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A Place Where Anything Can Happen

A Place Where Anything Can Happen

Last updated on: August 25, 2026 at 10:32 pm by Mary Pezzulo

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A Place Where Anything Can Happen 2026-08-25T22:32:00-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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A metal railroad bridge over the highway

A photo of the Rockdale railroad bridge near Mingo Junction, by Chris Light, via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rockdale,_WV_RR_Bridge_P6200213_s_of_Steubenville.JPG

“Did you hear several kids from LaBelle got into a bad accident?” said Jimmy.

I was driving him to his mother’s place on Sunday morning. He is replacing the transmission in a car there, so his family can have transportation again, and until it’s all done I’m happy to lend him Sacre Bleu. But Sunday I had to get to Mass and run errands afterwards, so I was dropping him off and going to keep the car myself.

I hadn’t heard about the accident. My heart shot into my throat, worrying that it would be one of the children I knew, or used to know: the Baker Street Irregulars who are like family to me. The Artful Dodgers who are somewhere around town, and I worry for them every day. Maybe even the Lost Girl’s lost children. But it wasn’t any of them. It wasn’t any child who has showed up in my writing at all. It’s their antagonists: the neighborhood delinquents and bullies, people Adrienne avoids on the walk to school. Jimmy named five of them.

“They were playing ding dong ditch over in Mingo,” said Jimmy, “And they started vandalizing cars.”

Mingo is Mingo Junction, the next town south of here. George Washington once paddled a boat over from Wellsburg to Mingo, took a drink from a well there, and met with the Mingo people, a tribe of Iroquois Native Americans. Beyond that it’s just another mysterious impoverished steel mill town, like every town on this part of the Ohio. I suppose terrible things happen in Mingo, but no more so than in any other town along the river. Mingo is a place where anything can happen.

What happened there last week was a horror. Jimmy explained that a seventeen-year-old boy without a driver’s license had picked up several younger boys in his pickup truck– no, I don’t know how it was “his” truck when he couldn’t legally own it. But he drove them to Mingo for some fun at two in the morning on a weeknight, in a truck with expired plates and no insurance. They ran around the neighborhood knocking on doors, but it didn’t stay that innocent for long. Eventually they escalated to breaking into cars, and finally a house. A neighbor waved a gun and tried to chase them away in his own truck. The boys fled in the pickup, but the angry neighbor rammed them. They hit a guardrail and flipped over it. Every road in Mingo Junction is on a steep hill overlooking the river, so flipping over the guardrail means a very long drop. The driver was still mobile enough to flee, without helping the younger boys. Two boys climbed out of the burning cab of the truck and ran away. The two who were riding in the bed of the truck were thrown clear, into the bushes at the very bottom of the shale cliff. They had to be rescued by helicopter and are severely injured. One had been in a coma for days, but he was awake now. The truck burned until even the expired plate was too warped and melted to read. The boys who ran were arrested, and were in jail last Jimmy heard. That’s where the other boys are headed whenever they get out of the hospital.

He finished telling this story just as he got to his mother’s house, and thanked me for the ride. I drove the rest of the way to church by myself. Afterwards, I asked Adrienne if anyone had heard about the accident at school.

“Yes,” said Adrienne calmly. “So-and-so was joyriding and crashed into a wall.”

I filled in the part of the story that hadn’t been told. It wasn’t surprising to Adrienne.

The boy who had been in a coma was a year younger than Adrienne, still a middle schooler, but Adrienne knew him by reputation. The break-in in Mingo wasn’t even his first felony: he’d been in juvenile hall for breaking and entering and then for arson. Some students said he actually went to school in an ankle monitor. No one at the high school was surprised he’d been mixed up in this. They were a little surprised he was still alive. Nobody seemed sorry for him.

I went out again to do the shopping. On the way back, I happened upon three of the Baker Street Irregulars: Snow White, her teenage sister, and the grandmother, walking home, all dragging heavy grocery bags. I pulled over and gave them a ride the rest of the way. “Did you hear about the accident?”

Oh yes, they’d heard. Grandma knew everything about it. She knew the children involved. She knows every child in LaBelle. She had to file a police report when that middle school delinquent beat up her grandson “And then he stole his mother’s gun! He’s a misunderstood boy. His parents are divorced! Mom lives here, dad lives somewhere else. But I guess he’ll go to jail now: after he gets out of the hospital.”

I tried to murmur sympathy.

The next day I went for a drive. I drove out past Richmond to Jefferson Lake, where it feels like I’m far out in nature and not in the Valley. The sun was sparkling bright on the water, and those angry crows were noisy. It was still bright summer and the water lilies were blooming, but I could see the tiny hints of Autumn settling in: the sycamores were drying up, and here and there a single maple leaf was changing. I could have believed I was in Heaven and not a bad part of Northern Appalachia where children and adults do unspeakable things.

I sat on a bench, staring at the water, ruminating.

I can’t even tell you how I feel about at it all. “Angry” isn’t the right word, but “sad” fits even worse.

I suppose every stereotype you’ve heard about Appalachia is true. But there is so much you don’t know. There are human beings underneath all of this, and they matter. I have been trying to show you those human beings for years now: the wonderful ones and the monsters as well. The human beings here are selfish, chaotic, dangerous, generous, kind, clever. They live in families that are astonishingly abusive and families who fiercely care for one another. They have hopes and dreams, they work hard, and they make good. They despair, and commit unspeakable crimes. This place is terrible, bleak, cruel, beautiful, and worth fighting for. Do you see?

This inhuman place is a microcosm of earth, and earth is like that. Earth is a place where anything can happen.

These human beings are people, and this is how people behave.

I would like you to know these people I’ve met.

I have never understood people, but I would like them to be happy.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to “The Little Portion” on paypal or Mary Pezzulo on venmo

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