The Capital Beltway, I-495, is an eight-lane, 64-mile long circle with 38 interchanges around Washington D.C. that at certain times of peak traffic flow carries about a quarter of a million cars, give or take a few.  I suspect that most people who drive it twice daily as a part of their regular commute to work have realized at some level, at least once, that the day would come when due to a hideous combination of accident, volume, weather and absolute stupidity it will come to a screeching halt around it's entire circumference in both directions.  I suspect that thought was followed immediately by a fervent prayer to what ever deity they acknowledge (even fate or luck or chance) that on that day could they please, please, pretty please and I'll never be bad ever again, at least be home sick with the flu if I can't be jetting to Florida.  It's hard to imagine a parking lot of that size, though, which may be why the Washington Star published so many pictures the next day. The national and international news had a pretty fair spread, too.  Some waxed nostalgic about what the Air Florida crash did to rush hour and the Fourteenth Street Bridge, and the subway crash.  It was not to my mind an apt comparison.

Charlie Palmer had no such thoughts on that morning last January.  He came to the not unreasonable conclusion that traveling I-270 to I-495, then taking the first exit onto Old Georgetown Road was the best way to Suburban Hospital at 8:00 am on a Tuesday morning in January with a wet snow spitting hard preparatory to vomiting.  He didn't know the temperature was dropping just slightly, and just enough, in response to an unexpected so' ester of a low-pressure system guaranteed to drop many inches of snow before noon and many, many more after that before the next day dawned.  He wasn't alone in his happy ignorance. But then Charlie, like most sane people, liked his mornings quiet so he left the radio off until he got in the car to head for work.  Bad news can always wait, whatever most people believe.  Bad news doesn't usually change in such a short span of time.

Today, he left the radio off in the car, too.  He had other things on his mind than the Super Bowl and the budget battles.

Storms out the southwest bring a lot of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico with them if they skirt and cross the Appalachians just right and have enough warmth in the right part of the atmosphere.  Such storms, as old weather watchers around the area can attest, when mixed with entrenched cold air also in the right place in the atmosphere, will cripple D.C. for days.  One might, with truth, call them snow-makers extraordinaire. D.C. and environs, being a city enjoying the best of both worlds...that is southern summers and northern winters...has never sufficiently re-examined the firm, funding-driven conclusion that, because it is located south of the Mason-Dixon line and hence a southern city...Abraham Lincoln notwithstanding...it doesn't need to expand it's snow emergency infrastructure for events that happen irregularly.  And, since the federal government runs the place anyway, if they close down the rest is a moot point. 

This so' ester, not just irregular, but unexpected and destined to be historic in its own right was in a hurry to reach the Atlantic.  Sadly, it was about to find itself stalled smack dab on top of the city while waiting for a high-pressure system with more clout over the Atlantic to decide to move northeast towards England and Wales.  Stephen's need for energy in a hurry exacerbated this, by about 6 inches of total snowfall but since the final official tally was 38 to 40 inches in places before it all ended 24 hours later, he doesn't blame himself for the week long hiatus that ensued.  Besides, the kids were outta school and the federal government closed down, so it couldn't have been all bad.

It was the timing, of course.  Charlie was leaving the house at about 8:00 am.  The Metropolitan Council of Governments declared a snow emergency at 8:00 am, in response to updated weather forecasts, issued at 7:55 am, of at least six to eight inches by the time it tapered off. Government was rolling into motion at least an hour too late, sending everyone into a tizzy of a hurry to turn around and go home before they ever arrived.  The National Weather Service would find itself issuing a new forecast with enlarged snowfall predictions of at least 24 to 36 inches in short order, sending those fortunate enough to be home in the suburbs racing for the candles and propane from the hardware store that they would need this time, but that was at least an hour away and had only a marginal final impact on the parking lot the beltway became. 

Most counties had closed all their schools by 8:05 am but that sent the school busses back out on the roads.  The Office of Personnel Management waited until 8:15 am to announce a liberal leave policy for all non-essential personnel.  Federal employees are due in at 8:00 am and had just turned on the coffee pots when the news came down.  State and local offices, likewise 8:00 am starters, followed suit prompting the private sector to fill out their time sheets as well.  By 8:15 am the snow was falling at better than an inch an hour and accelerating.  The accidents were starting as the bridges and overpasses began to freeze. 

D.C. and environs, thought those who lived there, has been here before. There was time for bread, milk, Pampers and beer on the way home if they hurried.  So they headed for the secondary roads, now covered by over an inch and slick as a greased goose.  It was 31 degrees Fahrenheit and holding.  The surface roads were colder.  The salt and sand trucks were hampered by the morning rush hour that suddenly turned into the evening rush hour nine hours early, so the roads were untreated. 

I, for one, could not have imagined a better scenario for disaster.

Charlie Palmer was innocent of all blame in the events that followed. He had simply came to a logical conclusion based on years of experience of rush hour traffic about the best way to get his heavily pregnant, blood-spotting wife to the hospital as soon as possible without calling the ambulance suggested by her doctor.  Charlie didn't like to bother people.  He figured, he told me later, when we'd reached the point of exchanging confidences, that he'd get her there faster himself at that time of day because the ambulance would have to fight the traffic both ways.  And besides, somebody might really need it.  He was right, but not for about 23 minutes and then it would be many 'some bodies', among them Charlie and his wife. 

When it got to that point, though, there was, as I said, over an inch on the ground and traffic was bumper to bumper from before the Cabin John Bridge over the Potomac River to the I-495/I-270 split at Democracy Boulevard.  Charlie hit the split coming from the other direction, driving parallel to Henry Simpkins. 

Most of the rest of my knowledge of the accident that helped make traffic history that morning came from the newscasts and the helpful diagrams in the Washington Post.  Charlie's accident may have been one of many, but it was one of, if not the worst.  But the accident wasn't the reason we watched the story so closely.  It was what Baylee did, and that got us where we are today, you might say.

Henry Simpkins was a 25-year veteran of the roller-coaster, bumper car derby that is the Capital Beltway in all kinds of weather and states of congestion, having been driving eighteen-wheelers from Fredricksburg, Virginia to Baltimore, Maryland five days a week since he finished high school.  On this morning he had the country station on loud, the wipers on high, and his mind busy with calculating his chances of dropping his load and making it back to Wheaton where his little bit of womanly-appeal-on-the-side lived before the roads got deadly.  The scalding hot coffee was in his shifting hand and moving towards his full, amazingly sensual mouth when it happened. 

It wasn't his fault.  He'd just made an unscheduled stop in Rockville to pick up a part for his stock car and was heading back onto I-495 at the same time as Charlie.  He even, for once, had had permission for the unscheduled stop, since Henry's boss owned half the stock car.  It really wasn't Henry's fault any more than it was Charlie's.  Fortunately Henry and his auto part both survived, though his mouth underwent a few modifications as a result of the burns that changed forever his relationship with coffee and with his little bit of womanly-appeal-on-the-side.

Regardless of the unexpectedness of what was coming, the really surprising aspect of the whole affair, at the time anyway, for us wasn't Charlie or what he set in motion.  That wouldn't be fully apparent for months.  It wasn't the end of Henry's affair or the world's largest traffic jam smack in the middle of the worst storm to hit the Nation's Capital in decades.  It was a man in a car about ten cars back from Charlie and Henry.  He wasn't an average guy like Charlie, nor a bred in the bone good ole boy like Henry.  He was The Reverend Daniel Dudley Day, KC...Daniel to his friends and Dudley to his enemies...a man of apostolic proportions, and Pauline temper and temperament.  Unlike St. Paul, however, his brains had never exceeded his zeal.

Now, The Reverend Mr. Day is an unusual man, though just how unusual isn't apparent to the uninitiated.  I knew almost right away, as did the rest of us but for us it was hard to miss...we being the initiated, as it were.

I found out later that he'd borrowed a car from the Cardinal early the day before to drive himself to a meeting in Hagerstown and had stayed the night in Emmetsburg at the shrine of Our Lady where he also had business with the Sisters of Charity of Mother Seton.  He was on his way back, detouring only slightly, but again as planned, for an unavoidable visit to the parish of St. Jane Francis de Chantal and its aging pastor off the same exit Charlie was planning to take.  Then it was back to the Cardinal's residence.  Until he hit the split, he'd hoped to make it before the snow got really bad.  He had a lot to accomplish and not a lot of time to do it in before he was due back in Rome, thus making getting snow-bound in suburban Bethesda a bad idea.  So, The Reverend being The Reverend, he had the radio on and was listening to the traffic and weather reports when he hit the fork onto I-495. 

The domino effect of the accident stopped just short of The Reverend or perhaps it is fairer to say he stopped just short of it.  And he, being a man wholly committed before all else to his vocation...a fact that was going to annoy Stephen, and even Clem, the most tolerant of souls, to no end before it was all said and done...carried a sick call set with him where ever he went, just as he had since his ordination.  Waiting in the car, where it was warm and dry was not an option that even crossed his mind.  Nor did the uncomfortable reality of the snow, his lack of boots or the carnage he might find up ahead.  A member of the Knights of Christ religious order he knew he was a soldier of Christ.  He took as his model, from the secular world at least, the French Legionnaires of silent film and press.  He longed for the desert. 

He couldn't save Shelly.  He knew that without question.  But he could pray for her, and he was doing so, when I got there.  And lemme tell you, I was the only one there who understood the Latin prayers he was using to give her the last rites of the Church.  Those prayers were the prayers of my youth, and even my middle age, though they were old by the time Stephen was born.  And The Reverend knew them by heart...was praying them without thought and without ceasing while he worked to staunch the blood flooding out of Charlie's thigh.

Now, Charlie Palmer is a very unassuming man.  With his soft brown hair and low impact hazel eyes in an average face, married to his medium height and weight, it's easy to miss him if you aren't looking closely. I did for a long time.  Charlie wanted it that way, I suspect, all his life.  He was that kind of guy.  He just wanted to go to work five mornings a week, on time and put in his eight hours doing what was in front of him to the best of his ability.  Then, he wanted an uneventful drive home to his wife Shelly with a low-key dinner eaten to the beat of the events of the day.  He wanted to help her with the chores, so he could get to the sitting with her in the evening sooner.  He wanted to just be with her, reading and watching TV, while also, once in a while, watching her hair reflect the light and the shadow of thought and emotion play across her face.  Then, and it was the high point of his day, every day, he wanted nothing more out of life but to take his wife to bed and held her 'til dawn when he got up to do it again.  Charlie has never been a complicated man.

Shelly was his heart, to him a rare and precious gift of unimaginable beauty that he had never, ever, not in ten years of marriage after two years of courtship, quite gotten used to accepting as his woman, his wife, his friend and lover for life, to have and to hold, and love and adore for eternity.  Not taking Shelly for granted was what made Charlie unassuming.  The twin girl-babies she carried in her belly were Charlie's soul and the proof, after all the trying and failing to conceive, that God had decided Charlie was finally worthy of Shelly, and could be trusted with her and her children. 

When the pain of the contraction that set the events in motion began the surprise and intensity, combined with the gush of wet warmth signalling that her water had broken made Shelly scream.  Her mind had been on the road, not her belly.  The scream made Charlie jerk his face and upper body towards her.  His hands, on the steering wheel at ten and two o'clock just as they were supposed to be, followed the same path as his head, like puppets on a string.  The car naturally went where the steering pointed the tires...straight towards Henry Simpkins' tractor-trailer.  The impact sent Henry's coffee flying in his face and the rest was history for that side of I-495.  He jack-knifed trying to control the truck. 

Charlie's little Honda went into Henry's truck, bounced off, spun and went flying back across the lane into the embankment, front end first, the damage of the impact pinning Charlie to the seat and sending Shelly's head into the windshield...her belly at seven months, filled with twins, being too big for the seatbelt to accommodate. 

It was the rubberneckers, watching in fascinated, somehow titillated, horror from the lanes in the other direction that did the damage to that side of I-495.  It was their fault.  Within minutes traffic was backed up to the Mormon Temple and the accidents had multiplied all the way to Prince Georges County.  While in the other direction traffic was already stopped past the Cabin John and was building towards I-66 and the Dulles Toll Road.  It was headed back to I-95 and I-395 at Springfield.  The I-270 split was blocked building back towards Gaithersburg both by Charlie and Henry and another accident approaching the fork attributed to the weather.  By now there an inch and a half on the ground and the fall rate was growing.  The only way anyone could get to Charlie and his wife was by helicopter, though Charlie didn't know it.

Shelly had minutes left to live, her babies a few more past that. Charlie, realizing this and not caring how he knew, began, in his extremity of need to save her, to reach for her...and this is when I met Charlie...because Charlie tried with his body and failed, ending in a scream of mind-bending agony that answered the impulse of the nerves in his crushed pelvis.  So he reached with his heart and mind and soul to find a way, any way, to save her and her children...to save his life and his heart and his soul...and when he did, he went into the maelstrom of need that governs the transformation he had unwittingly chosen as the only choice he had. 

He reached and in that reaching opened a door inside himself to all that he had the potential of being.  He went through it willingly, not knowing it was a one-way door or that entering would change his life forever.  He reached with his mind and wrapped it around Shelly's heart and lungs...a still, unbeating heart and empty lungs and gave them a very gentle squeeze. With first one squeeze and then another in rhythm to his own pulse, in time to his despair, he set her heart pumping and the blood flowing with its oxygenated cells to his babies. 

He didn't know he couldn't save Shelly any more than he knew he was saving his daughters.  He didn't care.  Shelly's heart was his own, joined now in a wholly new and unimaginable way, and while he squeezed he stormed the heavens with his need and his demand for assistance.  He went through the door.  He kept reaching with his need, in his need and because of it the changes began, in the flood of neurochemistry that began in his brain and would eventually reach every molecule of his body.  Then he reached again and blew breath into her mouth to fill her lungs.  He squeezed her heart with his and he breathed for her with his mind and he kept her body alive long enough to save her children.  He never told me whether he thought it a fair trade.

In saving her children he made a different kind of history from the history the accident and the storm made.  He changed forever the reality of my people, who were now his people even though they weren't his wife's or his daughters'.  He saved them long enough to force us to save them.  No matter what they say about Baylee it wasn't just her.  She wasn't alone in doing what she did.  None of us could have left them to die.  But Baylee was the only one who could have gotten away with it, the only one with the psyche to get forgiven and the talent to pull it off.  And what Baylee did set in motion the events that followed that changed us forever.  We just got into line and toddled along behind her, so to speak.  At least that's what we thought we were doing.  What we didn't know was that Charlie Palmer was going to set in motion a second chain of events that have led us to where we are today.  First Charlie Palmer tried to take his wife to the hospital and then, months later he went for a walk to think things over.  Personally, after all that, I think Charlie should never be allowed to leave home again.  But I digress.

All this began because Charlie reached.  Because he reached I heard him. I heard him because there was no way I couldn't hear him.  The emergence of a New One, born in trauma and need and filled with an imperative demanding a response echoes through some unknown expanse of time and space and resonates in the mind of those who are like me.  It is a call and I answer.  I have to. Need speaks to need that is born of need. 

I have to because I can hear it.  I can hear it because I listen.  I am a Listener and my name is Liam ap Cadfan.