“Daddy,” Margo says and I say “What?—whew! you scared me, I was so into—involved with my own thoughts—that I…anyway, saved by the girl,” and she says “What’s that?” and I say “Bell, as in prizefight, boxing, saved by it, the timer’s bell, like a boxer who was almost going to be counted out—referee over him; you know, or maybe you don’t,” and I hold the wheel with my left hand while the right one with the forefinger out wags like a referee’s when he’s calling off the seconds a boxer’s been knocked down, “‘One…two…three…’ But the bell ended the round, meaning the girl did, you, ended my confused thinking, before the boxer on the ground was counted out of the fight at ten,” and she says “I don’t—” and I say “Ten seconds, I mean; that’s how long they give the knocked-down boxer to get up if the round’s still going on—they’re three minutes each,” and she says “I don’t know boxing, not the smaller things in it, and I don’t know what the bell means to the girl,” and I say “Good, you don’t have to, it’s a stupid savage sport—you know, part of our culture so who am I to say and so on. With millions of fiends—fans—loving it…that wasn’t a joke by the way, I actually said ‘fiends’ for ‘fans’ by mistake. And some of the boxers make fortunes from it, when they might earn peanuts for their lives otherwise and maybe become street hoods. But like bullfighting in Spain and southern France or wherever they still kill the bull at the end of the fight, Portugal, or maybe it’s the reverse—no, never in France—it’s antiquated, out of date, too brutal and too much like gladiators killing off each other in coliseums; that was two thousand years ago. Animals—humans, bulls, fighting cocks, anything—tarantulas—shouldn’t be killed for money or sport,” and Margo says “Even the meat we eat? For we have to pay for it,” and I say “Hamburgers and grilled tuna steaks are another thing. I’m talking of…anyway, I forgot I was driving with you kids before, I was so engrossed in my own thoughts. But what were you going to ask me when I said whew!” and she says “I forgot too, and this isn’t it, what were you thinking that made you so scared then?” and I say “Those guys, their looks while they did it, and especially doing it while there were you kids in the car, the freaking, well, freaking bastards—it’s not such a bad word for what they did and I save it for rats like that,” and she says “Why did they, do you think?” and I say “Who knows? Bad bringing up, I’ll tell you, or maybe they had a great one but the neighborhood toughs or something wherever they lived had a bigger influence on them than their parents did when they were teens or even younger. In other words—why do I always say ‘in other words,’ or so often? Because I can’t say anything straight or unqualified it seems, meaning, well, heck with what it means, I’d just be doing it some more—or clear first time out. Meaning I can’t say it, first time out, clearly either. But in other words, their parents lost their influence and these guys, if they were once smart, got dumb because for years being dumb or acting it has been the fashion, you know,” and she says “How?” and I say “Talking it, for instance—‘Hey man, hey dude, yo, I dunno, I ain’t like going, gonna dis this muddy rudder,’ and so on. And looking and walking it too—the haircuts that make them look moronic, initials or coded messages scissored into their scalps, or maybe with razors, but some way—what barbershops do they go to? And the sides or just one side completely shaved as if they had brain surgery there while the rest of the mop’s floppy and wild, not to mention those bleached and greased spikes that run down the middle of their heads like porcupine quills or warpath Indians. And the slouch, the clothes, caps on backwards like baseball catchers or tough Hell’s Kitchen gang members—that’s when I was a boy, kids with switchblades, before your time, but just the thought of them ganging up on me used to scare me more than anything,” and Margo says “I wear a cap that way sometimes,” and I say “Yeah, but you’re a little girl, I’m talking about grownups or semiadults. And walking with their pants intentionally belted around their buttocks as if they’re about to fall off, or even below the crotch area, I don’t know how they stay on, but cuffs dragging up crud and such from the street. And I’m just referring to the guys and not even going into the stick-through studs they got up and down both lobes and through their noses and one woman, I even saw, through her lip and another with a safety pin through her belly-button nub—you know, the piece that—” and she says “Other than for the lip and thing-y, what’s so wrong with it? It doesn’t hurt you if they have it and if you don’t like what you see, turn away but don’t say how much you hate it,” and I say “One earring or stud per ear should be enough, I’d think; more than that’s mutilating the body, and safety pins should be for what they were invented for—fastening things safely and not stylishly and painfully. And please, if you ever think to do this, even with your own money, don’t come home with a big gold band clamped through your ear like a freshly killed kosher chicken has through its wing—you wouldn’t know of that because I always unclamp the band before I cook the chicken, but young people are ravaging their ears with similar things. And okay, I’m an old fuddy-duddy I suppose and a bit of a crank, and I’ll even grant you the cruddy cuffs and stuff—they’re funny and actually make me laugh when I see pants worn that way—but buying shirts and pants with holes and rips manufactured into them down to the frayed threads and at probably twice the price these clothes would cost if they were bought whole?” and she says “Dad, nobody wears them anymore except in old TV shows like from two to three years ago. It was a style, like all those things you hate are styles. Kids like styles and looking right. Older people do too but different kinds,” and I say “But the boots,” and she says “The boots?” and I think “Nah, I’ve said enough,” but I say “The ludicrous boots. Ones that cost seventy, eighty, a hundred bucks for kids, and what kind?—authentic work boots when they’re not working, they’re schooling or fooling around. I bet they even use them for dances and gyms. Even if they work at McDonald’s, these boots are for lumberjacks or people who climb telephone poles to the top to fix downed lines—they’re conducted or something to prevent electric shocks; they’re permanently oiled to keep out woods-like mud and slush and maybe something else is done to them to ward off snake bites,” and she says “I like work boots and I want to get a pair, and most of them are only copies of the real,” and Julie says “I like them too, hightops,” and Margo says “They aren’t boots,” and I say “Okay, let’s close it, I’m getting nowhere in my argument with you—discussion. But I—this is all I was saying before, that those guys who gawked eerily into our car at us and with theirs got too close reminded me in a way of overage teenagers, even if they were in their twenties—well, that’s my point, and the driver maybe thirty-plus. But they had that look of guys who never and will never grow up, which I hope what we’re discussing here will help you to never have or not as long or much. It’s such a repugnant puss though I realize as kids growing up you gotta try all kinds before the more fitting decent one sticks—all wiseguy and sly smile and insecure oafish to brainless grimace and pout. And which probably is the danger that comes from your parents, if they’re good sensible people, losing their influence on you,” and she says “Why, what were they wearing?” and I say “Wearing? You barely took in a word I said and after all my sputtering muddled effort,” and she says “Yes I did, why?” and I say “Because you could only say ‘What were they wearing?’ Oh boy do people try to fool you when they’re caught or might look bad, not that you did or weren’t entitled, sweetie—it was me remissing,” and she says “You said clothes has a lot to do with it, so I’m asking what,” and I say “That’s right, you’re right. A necklace, the driver; an ear stud, the other,” and she says “You saw that?” and I say “Yeah, the necklace, as if it had long teeth or white bones from a shark on it, but definitely very primitive. And the window guy not just the stud but I think another one pierced through his nostril like the ones I spoke of before,” and she says “You’re making it up,” and Julie says “I didn’t see it, I had my eyes closed, but I wish I had,” and I say “I only think
I saw the nose ring but the ear thing I definitely did and maybe two,” and Margo says “If he had them I would’ve seen it, I was looking more than you—I was watching you too and didn’t have to drive. But what else in clothes and things, this is getting interesting,” and I say “Just that, perhaps the ear guy a tie, the driver a hat, and both with those arrogant contemptuous looks, but the ear guy the worst,” and she says “‘Contemptuous’?” and I say “Snotty, sniffy, snooty in a cruel way—so, ‘Why?’ I was asking myself then, and not just what was making them act like that but everything years before and all around us today that went into it, for that was what you wanted to know, right?—what thoughts I had before you made me jump?” and she says nothing and I say “You nodding or shaking your head or just thinking?” and she says “I didn’t see any tie or hat, but yes, what?” and I say “Well, if that’s an invite for me to go on, and I’m almost sure the driver wore a hat, then they, these men, represented something to me—a toughness today, et cetera, that didn’t exist so pervasively—all around, so much—and also so maniacally, murderously, prevalently—all around again and as much—as years ago when I was a boy—” and Julie says “Oh-oh, Margo, when Daddy was a boy again,” and I say “Yes, sure, a boy and then a teen and so on, same things you’ll be except for the boy, but cutting it off, meaning it got worse, when I got to around thirty. Not that I’m saying I didn’t get into fights when I was a kid. I did, as my neighborhood, and especially the ones around it, and later my high school, could be rough and boys acted that way then. At a party or right after school, grade or high. Or they suddenly appeared on your street in a big group and got after you—picked fights, we called it—and over nothing. To show they were tough. For dopey or psychological reasons I don’t want to go into—having to do with their minds and the way they were raised—and you protected yourself or set a time and place, usually in the park on the grass so you didn’t crack your skull on the pavement, and fought them one to one, your friends and theirs standing in a ring around you so nobody cheated in the fight and the winner didn’t take it too far. So, all up and up but in a way terrifying because you could still get your wind knocked out and also lose the fight too easily. Though never with a gun, never a knife, not even a rock or club; at the most a hanky tied around your knuckles if you had one. But mostly you just fought in self-defense to stop them from busting your nose or for them to think you’re an easy guy to be picked on a second time,” and one of them says “How do you mean the nose?” and I say “Who said that?” and Julie says “Julie,” and I say “I’m sorry, darling, sometimes you both sound alike. Well, you’re sisters. But you were saying I wasn’t clear then, right? And I wasn’t when I should be, another thing I was mulling over when Margo suddenly scared me, how I should be able to think in my mind more—well of course thinking is in my mind, but—” and Julie says “No, I was saying how can they bust your nose? With a hammer?” and I say “Their fists. Imag ine,” and I raise my right hand into a fist and jerk it forward several times. “Pow, nose splattered. Half my friends had them, splattered schnozzolas, from that and football and which they were proud of, the fools, showing how stupid we were then too. I wasn’t, with that, because I didn’t bust mine. If I had I would’ve thought ‘Oh dear, my looks, ruined, I won’t be a Greek god to girls anymore,’ only kidding, but probably so, while they thought with their broken noses they would because it gave them a rough he-mannish look. But some boys, not any I knew—oh, I knew of them but didn’t want to know them because these guns meant bullets in the foot and gang wars—actually only one bullet since it only shot one, and—” and Margo says “What guns? You said before no guns. You’re confusing us again, Daddy,” and I say “Boys had—some did—not any I palled around with—zip guns then, handmade ones that were made from toy guns or a pipe and a rubberband, if you can believe it, that got the bullet off, and of course the toy gun converted into a zip. They made them then because I suppose you couldn’t buy the real ones—they weren’t around as much and probably were too expensive and maybe boys were still a little frightened of the real thing and still into—involved in constructing and fashioning things on their own then, bad as what they constructed was—we all had to take two years of shop in seventh and eighth grades while the girls took home economics. But half the time these zip guns backfired in your face when you shot them, or maybe that’s only what the police and older people told us to keep them out of our hands. Some other boys though, again not ones I wanted to know, and these to me were scarier than the zip guns, for you at least knew there was a chance the gun would misfire or the shooter of it would get it in his foot or face, while the switchblade never missed. In other words, there was always some part of you it hit. Well, these other kids carried switchblade knives—I didn’t mention this before?” and I listen but don’t hear anything from them so I go on. “But I wouldn’t touch one, because they also reminded me of terror, murder, gang fights with knives and zips and bicycle chains and guys pinning you to the ground and kicking your teeth in, stuff I could never do, or do only if I was attacked and my life depended on it and I saw one of these weapons on the ground, but I certainly wouldn’t do anything to some guy I’d already subdued. I also didn’t like—‘subdued’; to, you know, win over, beat by force—didn’t like these knives because they could zip open on your finger, so maybe they should have been called zip knives, for that’s how they opened, zip!—but cutting it. But I guess the ‘switch’ in the word—never thought of this before, not that it’s important—it isn’t—is the thing that springs it open. You flicked a little switch on the knife’s handle near where the blade and handle joined, if I remember right,” and I hold up my right hand as if there’s a closed switchblade knife in it and pretend to flick it open as if I remember where, thumb and forefinger rubbing—“and the blade sprung out. Anyway, it did that, cut your finger, or could, and could also spring open in your pocket by mistake and cut your thigh or pants, and then you’re in a jam, at least with the pants, with your mom. Because you got to know, the art of making these knives couldn’t have been so perfect, as the people who wanted them—punks, hoods—wouldn’t know the difference or really didn’t care; they just wanted a scary-looking weapon with a long blade that could fold back into the handle and stay hidden there, and if it stopped working right they’d just toss it away and buy another one. I remember as a kid I used to see a whole bunch of them sticking blade-point-down in wood, or maybe it was a sort of solid foam, but in store windows in Times Square and other places in New York, and maybe they’re still there. Also that I used to think when I looked at these knives ‘How can the police let the shopkeepers sell these things and put them in their windows, no less, to interest thousands of potential customers a day?’ I mean, that’s the point—that’s economics, marketing, business; you think you can sell them so you advertise or show them in the best possible spots. Or you just want to sell them, to make money, but what do you think of the creep you’re selling one of these to or about the person or the cop, which is the other point I had, he’s going to possibly use it on? It’s too unbelievable. But there they were, and most of the knives in Army-Navy stores they called them. So I’m saying, everything about these knives represented to me—that word again—an ugly dog-beat-dog-to-death life I didn’t want to live. I in fact hated it and wanted to become an adult in part just so I wouldn’t have to face young toughs with switchblades and guns anymore or just their crazy fists and kicking feet, and hey, look how that turned out. They’re all around us now, weapons, and kids are tougher to adults than they ever were, though believe me they were always tough, and believe me also when I say I was no saint then myself but I wasn’t a devil either. You know, somehow I don’t think I’m making much sense. Repeating myself, often contradicting myself, meaning saying the opposite or near opposite to what I just said but with as much belief. Am I, or should I just drive?” and Margo says “A little, but drive too,” and I say “Funny, funny, does this kit have a sense of hummus?” and Julie says “
Really, Daddy, you’re only making a very little sense; you don’t say things to understand and you’re not nice to the people you talk about,” and I say “Not nice, not nice? After all I said and you’re still on their side just because they’re kids?” raising my voice, angry, I can’t believe it, she’s just a little kid, I’m always doing this, where’s it come from and how come I can’t stop it? From now on I will. Make it that way. From now on you stop! “Okay, I apologize, about the earlier stuff if I offended the ladies, but I’d like to bust some of those boys’ faces for what they do to people, at least tackle and slap them, and guys like those schmucks who tried to scare the crap out of us. But okay, okay, but anyway, nobody then—boys—owned the powerful guns they do today. Boys and men, what am I talking about? For they’ve machine guns and submachine guns and probably semi-and quarterma-chine guns if there’re such things. All the guns. AKA this, ZBT-10 that. Even the initials, numbers and names are a clever come-on by the manufacturers of the guns, like for cars, though the ones I gave aren’t them. But a turn-on, a something-on, a buy me, use-me, abuse-me, that’s what I’m for if I’m affordable and if I’m unaffordable then all you got to do to get me is rob a few people with knives or normal rifles or handguns. I mean, boys—I know you heard Mommy and I discussing it the other night—boys of fourteen and fifteen getting on buses and maybe even paying the correct fare to do this…Okay, it happened recently with only one city bus and once with a commuter train when it was at a station for a stop. But Jesse James way-out-Wild-West style, but instead of holding up stagecoaches, which was bad enough, they hold up the entire bus and train car with these big blow-off-your-upper-torso guns with a single spraying round. Sorry, I’m being too graphic—I’m describing too much—and then for good measure—‘Oh, thank you, kind boys’—slamming two women in the cheek with the gun butts because they didn’t say thanks when these young robbers emptied their purses into a shopping bag and threw them back in their faces. And on the train another young hood putting the gun barrel—that’s the long part where the bullet comes out—into a man’s mouth far as it would go and pulling the trigger—nothing was in the first round, ha-ha—and giving the guy an almost fatal heart attack. So why, I’m asking, was asking—either of you have an answer? And why do boys set fire to derelicts—you know, bums on the street, but here on subway benches where they’re sleeping? Hey, subways were safe when I was a boy. The toilets were even open though so smelly to be unusable unless you had an emergency. I used to go downtown myself to Macy’s when I was ten or eleven to buy Christmas gifts for my parents and dog—maybe today during the Christmas season they’re a bit safer too. After all—well, I wanted to say something about ‘bad for business’ and especially during the month the stores make forty percent of their money—but I won’t. But do you think I’d ever let you do that alone at thirteen, fourteen, even if you were boys and traveling together? Though your mommy, who’s a good deal younger than I, used to do it too—go to some special genius girls’ school in New York when she was eleven and right through high school, so that must mean the city was still a lot safer then too, though she can recall incidents she didn’t like,” and Margo says “Like what?” and I say “Ask her—but on the subway, usually going to school during rush hour when it was crowded and she couldn’t get a seat,” and Margo says “So she had to stand. So what sort of things?” and I say “You know, you can imagine it, with men,” and Julie says “What they do to her?” and I say “They didn’t act nice to young girls. Some men didn’t with older girls too, but these guys I’m talking about were even worse. Because you know, or you don’t, and why should you? though maybe now’s as good a time as any to find out—for Margo; you, Julie, you keep your hands over your ears, hear? But older men—I didn’t mean to be cute about it; just listen, both of you, seriously to what I say. Older men can be a bit peculiar, some; a little dirty—yes, not nice, and they’re not nice, I’m not nice to them—in ways boys aren’t, with girls, I mean. I’m sure I wasn’t clear there, and probably intentionally. Anyway, that’s all I’m going to say about it—ask Mommy the rest, though she might kill me for saying as much as I did. But—so what happened, I was trying to think before, but I guess I lost track of it,” and Julie says “About what that happened?” and I say “Wait, I didn’t hear that, a bus just passed, what?” and she says “That track that happened, you said, and got lost,” and I say “Was I referring before, meaning was I talking to you before about what I was thinking way before, about…regarding…something about civilized life in cities and around them and what happened to it? I don’t quite remember, but certainly lots about cities have changed. Maybe it’s the overcrowdedness, not only in subways—there’ve always been rush hours and dirty men—but everywhere, and people just don’t know how to deal with it as well as they did. That clear?” and Margo says no and I say “Anyway, it’s ironic, though, because—you know, a strange twist, a reverse of what was to—” and Margo says “I know what ‘ironic’ is; we learned it in English,” and I say “Well, then that’s a positive part of life today—‘positive: good,’ Julie,” and Julie says “I know ‘positive.’ ‘The man is positive. The nurse is positive,’” and I say “So, there again: another slice of the good positive part of life today. You both know the word ‘positive’ and one of you at ten knows what ‘irony’ is while I didn’t probably know it till I was fifteen, or even seventeen, eighteen. I probably was first taught it at fifteen but it didn’t sink in and it maybe could have been till I was twenty till it did, and the truth is I’m not so sure I even now know what it means or at least could give a good definition of it. I was not well educated, you can say, and most likely because I hated school. Uh-oh, I wasn’t supposed to say that,” and Julie says “Why?” and Margo says “‘Irony’ has something to do with that opposite-to-what’s-expected thing again,” and I say “School’s—I’m avoiding an answer to Julie because I don’t want to give either of you reasons for hating school too—school’s just more fun today and the teachers are better paid and the classrooms are brighter and airier and everything’s less regimented in the safer schools, it seems. And the blackboard’s green and magnetized in spots so things can stick to it instead of falling off and something else it has where everybody doesn’t get full of awful chalk dust, and instead of solemn Presidents George and Abe on the wall you have gay posters of flashy TV and music stars. And what else? Lots else. Reading corners, Disney movies in classrooms, cheery librarians and a principal who merrily races through the halls calling you ‘sweetie’ and greets you with a good morning at the school door. While we had stiff-lipped principals and screwed-down desks and ugly textbooks, and teachers—Mr. Feeny and Miss Brady, call for Mr. Feeny and Miss Brady and his five ruler smacks on your palm and her single face slap if you spoke out of turn or for a second, while they were speaking, turned your back—who often used corporal punishment. That’s—” and Margo says “We know, you just said,” and Julie says “I don’t,” and I say “It’s when an army corporal punishes you in basic training,” and Margo says “You’re not funny sometimes, Daddy,” and I say “Vat’s dat? Anudder bigische bus just vent past and I dint hear,” and she says “No it didn’t and one didn’t before. It’s when people,” to Julie, “hit your body as punishment but not to kill you. That’s capital punishment,” and I say “Now that’s something. You know it, now Julie does and may continue to—can? may?—while I—” and Margo says “May,” and I say “Good, while I probably did think when I was your age, and probably at Julie’s never even heard the term—phrase?—that it was a corporal who punished you in early army training. But I’m also almost sure I didn’t know the difference between them, capital and corporal. In fact I might have thought—somehow this is all coming back—that capital punishment took place in the nation’s capital or even in that capital’s Capitol building, and probably not till I was sixteen or so did I think otherwise—and quick, on your toes, tell me the difference between those two capitals or capitols, and for a bonus Q, what two U.S.
bodies meet in the Capitol building, which are toughies but winner gets something sweet,” and Julie says “Let me think,” and Margo says “One’s an a, other’s an o and has a capital C but I don’t know who meets,” and Julie says “Not fair,” and I say “You’re so ehjacated as my dad liked to say, probably anudder reason I wasn’t, but how would that account for you girls being so smart? Your brainy mom, who doesn’t laugh at my anti-intellectual jokes, while my brainy mom did at my dad’s,” and Margo says “When do I get my prize?” and I say “At the next rest stop, and Julie too, but smaller,” and Margo says “That’s not fair.” “Anyway,” I say, “if you want to continue this till the first sweet stop, another reason for the dismalness of life today is that most people don’t read, and I kid you not. What’s the figure I read in the paper—fifty percent of the people don’t even read a book a year? And if they don’t this year, why would they the next, and so on, so maybe the real figure, unless I don’t understand statistics—you know…well, just statistics—is that they don’t read a book in five or ten years—Americans—twenty, maybe the rest of their lives,” and Julie says “I read a lot—three books in one day last week and I’m American,” and I say “They’re small books, and kids don’t count in this report; it’s for people after they’re done with school, and not for the day done but life. But you do, fine, I’m proud of ya, Margo too, what a read-team, and I just hope the habit sticks. But the entertainment or diversion or outside activity or just intellectual pleasure, and I use the word—term—loosely—phrase—is, well, lots of things—music, movies, catalogs, TV, but creepy demonic killer music, movies and TV, where it’s cool, dude, to say dumb things and that you hate cops and you take advantage of old ladies and young girls—I’m talking here of the—” and Julie says “What girls, what do they say to them?” and I say “No girls, shouldn’t have brought them up. But of talk music I’m talking of—you know, the one with the flat mangled speech and clumsy headachy beat. I mean, when I was a kid your age we couldn’t wait—and not seven but ten, eleven, I swear to you—and I don’t want to go into my own dad’s when-I-was-a-kid routine, though they had some wonderful artful songs then too, something with a honey blonde and the bicycle-built-for-two one and before his time there was ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ and ‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair’—but kids my age couldn’t wait for the next Broadway musical by Rodgers and—” and Margo says “Well I like rap,” and I say “Who said anything about that? I don’t even know what it is,” and Julie says “Oh sure, Dad, tell us,” and I say “Rap, like chitchat, right, or is that the one with the flat popular-ugly-music-one beat?” and Julie says “You know what it is,” and I say “Okay, I won’t lie, and I dislike it immensely and think it’s hateful—I give that music four aspirins, maybe five,” and Margo says “You won’t lie after you’re caught, because everyone knows rap and that must mean it’s good,” and I say “Oh, ‘good’—a great critical word, ‘good.’ it’s good, this movie’s good, this book’s good, this line of poetry’s real good,’ or it’s bad, this bassoon quintet’s bad, The Iliad’s bad, War and Peace is both good and bad,’ some title of a great work with three names which I can’t come up with right now, The Red and the Black and the Green or something, is good, bad and I-don’t-know,” and she says “I still think rap’s very good and that life is better for kids today than when you were one. Kids are freer to choose their own things and styles more,” and I say “Freer to choose what the advertisers gorge down their little throats,” “and have more selections to do what they want most times, while you’ve always said you couldn’t as a boy,” and I say “Advertisers, store owners, record company heads and the piggies who rant these songs, all they want is your money. And we too could say what we wanted when we were kids, to adults, but about important things, if we had anything important to say—racial and religious prejudice, for instance. Those were big issues for kids then, and the right of people to live freely—in freedom—you know, so long as they’re not killing other people, I’m speaking of whole countries. But other things, some not even important, we listened rather than shot off our mouths every first chance, not that you do that. But anywhere, I mean anyway, look what your freer freedom’s ended up in—I’m saying rap and music like it that makes kids want to do hateful things because the rappers encourage them to—‘Hey babe, beat, bleed and bleat, ‘cause it feels good’—and the kids think ‘Say, these dudes are cool and cute and just great because they’re popular and hip and make a mint, so they must know about life and what’s right, wrong and I-don’t-know,’” and she says “You’re not making sense again,” and Julie says “She’s right, Daddy, you’re not,” and I say “Ahh, she’s always right to you, but good, you’re inseparable sisses and she’s a thinker so a good one to look up to, and your loyalty’s fine too to a certain extent, you two will be true comrades forever or so I hope,” and Margo says “I admit some rap might be like what you said but there’s other nicer kinds that—” and I say “Look, those guys before riding alongside us looking as if they wanted to shoot—freedom, oh boy great freedom when they plug us dead, give me five,” and I hold up my right palm for someone to slap though know no one will, and she says “I don’t see the connection,” and I say “And you know something, for a few moments there I almost did think we’d get shot at—I didn’t see any gun but I was sure they had one, for what other way to travel today? And that face filled with a rapper’s put-down hate, though at least the rapper gets paid for it so his is mostly fake, while these guys make it for real; they hated me, but why? They don’t know me from Charlie, do they? Someone here snitch on her dad? So we got a man you don’t know who’s doing nothing to you and with two kids in back who are obviously his—that’s who you take out your rage on?” and Margo says “Maybe they didn’t see me and Julie,” and I say “They saw, you yourself said you were sitting up and staring at them, or at least staring at them so you had to be sitting up and for them to see, and if they didn’t, even so, for what I do? What’s really to mock and go ha-ha about in me if my driving was okay which I think it was? Before, sure, I laughed at myself in saying maybe they think I look funny. I’ve seen my mug in the mirror enough to know it’s often good for a laugh. But tell me, why am I letting it upset me so? Listen, one good thing from it once the scare was over is that they helped us pass the time for a while talking about them and anything that came out of it, and that’s always a relief. This trip’s too familiar and the scenery’s pretty dull so it can be a longie for me without someone to chat with in the front seat, not that that’s an invite for either of you to come up here. You can amuse yourself and each other much better back there and maybe get a snooze in too. And for safety sake, meaning I bet you get a leverage—ooh, I hate that word, it doesn’t mean anything and defies definition—an edge, an advantage of maybe ten percentage points in living and skipping injury from being in back rather than up front if let’s say, God forbid, there was ever a crash. If anybody’s got to get it, let it be me, though nothing’s gonna happen, take my word. This is all what they call conjecture—supposing, perhapsing, like that. But I’ll never understand why people act so savagely to people, do you? No matter what the reasons—meaning, what disadvantages they might have in life—you both know what I mean by ‘disadvantages,’” and Julie says yes and Margo says nothing but I know she knows. “And they were driving an expensive new car, though maybe stolen, but anyway, things seemed to be going okay with them and they didn’t look poor by any means. But even if you’re poor—hold on, what you’ve been waiting for, the lecture; even if you’re looked down on by a lot of insensitive stupid society who gotta look down on someone to think they’re better, all of which you’ve heard. Even if—” and Margo says “Daddy,” and I say “Wait, let me finish—even if lots of things like that. You’re knocked about, your parents and their parents were—I don’t mean beaten up by people, including your parents, but possibly that too. And there’s crime and drugs and all that awful stuff right outside your door day and night
if you’re lucky enough to have your own door to stay behind, you still have to be nice and polite to people and give them respect if you want to get the same back. Not to the ones doing these bad things to you but to the seventy or so percent of good decent people left in society. There’s more than that figure but just for conjecture, for argument’s sake, which I think is really what conjecture’s for—” and Margo says “Daddy, you’re really lecturing now and it’s boring, I’m sorry, but it’s like Officer Stokes who comes to our school twice a year to warn us against drugs,” and I say “So, maybe that’s what I should do for a living, lecture, prepare my copious notes, get up in front of hundreds of students, and three months off every summer—college lectures, I’m saying—monthlong Christmas vacations and other breaks—oh what I wouldn’t do for it if I had the brains—three teaching days a week if it’s a good expensive school, or just expensive, hang the good—but okay. But it’s the truth that for a long moment there I did think those guys would not shoot us but try to run us off the road and even ram our car to do it, but just for kicks, you see, for the sheer delight of seeing me squirm with fright for myself but mostly for you kids, and who knows?—maybe also to see—no. But they’re reason one we lock our doors at night though others in not-as-safe neighborhoods keep them barricaded all day. That’s all I’ll say. And we’ve more locks than the previous owners of our house did—than my folks did when I was a kid, and we lived in the heart of the city. We in fact kept our doors unlocked till dinnertime—New York, New York—can you believe that?” and Julie says “Didn’t anybody walk in?” and I say “Nobody, not once, and we had no doorman and were on the ground floor—we only started locking it all day about the time I was a teen and the crime rate in the city shot up. When people started getting mugged in the park. That seemed to be the first place. When you couldn’t walk through it at night anymore,” and Julie says “You used to before? That must have been nice with the dark and the outside lights,” and I say “Some people on summer nights used to sleep in the park when the city got very hot, or that might have been more in my parents’ time when they were kids, but you could still walk through it at night in mine, or maybe only in the safest well-lit parts. Though actually I remember gangs roaming through the park when my friends and I played in it when we were nine and ten and talking tough to us and giving a little shove and when we weren’t looking running off with our bats and gloves. Baseball. You know, we used to do it two against two, one pitching and covering the infield and one in the out, but these kids were usually older and came down in droves. So, robbery then but not the kind where if you stood up for your glove you’d get bashed in the head with your bat and possibly even shot. But the talk’s getting too dark,” and Margo says “What else happened when you were a boy like that? Now it’s interesting when you talk of things I know,” and I say “Regarding what—crime, play, just growing up?” and she says “Those boys,” and I say “Oh, we ran after them and sometimes even got our stuff back if we yelled for some adults up ahead to stop them and they did, though now they wouldn’t because they’d be afraid to get shot. And occasional fights in the street, mostly minor squabbles but sometimes this religion or block against that one when we were really young, and later on in high school much tougher fights, but then, again, because they didn’t like your face or the way your laces were tied. And some people got their purses snatched if they left them lying around or let them hang too loosely on their arm, but nobody I heard of had a car stolen or apartment broken into and there was never such a thing as a school shooting or a carjacking,” and she says “Did you like fighting when you were growing up?” and I say “What a thing to ask of your daddy—of course not. Don’t you remember my saying I looked forward to becoming an adult because I thought all that violence around me would stop?” and she says “Just the way you talked about it, you seemed to,” and I say “No, there’s nothing I said or was in my voice and if you saw me smiling in the mirror it was just at your question, though I will tell you—I’m being honest here—after you win a fight there is a kind of satisfaction with yourself—you feel pretty good just that you were able to defend yourself and if you did it in front of your friends, even better. But I never started fights, I think, and I wasn’t also, I want you to know—I’m not proud of this now, or maybe I am a little, but anyway—an easy kid to punch out. I knew how to fight pretty well, maybe because of my terrific temper then,” and Julie says “You still have one,” and I say “Rarely, very little, and nowhere near as fierce as I was then, because I became almost crazy if I thought I was being attacked for no reason or ganged up on, but that’s the only time. But I’d do anything I could then if I couldn’t lick them or overpower them in a fair way. Kick them in the groin, pull their hair, maybe not bite anyone’s ear or nose but I wasn’t against poking in the eyes a little—oh, I don’t know about that—but getting some guy in a neck lock and squeezing in his larynx till he choked—you know,” and I turn to the side and point to mine. “Women don’t have them, the Adam’s apple, or just not pronounced, for of course they have a voice box. But things I’d do, this dirty kicking and squeezing, only if I felt myself losing, or as I said before, almost dying—I did say it, didn’t I?” and Julie says “I don’t know,” and Margo says “You did but differently,” and I say “So, ferocious, absolutely so, but now I look back at it I bet it was—well, maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t,” and Margo says “Was or wasn’t what?” and I say “Fuzzy bear—only kidding; but that I was…you’re right: was what? I forget, though maybe that I was only acting against the rough tactics and just the injustice of those tough guys, or what’s another word for it?—the…the…just the injustice of them. That some kid and then later some young punk was starting with me or one of my friends for no reason, for I was, being bigger and usually stronger than most of my friends and a lot more hotheaded, a big protector and defender of them, though I may have only done that to get in their favor and be a good guy to have around. Anyway, I don’t think I fought that way, ferociously, for any other reason than that. Though maybe this high concept of injustice, as I call it, gave me the excuse to act ferociously—meaning their injustice and my strong feelings against it. In other words, some punk picks on me or one of my small friends—but I’m confusing things by bringing in defending them. Just me, and I now have the excuse to get back at him and even better—to immobilize and humiliate him, neutralize him by whatever means imaginable, just take him out as I think kids now say, to kick the living shit out of him, really. Excuse me, something we used to say, but he started it, I’ll finish it, for when there’s a chance you can get hurt bad or even come close to what you think is dying, as I said, you really can do almost anything—meaning you’re permitted to—the law of the streets, we’ll say, and maybe even the law of the law—if what the other guy’s doing to you or threatening to is dangerous, illegal and by everyone’s standards totally wrong. You guys following me?” and Margo says “I’m not now but I was,” and I say “Hey, if your big brain didn’t get it then I know I crossed myself up somewhere,” and Julie says “Did you? Beat other people up?” and I say “That’s what I’ve been saying, when I was younger. I probably even broke a couple of guys’ noses in high school—that’s how bad it sometimes got for me; it was a tough school and all boys. And once at a party when I was in college—by this time I should have just walked away from it. But a very tall guy, in a white turtleneck sweater, and I leaped up and punched him in the face and there was blood from his nose all over the place—I hated myself for it later; I hate myself for it today. He said ‘Why’d you have to do that, what I do to you?’ and looked at me so sadly because he knew I had sort of ruined part of his looks. His sweater was drenched from the blood also and I was so ashamed after he said it that I left the party and everybody there and my own sweater back there too and never picked it up, and later I should have called him to apologize and pay for the sweater and even the nose or as much as I could afford. So he wanted to fight with my best friend then, or somethin
g; maybe I had even misunderstood who started it and my friend had given me a pack of lies about it, saying the tall guy was at fault. If I did anything I should have just stepped in to mediate—work it out, peacemake—and if they wouldn’t and my friend didn’t walk away from it—out of the party, even; I would have gone with him—then just given up on them. But I had to be such a big damn stupid hero. At worst I should have only grabbed the guy from behind and held his arms back if I could and said ‘Stop it, cool it, calm down, someone will get hurt.’ For imagine, two to three old guys my age are walking around today, if they haven’t died of something else since those fights, with broken noses because of me. Or if they got them fixed—it wasn’t the type of high school for the first two to do, though who knows what almost anyone becomes later—and this to me is worse than walking around with it broken—then noses with shiny ugly plastic surgery done on them because of me. Actually, the guy at the party was very handsome—maybe that’s what I was hitting, his tall good looks and wavy blond hair. So it could be he was an actor or had gone on into acting, and for good reasons, perhaps—professional ones—got a nose job, or for modeling. But in high school, no hating myself, no feeling bad over it, and not because I had no feelings like that then. I had to hit back when they jumped me. They started it, as I said, so it was—well, you heard this one before—them or me, and by that I mean one guy jumped me one school term, the second guy another term; they didn’t gang up on me together. But that’s another thing. Gangs today work as gangs—real ones. Where they don’t, as they used to do then a lot, just watch one of their gang members beat up some guy or try to or get beaten up himself and once one guy’s beaten the other guy up but is still pummeling him, they also don’t say ‘Okay, fight’s over, our guy’ or ‘your guy won it fair and square, we should stop him now before someone really gets hurt.’ No, right from the start today and without warning they all jump someone and beat the hell out of him or kill him and not just with their fists—not with their fists, period. They use—” and Julie says “Think we should stop now, Daddy?” and I say “Why, I’m going on, right—too much?” and she says “At a stopping place I mean,” and I say “Oh? I was beginning to think we should drive straight through, since we’re only about what?—hour and a half away at most. But if you’re hungry—really hungry—not for a crappy snack but a hamburger or even those chicken fingers and some salad, or have to use the john—” and Margo says “What time is it?” and I look at the car radio, 3:47, then:48, and I say “Almost four—quarter to,” and she says “If we don’t have to stop or not for long and it’s only an hour and a half more, maybe I can still go to the end of the ice skating party Lillian’s giving,” and I say “Maybe. I didn’t think we’d get off so early or there’d be so little traffic in the city, so I never thought you’d make it there in time. When’s the party again?” and she says “Three-thirty to six, the Ice Arena,” and I say “I’m sure we can if we don’t stop for anything except to pee and there are no major tie-ups along the way—want to? Okay by me,” and she says “Whee, a big yes,” and Julie says “Not for me,” and I say “My sweetie, you get invited to lots more parties than Margo—you know, she’s so old that not all her friends still give them,” and she says “But never ice skating,” and I say “Uh-oh, Margo, we have the present?” and Margo says “So I can’t go, or can we get it at home first?—it’s already wrapped and I know exactly where it is,” and I say “It’ll take us, extra miles to home and then the rink and so on, twenty minutes more—and rush hour; it won’t be worth it—Ah, come on, so you go without one and just say you came straight from New York and the big sacrifice we made rushing to it and you’ll give her the present in school next day. No, no lies, we’ll just show up and say she’ll get it tomorrow,” and she says “It won’t be right, everyone will have given her one,” and I say “It’s right, it’s right, for what are presents anyway? Yours not so, but usually something the birthday kid doesn’t need or like or ever use. When I was a boy—okay, here he goes again—and had a party, lots of my friends didn’t bring them—they were too poor or it just wasn’t as important, and I never minded. The party was the thing. Soda, ice cream, cake, games, blowing out the candles. Now kids come with a couple of gifts sometimes. One Julie went to last month? I came in at the end to pick her up and saw the birthday girl tearing them open. ‘This is from me,’ one of the girls said—Rebecca, and I’m not criticizing her; it’s the parents who push these things—and handed over three. It’s this mentality that’s around. Buy, buy, buy and more buy till we’re stuffed to the gills with goods, which is probably why people give so many gifts for all sorts of occasions that don’t deserve them—to get rid of all the things they bought or were given that they didn’t need,” and Julie says “It’s not that bad,” and I say “It’s bad, it’s bad, though of course not the worst thing in the world,” and Margo says “Daddy, you think if we get there I’ll have time to skate? Because I’d have to rent them, hand over my shoes, put them on, and with nothing to give I don’t only want to be there to see Lillian open her presents,” and I say “Sure, it’ll be a challenge. Beltway’s jammed, I’ll go the side routes and I bet we still get there forty-five minutes before the party’s supposed to end—six-fifteen at the latest,” and she says “It ends at six,” and I say “I meant five-fifteen, hour and a half from now—less, hour and twenty. I also bet the party goes on for at least half an hour after six,” and she says “Probably not. Probably they’ll be done ice skating way before that and the presents and cake and stuff will be around five-thirty to six and then they’ll ask us to leave,” and I say “Listen, you’re having misgivings about getting there for nothing, tell me and I won’t bust my chops rushing,” and Julie says “Go to it, Margo; I would,” and she says “Yes?” and I say “I think you should too; you never know, I might be right, once in my life, about something—the extra time,” and she says “It won’t be too much out of your way? I don’t want you getting upset at me later for rushing you and taking too much of your time when you have lots to do,” and I say “Don’t worry; see my disposition? It’s good. And it’ll be a roundabout on-my-way. I’ll pull in, drop you off, give you some money for skates if Lillian’s folks aren’t taking care of it,” and she says “I’m sure they are, but maybe not now because they’ll think all the kids have them already or it doesn’t pay for me for just two minutes on the ice—I wouldn’t blame them,” and I say “Anyway, if you can skate five minutes, then skate, and I’ll drive home, unpack and come back with Julie in an hour. Say around six-ten, and then we’ll all go home and have dinner, which I’ll have started to prepare there, or even eat out; maybe we will,” and she says “Okay, I’ll go, thanks, Daddy,” and I say “Fine,” truth is, wishing she’d given up on the idea, and calculate if I can make it in time for it to be worth it to her. I probably can; I know the side routes; there’ll be some rush-hour traffic near the Beltway and first few miles on it before I can get off at an exit I know, if I have to, since most of the traffic will be coming from the city. So I pick up speed, stay at sixty-eight, look at the rearview; Margo’s smiling; good, I made someone happy and did it with no fuss, bellyaching, “Look how I’m going out of my way for you,” and Julie took it pretty well for a change too, so it was good for all of us. I signal, though no one’s behind me, get in the fast lane, no cop will stop me at this speed, not even at sixty-nine; seventy, seventy-one’s when they start going after you, and I drive like that, kids talking together in back, checking the rearview every minute or two to make sure no car behind mine wants me to move over, pass a few cars, think of those two dopes from before—why, tell me? Well, I’ll never know; just fools, big dopes as I said, with a cruel streak in both—drive at sixty-eight, seventy, keeping an eye out for parked patrol cars, but no faster than seventy, for sometimes you don’t know where they are. And so few cars on the road around here, chances are even greater they’ll grab you. Radio? Why even try? I’ve never been able to get anything but popular music and religious programs
in this area. Kids still talking low. About what? I really don’t mind doing it for Margo; so it’s a half hour more of my time on the road, big deal. Half hour, forty minutes: same. This way she won’t feel she missed out on much because Lee and I wanted to be in New York a few days. Lee did; I would have as easily stayed home, read, rested, done some work of my own and around the house, things with the kids. She always seems to be missing out on a party or sleepover because of our plans; it just happens; bad luck we’ll say. For some reason, Julie almost never. Maybe I can get to the rink even sooner than I thought so she can be sure to get some skating in. And really, faster I get there, the better; driving can be so tiring. And this way she’ll feel she missed out on even less, and I can go home and get lots of things done—the entire dinner fixed if I decide not to eat out—and it’ll be nice just being with Julie alone, when there’s a car in front of us, older guy it seems driving at what? sixty, maybe, that’s what I’m doing now—and I get close behind him, I don’t like to and if he suddenly brakes I could go into him, though I think we’re far enough apart for me to avoid that, but what the hell, it’s a message, for why’s he think he has to set the speed limit for this lane? everyone knows you can go ten miles an hour over and usually fifteen in this lane and just about any other except the slow one, but he still doesn’t budge, doesn’t seem to have seen me, head hasn’t moved in a way where I’d know he’s looked in his rearview mirror, so I turn my lights on and blink them, on and off, on and off, that usually does it in a few seconds or until the car can get past the car in the lane to the right with plenty of room to go into it, though no car’s there now, nine times out of ten it works, it’s what I should have done instead of tailgating him, and I slow down a little to put another twenty feet between us, but he doesn’t move, this guy isn’t moving, why isn’t the sonofabitch moving? he has to have seen some flashing in his rearview even if he wasn’t looking right at it, it just flashes, catches his eye, and he’d know something was catching it, even if he thought it might be the sun, and then he’d look right at it and see it was the car behind him flashing and he’d know it was to move over, it can’t be for anything else, if a driver knows anything about driving it’s that, and if he’s only looking at the side mirrors instead—well, nobody does unless he has to, turning right, left, entering traffic and so on, key mirror’s the rearview—anyway, I forget what I was saying, something with the side mirrors, if he was looking at them to see what was behind, I think, well, if he did he’d see part of my car too, that’s all, but he hasn’t looked at either side mirror, far as I can tell since I’ve been behind him, but the rearview, through that one he’d see the flashing wasn’t the sun or some light bouncing off something way behind him even if he wasn’t looking right at it, so he’s playing games with me or something, not games but probably thinking “Hey, the guy behind’s tailgating me, he knows he shouldn’t so I’ll keep him going slow for a while to teach him a lesson before I switch lanes and let him pass,” or could be he still hasn’t seen me, not my flashing, nothing, could be he has eye problems, doesn’t see well if at all out of the right one and not so good also in the left, but I don’t think so, though he is wearing glasses if those bumps on the back of his ears are the sides of the frames, but he’d have trouble getting a license with such bad eyes or, if the condition came after he got one, then passing the eye test most states make you take every time your renewal comes up and his plate says his state’s same as mine, if he’s not renting the car and comes from somewhere else that doesn’t have such a law, it’s just probably he’s deep in thought somewhere, as I was before when Margo snapped me out of it, and not paying attention, so I turn the brights on and pull up about ten feet closer and flash them on and off a few times and wait for him to signal right, for when someone flashes the brights from behind so close you almost have to see them no matter where you’re looking or what you’re doing, but he doesn’t signal, I wait thirty seconds, nothing, flash some more with the brights, then pull up a few feet closer, now around two car lengths behind him, which is close enough, and then think I haven’t looked in the rearview for a few minutes and look and see a car about thirty feet behind me, so there’s two of us, maybe three, more, waiting to pass this guy, and I check both side mirrors and in the right one see a car behind the one behind me but that’s all, and I flash my brights several times, for this guy and to let the driver behind me know I’m doing my best to get past him, I could use my horn but I don’t like to, sometimes it scares drivers in front, he could be in deep thought as I said and hasn’t seen me and one horn blast might startle him where he could go off the road or veer into the next lane when a car’s coming in it or something dangerous like that but less, the woman in the car behind me—it looks like a woman, the hair—flashes twice with her brights and I say “Oh come on, you can see I’m doing everything I can,” and point to the car in front and keep flashing my brights and think “That goddamn asshole, that goddamn stupid old asshole, look alive, you putz, look alive,” and Margo says “Daddy, you’re too close to the next car,” and I say “I want to get past it, he’s not moving, look at the stupid speed he’s traveling at in the passing lane—that’s right, this is actually called the passing lane, it’s been going on like this for minutes and there are cars behind wanting to get past,” and she says “So go in the next road and let them,” and I say “But I want to pass him too,” and she says “So go in the next road—” and I say “Lane, it’s a lane, the middle lane,” and she says “Lane, then, but go in it to pass him,” and I say “You’re not supposed to pass from the right, he might not see me even if I’m flashing him, he certainly won’t if I flash him as he hasn’t seen me flashing since I started doing it, and then, without looking at his right side mirror and signaling me, he might suddenly decide to go into that middle lane himself the moment we’re alongside him and hit us. He’s supposed to move over when he sees us behind him so we can pass from the left lane. He’s like some Maine driver—you know the ones I always complain about up there—on a two-lane back road, but they go fifteen or twenty miles an hour when they should be going the posted speed of thirty-five or forty. He’s doing sixty now—not even sixty—fifty-seven or -eight,” and she says “So he’s right, the speed sign before said fifty-five,” and I say “But you don’t know, you’re not a driver, you’re allowed to go at least sixty-five on these Interstates even if the signs say fifty-five, the police allow it, everybody does it, and especially in the speed lane, this passing lane,” and she says “You’re still much too close to him, Daddy; if he stops you’ll crash into him and hurt everything,” her voice shaky saying this and I say “Okay, I give up, you’re right, and as my dad said, ‘When you’re right, you’re right, and no one in the world should say you’re not right,’ I just wanted to get you to that skating thing in plenty of time to skate but I shouldn’t take chances doing it,” and she says “The skating’s not so important, I don’t even want to go to the party if it means taking chances with the car,” and I say “You’re right again,” slowing down a little to put some more room between our cars, check the rearview and see the car behind me’s keeping just as close to mine, “And you talk like your mommy; you do,” and Julie says “I do sometimes too,” and I say “Yes, you’re both—you’re all three very smart and cautious and the way I should be, I admit it, I admit it, but that creepo, look at him, I can even see his eyes now in his rearview mirror, he sees me and he knows I see him and now he’s looking away but that I’m angry and he probably even knows I don’t want to honk at him, no, he couldn’t know that, but he has to know he’s going too damn slow for this lane,” and I signal right and look into the rearview and right side mirrors and cut into the middle lane to go around him and teach him a lesson by speeding past him and then cutting sharply in front of him and speeding on, but his car without signaling cuts into the middle lane second after mine does and when I see I’m going to hit it I brake and try to cut into the lane we were in but the car that was behind mine’s already the
re and our sides hit, I brake all the way, didn’t think about it, just did it, and our cars come apart and mine spins around my side and I try to brake with little pedal taps and then all the way when that didn’t work but have no control of the car and it spins around again and nothing will help it it seems till it stops or slows way down on its own and then I can stop it and I’m screaming and the girls are and I yell “Duck down, down, duck down,” and a car from somewhere, not one of the other two, smashes into the passenger side in the middle lane and pushes us about a hundred feet before it stops, all the time we’re all screaming. All sorts of things after. I must have been knocked out a few seconds. There’s a gas smell and a burnt smell and a metal smell and a rubber one and I can hear cars screeching and people shouting and I think “No, this can’t be, it can’t,” my eyes are shut when I think this and then I think “I’m out of it again, I’m sure I put myself out because I don’t want to know what’s happened,” and when I open my eyes it’s raining, but really pouring, sky’s dark when just a few seconds ago, a minute, minutes, I don’t know, but it seemed it was light, rain’s slashing the windows and banging the roof when before it was dry, I’m sure it was, there wasn’t a drop, I didn’t have my wipers on or even thought I’d soon have to put them on and I tell myself “Turn them on now, no, that’s not where you are,” and I think “I never would have made that lane change if it had been raining like this, never, ever, I’m afraid of driving in blinding rain and the rain slicks, cautious of them, extracautious, I hate them, hate to slide, and I would have slowed down to a hundred feet more between me and the old guy and gone into the middle lane when it was safe to and maybe even into the slow lane and then down to around fifty if the rain continued like this, forty-five, forty, thirty as I have on this same Interstate when it was raining hard as this and I couldn’t see much even with the high-speed wipers on,” and then I’m quickly out of it again and in my dark shake myself awake and think “Hey, what’s going on, I’m not driving, who’s driving, somebody driving?” the last I either think or say and I shout “Julie, Margo, Julie, Margo,” and Julie’s crying and I think “Where’re they crying from, it sounds so weak, were they thrown out? but it’s only one crying, Julie, not Margo,” and I look up, see the roof, hear the rain banging, try to sit up, for some reason can’t, “What is it,” I say, “what, where are you girls?” and try to sit up again, my body’s twisted around itself with the back of my head down on the seat, seatbelt’s caught and I finger around for the clasp, “No no,” I say, “no, please tell me you’re both okay, Margo, Julie,” and continue fingering, find the place to press if it’s my seatbelt and I press and sit up, my neck, it stabs, head, holy shit, I can’t lift it, feel it and feel a big gash with blood or some slick stuff all around it, I reach up and grab the top of the seat and hear whining behind it, Julie’s, still not Margo’s, and hoist myself up and am now on my shins with my knees facing the seats and get my face between the backrests and look. Julie’s still on the seat. Someone’s banging the driver’s window and yelling “Sir, you all right, sir? How is it in there? Your girl pinned? Can you let us in?” Julie’s still in the seat. “Julie, you all right?” and she says “I hurt, Daddy. I’m bleeding. There’s blood,” and I say “Where’s Margo?” and she says “Daddy, your head,” and I say “Where’s Margo?” and she says “Here,” and looks where and I look and say “Margo, my poor Margo.” She’s on the floor, not moving, eyes closed, not breathing it seems. “Margo, oh my God, oh dear.”
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