected impact and then drive through. Sometimes force is an ocean. Sometimes we call brutishness holy—treating death like a newborn child, crying. Throwing the car sideways is a path leading to confession; furious countersteer like the answer to every prayer.