Agency

In Which an Act of God Occurs

just now

The roads were dry. Weather wasn't a factor. If anything was to blame, it was the goose.

Or, okay, maybe it was Berry himself, who had, after all, been watching the goose rather than the road.

But on an existential level, and as it would later appear on the insurance claim forms, neither the bird nor Berry were at fault. Strictly speaking, it was just dumb luck; an 'act of god' as they say in the insurance world, a calculated allowance for the free will of deities being prerequisite in that line of business.

What happened was this:

Berry — short for Bertrand, a name he'd always hated even as a pudgy child with floppy hair, uncomfortable in the tight velour shirts his mother favoured for him — was half listening to drive time radio and watching the sky. Specifically, he was watching a flock of Canadian Geese in flight.

Hold here. Someone call an editor. Aren't groups of geese referred to as a gaggle? Just that the word gaggle doesn't suit an elegant v-shaped formation angling southward in perfect avian synchronicity through the gray autumn sky. A gaggle sounds gang-like. A gaggle hangs around outside the corner store, looking for trouble, clad in leather jackets and spinning switchblades. No. Gaggle doesn't feel right at all — this would be a flock, surely.

The radio host was interviewing someone of merit — a smooth-voiced lecturer harping about the death of language at the hands of the sexting generation — but the voices were only background noise to Berry's thoughts, which were, outside of goose formations, concerned mostly with his lateness and what it would mean.

It was 5:45 pm. Unusually early for Berry to be coming across this stretch of the Gardiner, in fact. He normally worked much later than this, relying on his wife to pick their young children up from daycare, cook supper and put them to bed before he arrived home. But on that day, he'd agreed to do the pick up because his wife had an important meeting of her own, at her own important job which he sometimes forgot she had if he were being honest.

He had sworn to her that he would leave the office on time so he could be across town before 6 pm: the absolute latest his children could possibly be picked up without incurring extra charges (and the scorn of the daycare staff).

Things being the way they always were, he'd left later than he should have. In all fairness, he'd been on his way out, jacket over his arm, keys hung around a finger, when his phone had buzzed with an email from the Managing Director. He'd stopped to check it before leaving just in case it required an immediate response. Which, of course, it did. And that's how he ended up being later than he strictly should have been, while at the same time earlier than he usually would be, taking the Lakeshore off-ramp toward Carlaw at the same moment that the Canada Geese (flock or gaggle, as you prefer) were flying gracefully southward right above.

In the moments that came just after this, as his car corkscrewed through the air and over the barricades onto the westbound on-ramp, Berry would find himself thinking thousands of thoughts compressed into one — mainly, that he wasn't supposed to have been there. He spent those brief milliseconds stewing in authentic annoyance at fate, which had done him over again. What would his wife think when it all came out, he wondered briefly before his head hit the door frame with a surprising amount of force and he stopped having thoughts at all.

But hang on, here's the rest, so you understand that it wasn't Berry's fault. Not entirely.

Let's go back again to the moment before, as the geese were gracefully V'ing above him. He was watching them and worrying about lateness. The radio was droning. His car was going 110 kilometres an hour, but his foot was off the gas as he slowed for the exit.

Just then, in the gray sky, something irregular occurred. This all happened in less than a blink, you understand. A single goose, which had been anonymous in formation, indistinguishable from its co-pilots, suddenly broke ranks and began an awkward descent from the sky. It was angled oddly, one wing pointed toward the concrete highway while the other flapped wildly above it.

The goose, if one had the emotional distance to observe it in this moment, was probably feeling fairly panicky. As it should. It was plummeting toward the roadway and didn't show any sign of being able to right itself. The goose's fate was certain. Two. Three. Four. And it was over.

At least, for the goose, it was over. For Berry, it had just begun.