William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s loss of control on a snowy hill is a remembered near-accident whose anticlimactic survival becomes part of how he understands danger: even a spectacle that seems poised to end badly can leave almost no consequence. Recalled while Devereaux and Teddy Barnes are driving up the same hill months later, the incident turns a familiar stretch of road into a measure of both risk and disappointment.

The Attempted Climb

On the earlier night, Devereaux was driving home from campus near midnight during the long Pennsylvania winter. Rather than take a route that would add ten minutes, he attempted the five-block incline in light snow. The streets were deserted in part because curbside parking was prohibited at night during winter, leaving his car alone on the climb and giving the road an ominous stillness.

His tires spun at the light, then caught, and the car labored through the last two blocks. Devereaux remembered wishing that his insurance agent, whose office stood on the corner, could see him attempting something so reckless in an insured car. He came within roughly ten yards of the crest before the tires began to spin again and the rear of the car drifted.

The Descent

The car stalled, and the brakes could not meaningfully slow it. With the engine dead and the snow muffling the surrounding sounds, Devereaux became a witness to his own mistake as the car slid backward. It first moved toward the landing in front of the insurance agent’s office, where it seemed it might stop; instead, it slipped over the edge and continued down the final three blocks.

The car spun and rebounded off curbs like a cue ball in bumper pool before stopping at the entrance to the railyard. Devereaux suffered a loss of equilibrium but was otherwise uninjured. Bodie Pie, who lived in a second-floor flat near the bottom of the hill, later said that she had watched the descent and heard Devereaux laughing maniacally. He did not remember laughing; the feeling he did recall was disappointment that such drama had produced so little consequence.

The Memory on the Same Hill

The incident returns while Devereaux and Teddy Barnes are climbing the hill together in a small Civic. A few months earlier, Devereaux had been alone in light snow; now Teddy is with him, urging the car forward. The remembered skid gives their present ascent a history, but it does not make the danger into a lasting catastrophe. Devereaux is sure they will make it, as is Teddy, and both men have tenure.

That contrast shapes the memory’s significance. The earlier ride had all the appearance of a disaster in motion—a dead engine, ineffective brakes, and a backward slide toward the railyard—yet ended without serious injury. Devereaux’s disappointment at the gap between dramatic peril and negligible consequence follows him onto the same hill, where the prospect of making it safely is reassuring but also, for him, faintly discouraging.