Interstate

by Stephen Dixon

  INTERSTATE 7

  Guy in the car to the left of ours looking at me. I didn’t see the car till just before this second, nod to him, eyes back on the road, car he’s in stays beside ours maybe four-five feet away; maybe six. “Yes,” I think, “what?” looking at him. “You’re awfully close, any reason to be? No answer. Wouldn’t think so. Just the look, the straight stare, oh you’re a toughie, bet your kids are scared shit of ya,” and look front and steer the car closer to the right lane line. Few seconds later I feel—sense—he’s doing something with his hand, motioning, or waving something and maybe even from outside and I look over and car he’s in has moved over to almost cross the lane into mine and his window’s down and he’s pointing out of it at me and has this smirk or sneer or I don’t know what, not the noncommittal plain know-nothing to even dopey look from before trying to be hard but some smart-ass scorning sarcastic smile if I want to say it in a mouthful, and I think “Why, what’s with him, did I do something with my driving he didn’t like and for all I know might have, or he thought so, endangered their car for a moment or maybe the driver thought this and told him to let me know for he’s closer?” and say through my window “Yes?” and Margo in back says “What’s the man pointing at you for, Daddy?” and I say “Beats me—Yes sir, what, something wrong?” I mouth to him now, raising my eyebrows to show, or by doing that making lots of folds in my forehead, but that I’m asking a serious question and am no wiseguy and maybe something’s wrong with my car that he’s seen and he wants to tell me but doesn’t know how to look at people or really deal with them in any way, or just strangers, but how he’s doing, or possibly just normal rather conventional looking guys with kids in tow who he thinks might be some threat to him for some reason, that they do seem so normal and content and polite while he’s such a roughneck who can’t keep anything, job, woman, family, but I’m no doubt going too far into it, and he starts laughing riotously while pointing at me, to even shutting his eyes and opening his mouth wide and probably making haw-haw noises it’s all so funny and then says something to the driver who starts laughing normally—I’m looking back and forth at the road and them—but almost as if he doesn’t really want to laugh, his face I mean, but feels he has to for the other guy’s sake—honor, whatever—or so the other guy doesn’t think he hasn’t a sense of humor or something. In other words, his heart’s not in it, and out of friendship or fellowship, I mean. They beat up people the same way, I bet: even if you think the guy who’s arguing with your friend is absolutely right and your friend’s dead wrong you still stomp the guy with your friend because he is your friend. And I look front and I don’t know why, out of nowhere perhaps but maybe more so from some nervousness with these guys keeping up this thing with me like they are and their car being closer than I like and still almost in my lane, maybe straddling the in-between line now and staying even with us so long, but I say “So what do you think they find so funny, girls?”—asking them this to distract myself from those guys, is what I’m saying—“and don’t look, no staring, don’t give them any more cause for continuing whatever it is they’re continuing,” and Julie says “What is it that they’re doing, Daddy, and the driver’s doing it too?” and I say “That’s just it, I don’t know what it is, playing goofy loony games with me is all I can see. There are all sorts of stupid people in this world I’m afraid to tell you, but when they get on the road they’re even worse. The car seems to bring something out in people that nothing else does, and it isn’t just the speed and enclosure of the thing either—you know, being contained in it, inside, windows shut, cut off from other people. For even the bumper cars at the amusement park do it to people—excite them, make them reckless. But that’s a bad example since they’re made for craziness and you pay to get in them and drive wildly, but I guess I was saying that those things are wide open and aren’t fast at all while most real cars are the opposite. Meaning, fast or slow, open or enclosed, just being in a car, even a kiddy car when you’re a kid—I remember how reckless and adult I felt in them—does it. And in a way, though you can’t get in them but they can make kids wild and strange a little, those miniature toy cars kids have—Matchboxes, because they come in them or that’s the size they are—that they roll against the wall or smash into other tiny cars like it, or off a table and that sort of stuff. So it’s cars of all kinds we can say—kiddy and bumper ones, toy cars and real convertibles and Jeeps. Two-seaters, six-seaters, racing and stock cars of course, probably not blood-and bookmobiles and golf carts, but panel trucks, minivans, though not as much, I’d think, possibly because families are usually in them. They’re made for parents with their kids, you can say, and families can be kind of inhibiting on the road. Restraining. You know, they keep control of the driver’s most reckless and wild emotions when he’s outside, while inside, meaning in the house and not the car, it could be another story where all sorts of violent terrible stuff can go on. But anyway, you don’t want to drive too fast and carelessly and take chances—that’s it—take chances with your wife and kids in the car, so almost any car or minitruck when they’re in it and also your cats and dogs and so on. Oh, do I know what I’m talking about? Nobody answer but I’m afraid not. Though what was I talking about way before I started all that about cars and pets?” and Julie says “I don’t know, you lost me long ago,” and I say “Thank ye, thank ye—oh yeah, about what do you girls think those men found so funny before from their car, anyone have an idea now?” “Not me,” Julie says and I say “My face, right? Maybe my face. Got to be that, for we all know it’s funny, and can’t be your faces for yours are gorgeous and who laughs at that? So, fine, my funny-looking spongy face and maybe my balding scalp—they both had big hairy clumps on theirs—and we’ll leave it at that,” and Julie says “I don’t think your face is so funny, and you have hair,” and I say “Not in the right head places, but thanks. And Margo, you’ve been noticeably quiet, anything wrong?” and she says “I’ve lost interest in the subject,” and I say “Oh, well, that’s—uh,” for I see without looking right at it that a car’s alongside us again when one hasn’t been there for a couple of minutes, not that I saw the guys’ car go, I was too caught up in my talking, and I say “Listen, and I’m serious, I’ve a funny feeling those same two palookas are beside us again on my side, anyone want to sneak a peek for me and report back?—maybe it’s a different car,” and Julie says “The same, they’re there for lots more seconds than just now, something the matter, Daddy?” and I say “Are they—do this from memory, neither of you look—were they staring or laughing again?” and Margo says “Staring, at you, the man not the driver was. And now kind of trying to talk to you through your window. And now making these hand movements as if rolling down a car window while also pointing to you as if you should do it with yours,” and I say “I told you not to look, goddamnit,” and she says “I’m sorry, Daddy, I didn’t mean to; I’m now looking straight ahead at only nothing, but are you worried by him?” and I say “The truth is, without trying to scare you kids, the good thing is they’re not so danger ously close as they were the first time—And continue not to look at them, just as I’m not and won’t, for sooner we completely ignore them I’m sure quicker they’ll go away. But I just didn’t like the looks of those guys. Not the looks so much as what they did and are still doing, distracting my attention, or trying to, really, and just being dumb, but real dumb dumb dumb, as if they want to spook me off the road, for who the fuck they think they are?—excuse me, but I’m mad at them and with good reason—I got my kids with me,” and I speed up and Margo says “I hope I didn’t make you feel bad before by what I said about losing interest,” and I yell “Please, not now,” for their car stays beside ours, “I’ve got too much to do driving, and sit back tight, make sure you’re buckled in good in case they try to do something crazy with their car—they could,” and Margo yells “Oh no,” and I say “What’s wrong?” and Julie says “My gosh, Daddy, what?” and I shout “It’s okay, nothing will happen, but do what I
say, and let me drive,” and slow down and their car continues as fast and the guy sticks his head out and turns it around to me and gives this sinister big grin and then sticks his hand out the window and points it at me into sort of a pistol shape and takes aim, one eye cocked, and I think says “Bang bang,” his mouth moves like that, or maybe “Pop pop,” and then puts the pistol hand up to his mouth and blows gunsmoke off his fingertip and brings his head back into the car and faces front and they’re now about a hundred feet in front of us, his pistol hand open and dangling down the door, and now a hundred-fifty, two hundred, and their car cuts into my lane without signaling and slows down a little and I think “What’re they up to now?” and slows down some more and then shoots across the next center lane into the slow one and really speeds up till it must be doing eighty-five, ninety, no car’s in front of it, even a hundred, it seems to be going so fast. I look around for a patrol car same time I’m keeping my eyes on the men, or an unmarked car with a trooper in it in trooper’s clothes and maybe the hat. I’d love to see those bastards caught. If one went after them with the roof light or siren going I’d follow at a reasonable clip just to stay near and pull up behind on the shoulder once the trooper stopped them and explain to him why I was speeding like that myself: what these guys tried doing to me and my kids, the scare tactics and driving close and so on. By now their car’s way off, half a mile or so, quarter-mile, third of one, anyway, pretty far in front and still speeding it seems and now no threat to us, for I can’t think of them slowing down so much where they’d come back and resume what they were doing, and soon they’re out of sight or just mixed in with lots of tiny dots that are cars and buses and trucks. “It’s okay, girls, you can relax, the idiots are gone,” slowing down even more and moving into the slow lane to be out of the way of any cars that might want to get around me, for my body has that feeling of having gone through something very scary, heart pumping where I can feel it, the stuff in the larynx or neck, and of course the sweat, and Margo says “It wasn’t really ever that bad, was it, Daddy?” and I say “Nah, though for a moment I thought so, but I’ll tell you, if I ever saw those guys stopped off the road by some cop for speeding, which they should be, but you know, as they say, ‘try and find a cop when you truly need one,’ well I’d pull over and tell the policeman what they did. But okay, good riddance and may we never see them or anything like them again,” and Julie says “What’s ‘good riddance’?” and Margo tells her and though her definition’s all wrong—something like riders no longer riding—I don’t correct her. What would I say to the policeman though? That they drove alongside us awhile, sort of were following us, tried to screw up my driving by trying to frighten me with those sinister grins and getting too close and also that thing with the hand shaped like a gun when they tore off? It would be nothing; they could give all sorts of innocent and plausible reasons why they did it: they like kids, at least the passenger does, but in a good way and he was trying to make my sourpusses laugh by making faces. Or he thought my door wasn’t closed all the way and was pointing it out to me, that’s why their car got so close, because I didn’t seem to hear him and they thought it too im portant to let pass, and that’s also what his so-called shooting finger meant: it was pointing to my door, and they never crossed the lane line into mine either, and so forth. The trooper might just laugh at me or tell me to be a good guy and forget it, even if he half believed me, and move on, for he has more important business to take care of, like writing out a speeding ticket—that he has clocked on his radar—and calling in on them to see if their car’s stolen or they owe for past traffic violations in this state.