THE BEAM OF LIGHT

by

Alyne Pustiano 

The Twin Spans are a set of five mile long, non-descript, cement expanses crossing a small portion of lower Lake Pontchartrain between Bayou Sauvage and St. Tammany Parish.  Thousands of commuters and travelers make the trek daily to work and other destinations in the city of New Orleans.

One late summer night, just about two years ago, one commuter was making his usual drag home; and, listening to the radio, engrossed perhaps in the last remnant thoughts of his workday, this soon-to-be-eyewitness had no idea he was about to sound the first notes in a little tale that lingers to this day.

The green Ford F-150 in the lane ahead had swerved a little over the line.  No big deal, since even this small expanse of concrete had that “road hypnosis” reputation.  But soon the lone commuter became aware that there was something wrong in the truck ahead.  Like all good New Orleans commuters, he did the typical thing and sped up past the truck.  The last thing he needed tonight was a collision with a pick up, especially on a bridge. 

As the last rays of the setting sun played through the bridge railing and Irish Bayou faded into the twilight, the truck barreled past again.  This time the hapless commuter got a look inside.  There was a young couple having what seemed to be a knockdown, drag out argument in the cab of the speeding vehicle.  Fingers pointing and arms flailing, the truck sped on past the now quite alarmed commuter.

Suddenly the truck veered into the right lane ahead of the witness and almost regained a straight line.  But the driver was out of control by this point, hitting the woman who now held her hands up against the blows.  The commuter watched in horror as the truck swerved right then left, then right again and suddenly, horribly plunged over the side of the bridge into the darkling lake waters.

The horrified witness stopped immediately ahead and put his hazard lights on.  Other commuters who had seen the occurrence from behind stopped too, and all began converging on the spot where the truck went over the side.  Skid marks and oil marked the bridge railing, but in the water there was no sign of the truck or it’s doomed passengers.

The man whipped out his cell phone and the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Department was summoned, along with fire trucks and ambulances.  A State Police officer arrived on the scene and soon a helicopter appeared overhead.  From the North Shore of the Lake, a Coast Guard patrol vessel was dispatched, sending wet-suited divers to the scene.

The unfortunate commuter who had witnessed the event from start to horrible finish now stood sweating in the humidity of the late summer night.  He peered into the dark waters between providing information to the authorities and exchanging amazed reactions with other commuters.  Something about the blackness under the bridge troubled him.  It was all enclosing, or so it seemed, and all consuming.  He could not even see the headlights of the truck and this troubled him because he had always been told that the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain is made of layers of thick muck.  Anything plunging head-on into the lake bottom had a high probability of disappearing completely.

Once he had met his responsibility of informing the authorities of all he had known, the nameless man headed home to wife and family.  Each day in the intervening eight days, as he commuted to his job via the southbound span, he watched with nervous interest the explorations occurring off the side of the north bound span, wondering if any trace of the couple or the truck had been found.  Each evening, heading home on the northbound lane, he felt a little sting of remorse and tried not to glance at the black tire marks and mangled cement, the only clue that something awful had happened just days prior on that bridge.

Within days the search was called off.  Nothing had been found, no bodies had floated to the top nor indeed had turned up in any of the far-flung outlets of Lake Pontchartrain or the Rigolets.  A dredge had been unsuccessful in locating even the truck itself.  Faced with this, the authorities recalled their resources and life returned to normal, despite the fact that two families had lost loved ones and had no bodies to bury.

But the story didn’t end there.

Late one night, three or four weeks after the incident was case-closed, a St. Tammany Parish deputy was making the trek from south to north shore via the northbound Twin Span.  He hadn’t participated in the search and rescue, and usually crossed the lake at the Causeway Bridge, far to the west.  

Driving along, speeding probably, his attention was diverted to the dark waters over the right hand railing.  He saw what appeared to be a beam of light shining out of the depths of the lake beneath.  He put on his lights and flashers, stopped the patrol unit and got out, flashlight in hand.

Gazing steadily over the side of the bridge, panning the flashlight to and fro, it now became apparent that what he was seeing was, indeed, a solid beam of light shining up from the bottom of the lake.  The waters that covered it caused it to look even more ethereal in the dark night, but there was no doubt in the deputy’s mind that he was seeing something significant.  He radioed for a search unit dispatch; other officers arrived on the scene to await the slow appearance of the helicopter and dredge that had searched this same spot unsuccessfully only weeks before.

As the deputy stood on the bridge other officers filled in all the details of the search for the Ford truck for the curious deputy.  They expressed fear that someone else had ploughed over the edge of the bridge in a similar accident.

The dredge radioed a positive impact and divers hurriedly fitted heavy chains to the submerged vehicle.  They began pulling it up.  But even before it surfaced, divers were popping out of the water and shaking their heads.  One diver even had the mysterious light in his hand: an intense, 1,000+ candle Q Beam of the type used by pleasure and fishing boats all over south Louisiana.

As the Ford F-150 was surfaced and lowered onto the bridge, the deputies peered inside.  To their amazement, there, locked in a final embrace of anger or fear, were the couple that had plunged over the bridge that awful evening a few weeks before.

The Q Beam, it was discovered, had been in the abbreviated rear seat behind the driver, on the floor of the truck’s cab.  It was powered by battery, but it was required that a switch on the underside be turned to the “on” position in order for the unit to work.

As they watched the truck being hauled away and the bloated bodies being shut into a St. Tammany Parish Coroner’s van, the deputies and the other officers shook their heads and pondered many things.

Chief among them:  since the truck had lain at the bottom of the lake for over two weeks, who or what had turned on the Q Beam that night?

The conclusions they reached simply did not bear expression and certainly nothing was written down. 

But . . .

There are nights when commuters making the trek over the Twin Spans still sometimes see a light beaming from the waters below.  Other law enforcement officers have stopped, like their predecessors, and, flashlight in hand, peered over the side of the bridge only to see . . . nothing.  But the brackish black waters seem to have no other tale to tell.