There is a little hill right outside Provincetown where everything opens up big and wide, the sky, the bay, the sea, and the dunes. From this point you can see the end of the world, or at least the end of America, the very last tip of the cape jutting into the Atlantic. It's called the Witch's Knoll because supposedly it's where the old broom riders met to toil and trouble over their bubbling brew on full moon coven nights. It's the windiest part of the Cape and the wildest.
From this vantage point on clear winter days, you can see whales blowing their spouts and flicking their tails among huge icebergs from Arctic flows .
The Cape highway runs right over this knoll.
The day Divine and I were traveling along this very spot the wind was kicking and howling, shaking and whipping the VW bus with a lot of force. There was some ice and snow on the road and we didn't have snow tires, but we were singing "Got no diamonds. Got no pearls. Still I think I'm a lucky girl..." from Annie Get Your Gun, and the day so clear and fresh that we didn't care about slipping and fishtailing. We were zooming toward a thrift-store shopping spree down-Cape.
A mean hand of the wind caught us while we were on the second verse. "Got no checkbooks. Got no bank..." and the bus just spun all the way around twice and then it just fell over onto the tall dune grass and almost into the wild cranberry bog. It just tipped over like an empty cardboard box.
A funny thing happens in all car accidents. Time changes. Everything goes into exaggerated slow motion. It's so bizarre.
Once I was in a really bad car accident with my parents when I was fourteen and while the car was spinning slow and mom and dad were flying out the doors in quarter time, I was marveling at the eerie time phenomenon. It was only when the car came to a full stop that time sped up again and got normal. The same thing happened this day except neither of us got hurt.
When the VW bus came to a halt on its side and time got regular again, Divine and I found ourselves in the back of the bus. I was on top of Divine. The windows were flush to the ground, and we were dazed, but nothing was broken. The engine was still whirring away.
"You alright, Cookie?" he asked me.
"Yeah. You?"
"Yeah. But that was wierd. Like slow motion," he said and crawled into the front and pushed open the passenger door that was now the top of the bus. "Door works." He laughed.
"The windows didn't even break." I said looking around and crawling out after him.
We walked around the bus and stared at its belly. It looked fine. Nothing was falling off.
It wasn't even scratched.
"We gotta call a tow truck or something." I said but a phone was miles away and there weren't any cars coming.
Divine didn't say a word. He just picked up the bus, the whole thing and stood it up, back on its tires. Just like Superman-woman.
I think I was just standing there with my mouth open.
"God, you're really strong," I said, "I can't believe you just lifted this thing. I'm flabbergasted. You oughtta go into wrestling or weight-lifting or something." I couldn't get over it.
"Must have been adrenalin strength," he said and he got back in the driver's seat. "Well, get in," he said, "We going shopping or what?"
From that day on I always felt really safe when I was with Divine. He wasn't afraid of anything.
