The Dead Boy

I can’t see the scene behind the overturned tuk-tuk, but I can see the reaction of the people who are rushing out of the storefronts. At first they hurry toward the accident, but when its scope is revealed, they stop in their tracks. It’s as if there is an impenetrable force-field of horror radiating from something on the pavement. Nobody can approach closer than about fifteen feet, and soon there is a perfect geometric circle of onlookers. Many turn away. A few drop to their knees. A woman screams. The young men are ashen-faced and dumbstruck, fingers knit, hands clutching the backs of their heads in the universal gesture of helpless despair.

My wife grips my knee as our driver pulls the car to the side of the road and leaps out. From our vantage point we can only see the faces of the gathering crowd. We stay in the car. We are in a rural Ethiopian village, at the scene of a tragedy, and I’m not sure how the presence of a couple of bumbling white tourists would be received. I wonder if I can help, but it’s been forty years since I earned my First Aid merit badge in the Boy Scouts, and besides, it’s obvious from the reactions of the onlookers that the victim is very dead.

Our driver returns. He is silent. He puts the car in gear and drives. I look away as we pass the overturned tuk-tuk, but my wife doesn’t. Her grip on my knee tightens. She whispers through a tight throat, “It’s a little boy,” and then, after a few moments, “There’s nothing we could have done.”

Our driver, who has been intensely talkative during the journey, is now silent. I don’t look back as we leave the village. Perhaps this is a mistake, as my imagination immediately begins to provide a variety of unwanted and gruesome accounts of the scene. My mind points an accusing finger at me. Maybe I should have tried to help. Maybe the little boy wasn’t really dead. Maybe I should tell the driver to turn around. Maybe we can gather him up, rush him to a hospital. But I remain silent and we drive away, and now I will never know for sure.