Fall and Rise

by Stephen Dixon

“You blame them?” shorter man says.

  “No, but I said I think I should be the one since I was the other person involved—‘not that I was responsible,’ I said. ‘The other driver was—out in my lane, not that I like putting any blame on him now,’ I said—lying, lying. Actually, since I didn’t see the accident, I didn’t know at the time who was really responsible, but had a good idea. But say both of us were drunk or asleep at the wheel and in the wrong lanes—it’s possible. Or I’m asleep in my lane and he’s just drunk and in my lane. Anyway, most of me assumed I was the only one responsible, but the rest of me said to myself at the time ‘Well, who really knows?’”

  “I take for granted you were the one responsible,” shorter man says, “based on what you said so far. But it is possible, if somewhat implausible—two drivers on the road drunk or asleep at the same time and hitting one another’s car, even if it’s probably happened a couple of hundred times in America this year. What do you say, expert?”

  “One I never heard of but has to have happened. But continue,” he says to me. “You’re guilty, but of felonious car crashing or attempted manslaughter we don’t know yet.”

  “I opened the driver’s door. There’s one man there, half on the seat, half on the floor.”

  “His body in half?”

  “From the waist down he’s on the seat, the waist up on the floor, his head on the pedals but still connected to the neck and the neck to the rest. I lifted him up, though knew then I shouldn’t—broken bones, that sort of thing—till he was flat on the seat. Glass in his head cut my hand in several places, but that didn’t matter. In fact it made things look better for me, I thought. A lot of blood, his and mine. Made sure to get some of it, but not too much as if I intentionally smeared it to elicit a sympathetic response, on my face and shirt. He was mumbling something. I said ‘What is it?’ and put my ears to his lips, thinking if it’s something incriminating about me I should be the first or only one to hear it, especially if he died.”

  “That’s horrible,” shorter man says.

  “Not only that, if he did die—and I hope it goes without saying that I was just about praying he wouldn’t—and someone asked what he’d said and it had been critical of me—I was telling myself then I’d say ‘He mumbled, nothing I understood.’”

  “Even worse.”

  “It was. But I’ll stop. I’ve said too much, besides all your time.”

  “What’d the near-dying guy say?” ponytailed man says.

  “Yes—momentum—go go go ahead—what?”

  “He said ‘Other car did it, was on my side of the road.’ I said into his ear very low ‘No it wasn’t. You were, on his side, try to remember that, and we think driving without your lights.’ Sometimes since then I’ve thought—as I also thought with a Denver dentist I ran out on the bills around that time—that I’d call him and say ‘Listen, I was drunk and in your lane, so what can I do to make amends?’ And to the dentist say ‘How much do I owe you plus interest over the years?’ I did say I was sorry then to the accident guy, but inside more sorry it happened to us both and me the inconvenience of going to court and time away from paying work and losing my car in a car-required state when I was strapped for cash. But I never admitted to him my fault in the crash, and to the dentist—well, when I got a lawyer’s letter in New York I wrote back under a different name that I was the executor of my estate and that I’d died.”

  “I don’t get that.”

  “I’ll explain it later,” shorter man says.

  “I used the apartment number and address of a not-so-willing friend and said the man he’d sent the letter to about the bill had died and if there was any money left after the settlement of a very negligible estate, his client was seventh in line. He sent a letter every half year asking if the estate had been settled, but I ignored them, so even to a few years later I was still irresponsible, since by then I had enough to begin paying the dentist back on time. Anyway, the accident guy shook his head, shut his eyes and looked dead and I held his hand—till the police came—while several people patted my back and rubbed my neck. I got a summons—that was automatic in an accident that bad, the trooper said, just as the other guy would have got one if he was even half alive at the time.”

  “Wait a second,” ponytailed man says. “You got a summons at the accident?”

  “I think so.”

  “Colorado? Give me a second to think. No, on that there’s almost strict uniformity. You would have been told to expect one, if he didn’t arrest you on the scene, and then got it through the mail. So what the trooper might have told you was that the other man would have also got one if he hadn’t been near death and if you didn’t seem the main cause of the accident. Do you recall him measuring your tire tread marks on the road?”

  “Really, I forget. Anyway, I showed up in court hangdog and without lawyer, since I thought the judge would be favorably disposed to that. And pretended, as with the psychiatrist, to be, despite my university connection, which only involved student-teaching to a master’s degree I never completed, a bit weak-minded and oversensitive to the point a few times of doing my sincerest best to repress real tears, and very unorganized and alone. I was living with a woman then but left her a block from the courthouse and told her not to give a sign in the courtroom that she knew me. I also saw there the man I hit, still with Band-Aids on his face and walking with a cane. I never asked nor found out if he’d walked with one before the accident. I wasn’t questioned in depth about driving while drunk, since I was able, when I got out of the car the second time—and because they also didn’t give me the balloon test, since the drunk driver they’d picked up before me got so incensed at what she called a divestment of her civil liberties that she punctured it with her fingernails. Anyway, I was able to make all my alcohol mannerisms and breath disappear. ‘Get stark raving sober,’ I told myself when I left the car, ‘you’re in trouble up to here.’ Impossible, I know. But about drinking, I said to the judge when he asked, ‘Yes, had a wine and a half at that party up the hill, but some yogurt before and a glass of milk after to coat it.’ Also, after I said I’m sorry to the guy for what had happened to us, he asked if I’d said anything to him when he was in the car—he seemed to remember it. I said ‘No, except for “Don’t worry, you’re gonna be all right,” while I held your hand and dabbed blood from your eyes.’ ‘Okeydoke,’ he said. ‘This is the Wild West so accidents like that can happen, just so long as your insurance company takes care of it.’ The judge advised me to plead nolo contendere and I got a twenty-two-dollar fine and they didn’t even take my license away for a day. That was it. I walked the two miles home alone in the rain because I wanted to save on the cab fare and not be seen with my woman friend. Story has a rather unuplifting ending, but what can I say? When I got back she called me a louse for everything I’d done that day, wouldn’t even run a warm tub for me and soon after that moved out, but more because we were broke and she’d just turned thirty and wanted to get married and have a child right away, while I—”

  “You’d think they would have slapped something more than a small fine on you,” shorter man says.

  “You’re right. But after all my lies to the trooper and judge, I certainly wasn’t going to ask for it. Besides, I couldn’t afford to go to jail or pay a big fine. Look, I was lucky.”

  “Did you watch a lot of TV in those days?” ponytailed man says.

  “No, why?”

  “When you were young then. Were you affixiated, I like to call it, to the TV screen?”

  “No more than most kids my age. Howdy Doody at five every afternoon. There weren’t as many stations and programs then. Mostly test patterns and Gorgeous George and Ralph Bellamy as a private eye I think and maybe not even Uncle Miltie yet. But you think there’s some connection with my lying and conniving to TV?”

  “I’ve theories, but nothing proven in the lab. But the art of getting away with things or thinking you can—that can be too much TV. That jail isn’t real, for ins
tance, but that wouldn’t apply to you, since you wanted to avoid a sentence. You said you were lucky. Well, then Mr. Lucky perhaps—a character in the early days of TV.”

  “I don’t remember him.”

  “Flipping a coin? Dressed sharply? Always led off with ‘Hello, suckers—life still thrilling?’ No? If you do go back to Howdy Doody days, tell me—the early Howdy or the late?”

  “You mean the one before he had plastic surgery on his face?”

  “So, if you go back that far—”

  “Hey, you too—his operation right on TV—right? right?” and I slap his palm though he didn’t offer it and say “And the doctors in masks working over him and his convalescence for weeks after with bandages covering his face. And he was so ugly before, but interesting, remember?—but much worse after because they made his face so cute and telegenic with too many freckles. And the Peanut Gallery and Bob Smith too?”

  “I sat in it on TV one day.”

  “So did I. Sent away for the seat. I wonder if we were in it the same day.”

  “I’m sure not. And I only went as a chaperon for my younger sister, so I have to be a lot older than you.”

  “I don’t know—I was a late bloomer. My family was afraid I’d never come around.”

  “That’s surprising to hear. Still, getting back—but I’ve lost track of what I was going to say, and I have to apologize about Mr. Lucky. He was in the movies, even if somehow,” tapping his head, “it still registers TV. But I’m also starting to freeze out here, so no further questions.”

  “I’ve only one,” shorter man says. “Maybe you won’t like it, but we’ve proven we’re civilized here without the other person immediately thinking we’re full of disapproval, yes?”

  “Fine by me,” I say.

  “Good. Then what made you change? Conniving to the army, lying to the judge, that injured man, because you say you’re much different today.”

  “Life—the maturing process—the over and over again—ideas. Gradually realizing what I was doing and did. You know—the repercussions—on me and others. I mean, I still lie—little ones to get by, to others and myself. But the big ones—well you know, they’re more obvious and harmful, to me and to others, so if you continue to do them—if I do—cheat, bullshit—well you know, it’s increasingly obvious you can’t. But if you do after you know how obvious it is and that you shouldn’t, then it’s also increasingly obvious to others or should be—yourself included—that they get bigger and bigger these lies and just acting like a prick, and some more obvious and harmful than others—no, that’s not it. I know what I want to say but can’t articulate it, though it should be obvious what I mean by now, or fairly.”

  “I think I see. Okay, I can figure out the rest myself, so my case is closed too.”

  “You’ll clue me in later if we’re still here together?” ponytailed man says and shorter man says “If you don’t freeze as you said, yes.”

  We’ve inched up—at least I didn’t know we had—to the car and I’m about to say goodnight to them when the ponytailed man says “Look—on the floor by the soda can—a quarter.”

  “You saw it first, you take it,” I say.

  “If you believe in good luck finding coins, that one’s bad.”

  “Oh, I’m not superstitious and you never know when you might need some extra change. You guys first? Sure? Sir?” to the shorter man.

  “Not me. This time I agree with my new friend completely.”

  “Besides, talking about being unsuperstitious, I’ve a lucky coin jar at home—even have a five-dollar bill in it—but I didn’t tell you this?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “It’s a stupid reference—really, unrelated. Not unrelated, just stupid. Anyway, money I’ve found over the past ten years, not that it’s brought me good luck, but who knows? According to you two I could be dead right now without it, and for ten or fewer years. And then—well I wonder what you two would be doing now if I were. Everything else would be the same, though of course my shadow wouldn’t be here and footprints if there are any, and other small to smaller things: cigarette butts I might’ve squashed with my shoes and so on—carbon dioxide in the air or a little less oxygen because of me, but I know next to nothing about those. But the car would be here, bus, weather, etcetera—that policeman, with maybe just the slightest of faintest chances my absence of from an hour to ten years would’ve changed any of that. Probably, even without me, you’d be looking at this car and possibly from this or a nearby spot. Or more probably, since you’d”—to the ponytailed man—“have ended up just as cold and I wouldn’t be keeping you here with my yakking, you’d both be inside somewhere talking about the car, or on your respective ways home, if they’re not in the same direction. Or maybe they’re even in the same building or on the same floor for all you know, though that’s much less likely, unless it’s one of those twenty to thirty apartments to a floor buildings, if they run that large. No? All wrong?”

  “I’ll go along about the shadow and dioxide,” ponytailed man says. “As for this guy living in my building, except if he moved in today or had been hiding all this time—”

  “Okay. But after living so long with this jar, I don’t have the heart to stop putting found money in it or empty it out to use the money or even just to use the jar.” They stare at me. “I mean, it’s an old pickle jar with a wide neck—quart-size, so really good for storing things—so the money I’d store somewhere else, if I didn’t use both at the same time: money and jar. I knew I shouldn’t have brought up the subject of good luck.” Policeman has his back to us, talking on the phone. “But I can be compulsive about not passing up found money, though not to the point where I think it’ll bring bad luck if I don’t. That someone first had to point the coin out to me—well, that variation of finding lucky money hasn’t come up till now, so I’ll deal with it when I get home or along the way, but how can I deal with it realistically if I don’t have the coin? Anyway, coast seems clear enough,” and I reach in to get the quarter, blow off the glass bits. Try to put it into my change pocket, but this pair of pants doesn’t have one, so I feel for an empty pocket, back right one first, is none, take the comb and keys out of that pocket, which is where if I have no change pocket I put found coins, stick the keys into the less crowded left back pocket, comb into the left side pocket, quarter into the right back pocket where I’ll know where it came from if I want to drop it into the jar. My notebook and Hasenai’s book of poems in Japanese—and I tap the two side pockets to make sure they’re there. Wallet’s in the right side pocket of the pants, pen in the other. Smaller notebook—which I’m not afraid to lose since there’s nothing much in it, and its metal tip has ripped, even when I’ve wedged it under the spirals or taped it, a couple of my pants pockets or other parts of the backs of my pants—in the left back pocket, handkerchief also in the side coat pocket, so everything’s there. Subway tokens? Have none. Other coins—can’t feel or find any, unless they’re at the bottom of one of these pants or coat pockets. Nail clipper, I find, when I thought I lost it weeks ago, also in the right side pocket of the pants. “So, that was my Colorado car crash yawn and selected confessions. Call it a night, gentlemen?”

  “We all do kooky things when we’re young,” shorter man says.

  “Really, I’m much too cold to listen,” ponytailed man says.

  “A moment. Last tale. I did with you both for more minutes than I enjoyed, and if you want I’ll stand you to a real drink after—worth the wait? So everyone sit. In the army I threw—on German land but Allied-held territory—a live grenade at my best buddy ever when I got overwhelmingly sore at him for something he did, of what I won’t waste your time with, but it was dirty. Fortunately—that it wasn’t the advancing enemy with fixed bayonets charging—it was a dud, or I’m sure, for penal reasons, I wouldn’t be here speaking to you now. Though after so long and because I was born in the Village and my family would still have been here for sixteen years—my mother the last of her kin to
die and in the same apartment I still live in. The same bed, in fact—I switched to theirs after she went—and please, I don’t give a blink to what people say about extremely close mother-son relationships—I loved her!—maybe I would be speaking to you right where we’re standing and same time, give or take.”

  “They also broke the mold after my mother was born,” ponytailed says, “but I never did anything as angry as you. Sure, once tossed a man overboard but knew no sharks were around and he could swim.”

  “All of us Peanut Gallery émigrés,” I say. “Wound up so peaceful and, well I was going to say ‘loved our mothers,’ but you couldn’t have watched it too.”

  “My baby brother did. And you can’t be too sure sharks aren’t everywhere around but in your bathtub,” to the ponytailed man. “Right from the piers over there I’ve seen them—when I fished as a kid and now just to sit and think—frequently.”

  “We had safety nets to keep them out—for swimming.”

  “Then if they weren’t in the swimming perimeter before you set up the nets, true.”

  “So,” I say, “—great talking,” and I stick out my hand.

  “Same here,” ponytailed man says, “without reservation,” and shakes.

  Shorter man smiles, is about to take his hand out of his pocket, says “Doubtful as I was at first when I saw you approach that it could actually happen—for I’m usually a keen judge of character and I had you down as odd and troublesome, especially after you walked back a block after your screaming-fag incident, it was a pleasure,” and I say “Thank you, thank you both,” pat his shoulder and pass the corner, policeman still on the phone but now facing the street and nodding to me as he listens, carefully pull the little notebook out of my back pocket, flip through it to make sure nothing of interest’s in it—“‘Free speech,’ the orator said, batting his adversary over the head, ‘and also freedom of action’”…“kasha tonight—make it!!”…“dahlias: 366: 4182”…“pick up ticks to Bunraku by fri and dont let May give any excuses shes not going”…“Parnassus 205 w 89 10024”…“military court of national salvation”…“dovecote”…“Grossingers mocha apricot or praline”…“trichloroethane at hardware stead of regular typewriter cleaner—savings 4-1 Di says”…“tissues, al foil, lemons, limes, Times, cake plates 24 white”…“May’s folks: demitasse set; Mom: subscription to New Yorker”—and rip it apart and drop it into the trashcan and walk uptown.