Tom Lake: Jerry Jerome Brown Jr. comes along at a strange time in history: a time when humans willingly enter cages of glass and steel that move in such great numbers at such terrific speed that a subtle turn of the steering wheel can easily result in death.
Anyone with clear eyes and a steady hand can accidentally make this subtle turn in a single moment of inattention. And every night in every county in every state, probably on every road, someone tries to avoid this mistake while drunk. In 1987 on the roads of the U.S., 23,632 people will die in alcohol-related car crashes. If today is an average day, these crashes will kill 65 more people by midnight. If the deaths come at regular intervals, they will come every 22 minutes.
A thin crescent moon rises at 5:03 a.m. over the hospital in St. Louis where a 19-year-old factory worker named Stacey Irons waits for her son. He is two weeks past due. She has been here since yesterday morning. The labor-inducement drugs are not working. Fluid builds up. The pain is excruciating. That’s gonna be a good baby, says Stacey’s mother, Theresa Clark. ‘Cause he’s takin’ his time.
Two hours and 12 minutes pass between moonrise and sunrise. Six more dead. The boy’s father, Jerry Brown, stands at the bedside. He calls Stacey his first love. In eight months they’ll be married; in eight years, divorced. Twelve years after that a state trooper will find Jerry Sr. drunk in a Chevy Blazer on the side of an interstate with his seven-year-old daughter and an open bottle of beer.
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