Nashville: The Mood (Part 2)

by Donald H. Carpenter

  It was the kind of day that many people associated with 9-11. Clear blue skies, without even a hint of cloudiness or haziness, a moderate temperature that required no long sleeves, but only barely, bright sunshine, and a stillness everywhere that seemed as if the world was not moving forward or backwards—it just was. That was the only resemblance. It was June, after all, not September, and the scene was an interstate highway heading into Nashville. To be more specific, it was Interstate 65, heading north, between Brentwood and the Harding Place exit.

  A small, rundown pickup truck exited at the Harding Place exit, and as it entered the exit, something flew out of the passenger side of the cabin. Behind the truck was a small BMW. Dan Edelson, the driver, wasn’t even planning to exit at Harding Place, but when he saw the trash being thrown from the truck, he almost instinctively turned the wheel hard and followed the truck. He sped up to catch it during the long stretch down the exit, and pulled up immediately behind it at the light to turn onto Harding Place.

  Edelson had lived in Nashville only a few years. He was born in Massachusetts, and went to college there, and had lived in several northeastern states before moving to Atlanta, and then Nashville. He worked as a software systems consultant and had contracts with several large companies. He had lived in the southern suburbs of Nashville during his first year there, but had moved into the city, in an older neighborhood, about two years ago.

  Edelson started to get out of his car while stopped at the light, but just at that moment the light changed, and the truck in front of him took off. He followed it closely, driving somewhat aggressively in order to stay up with it as it weaved in and out of traffic. He wondered if the driver had noticed he was following him, and he tried to catch his eyes in the rearview mirror. A couple of miles down Harding Place he pulled up behind the vehicle again at the light on Nolensville Road. The light had just turned red as they pulled up to it, and with the green light on Nolensville Road having a span of a couple of minutes, he decided to get out of his vehicle, leaving the door open, and approach the truck immediately in front of him. When he stepped up to the driver’s side window, the man inside did not turn to look at him, even though it was obvious a stranger had just stepped up.

  Edelson tapped on the window, and the man turned to look at him, a scowl on his face. Edelson motioned for him to roll down the window, and he did, but obviously with great reluctance. The man appeared to Edelson to be an immigrant from somewhere, although it was difficult to tell if he was Latino or Asian. He looked to have a mixture of both in him, and Edelson wondered if he was Filipino.

  “What is it?” the man said in a faint accent.

  “You threw something out of your car back there, just as we were getting off the interstateDon’t you know how bad that looks?”

  “What business is it of yours what I do?”

  “It’s everybody’s business,” Edelson said, an angry tone rising up in his voice. “We just don’t do that anymore. If everybody did that, the streets would all be a mess.”

  “Look, Man, don’t worry about it. It’s none of your business.”

  The two stared at each other hostilely for a few moments, then the light changed and the man immediately began to pull forward. Edelson stepped back quickly to his vehicle, got in, and slammed the door. He started forward quickly, not even bothering to fasten his seatbelt. The pickup truck was already a ways ahead of him, but no cars had gotten in between them, so he sped up to close the gap as much as he could.

  He was about one hundred feet behind the pickup when another light on Harding Place turned red in front of the truck. It slowed down, but the driver, apparently seeing that no one was crossing the intersection, never stopped; he turned to the left into a neighborhood. Edelson stopped at the light and waited for a couple of cars to pass through, looking to his left to try and keep the truck in sight. As soon as the intersection cleared, but with the light still red, he turned left and drove into the neighborhood. He thought he saw, up ahead in the distance, the pickup truck turning to the left onto a side street. He sped up again, but by the time he got to that particular street, the truck was no longer in sight. He turned to the left and began to make his way down the street, looking from one driveway across to another, then back to another. He saw a couple of pickup trucks, but they didn’t look like the one he was following, although it began to dawn on him that although it had been easy to keep track of when it never left his view, he wasn’t really certain how to distinguish it, other than it was old and relatively worn, with faded paint.

  He drove up one street and down the other, looking for signs of the truck, but never seeing one close to it. Soon, he got lost in the maze of streets that ran up and down the large rectangular section north of Harding Place and east of Nolensville Road. Once, after he had crossed a street that seemed to have a little more traffic, he wondered if he was even in the same neighborhood. The houses all seemed to look similar, much different than his neighborhood off of Franklin Road. There were a lot of old cars and trucks parked in the driveways of the homes, sometimes several of them, and he began to wonder if he could even pick out the pickup truck out of such a lineup after it had been out of his view this long.

  He looked for signs of the driver in yards where people were present, but he didn’t see anyone that looked like him. He had only come face to face with him for a few seconds, and he wondered if he would even recognize him if he saw him again. He saw people that looked Hispanic, maybe Indian, Arabs, and Asians, perhaps immigrants from Thailand or Cambodia, but he didn’t see anyone that looked like the driver of the truck, and he didn’t see a truck that looked like the one that he had been following. He knew that his certainty with regard to either one was less than exact.

  Just as he had about given up the search for the man and the truck, as he was driving at a measured pace down some unknown street in the middle of the large block of residential areas, he saw a pickup truck cross the intersection about two hundred feet ahead of him. It was going very fast, and it went through the stop sign on its side of the intersection. It crossed the intersection and went to the right, and soon disappeared behind a grove of trees that bordered the road. Instinctively, without even thinking, Edelson pushed on the gas and proceeded to the intersection. He slowed for the stop sign, but didn’t stop completely, and jerked the wheel to the right and accelerated as quickly as his vehicle would allow in pursuit of the truck. Up ahead, he could barely see it turning to the right onto another street. By the time he got to that street and turned onto it, he could see what he thought was the vehicle ahead of him a good distance, but slowing down; he could see the brake lights. He drove as quickly as he could, trying to watch out for kids playing softball near the street in several of the yards, and soon pulled up behind the truck just as it had parked in a driveway off to the right. By this time, he was so keyed up about it that he turned into the driveway behind the truck, without even considering his action.

  He stopped the car in the driveway. His heart was pounding, and he took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He seemed to be in a daze, and his vision seemed to fade in and out on him, as if he was having a surge of blood pressure that alternately subsided. Things around him seemed blurry for a few moments, then became clear, then he felt the pounding in his head again, and things became blurry again, although less so.

  He looked up, and saw a man approaching his car. The man looked similar to the man he had seen at the traffic light a short while before, but he wasn’t certain. He had the same seeming mixture of Asian and Latino that distinguished that man, but certain of his facial features could have been different. He looked up at the man, scrutinizing his face, but at the same time feeling a sense of concern bubble up within him.

  They stared at each other through the side window pane. After a few moments of silence, the man motioned for Edelson to roll down the window. Edelson hesitated, but having come this far, decided there was no point in not going through with it.

  “What do you wan
t?” The man’s voice was sharp, almost accusatory.

  “Why did you take off?” Edelson demanded. He was certain it was the man now, and his former anger began rising slowly inside of him. “I wasn’t going to kill you or anything.”

  “Kill me? What’s with you threatening to kill me?”

  “I didn’t threaten to kill you. I said I wasn’t going to kill you.”

  The words sounded silly to Edelson even as he spoke them. He wondered if he should just back his car up and drive away.

  “Who are you, Man?”

  “I’m just a concerned citizen who didn’t like what you did.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I think you know.”

  The man stared at him again, and a puzzled look came over his face. He had a natural look of puzzlement to a degree, but now he was clearly trying to understand something about what was going on. He had to be the man, Edelson thought to himself, but he seems to be wondering what it’s all about.

  “Could you please get off my property?”

  Edelson opened his car door and got out of the vehicle. The man backed away a few steps, but the look on his face became angrier. He was not a large man, but he was physically well-built, and he gave the impression not of backing down, but merely positioning himself in a better spot.

  “I just want to talk to you about what you did.”

  “We don’t have any talking to do.”

  “You can’t just do what you did and get away with it.” Edelson was angry now, and had clearly taken back the initiative that had caused him to follow the truck in the first place. “We just can’t let people do what you did.”

  Edelson took another step forward, and the man’s eyes widened. The man turned around abruptly and headed for the door of the house, only a few steps away now. He opened the door immediately and stepped inside, shutting it behind him. Edelson listened to see if he could hear the lock being shut, but he didn’t hear that familiar sound.

  Edelson wondered again if he should just get in his car and leave. It seemed like a good time. He had made his point, perhaps not perfectly, but at least in some manner. Maybe it would make the man think twice before repeating his actions. Maybe not. At this moment, it didn’t seem to matter quite as much.