In the end I run them down, I wave them over; they always stop. Although I am clearly in impressive car-chasing condition, that is not what intimidates the speeders. No, they are almost always intimidated by my parenthood, because they are almost always young. Yes, my parenthood is what sobers them, almost every time. I begin simply. “Did you see my children back there?” I ask them, loudly and anxiously. Veteran speeders, upon being asked such a question, are immediately frightened that they have run over my children. They are instantly defensive.
“I have two young children,” I tell them. The drama is deliberate in my voice—which, with this sentence, I allow to tremble a little. It is as if I am holding back tears, or unspeakable rage, or both. Perhaps they think I am hunting a kidnapper, or that I suspect them of being child molesters.
“What happened?” they invariably ask.
“You didn't see my children, did you?” I repeat. “A little boy pulling a little girl in a red wagon?” This is, of course, a fiction. I have two boys, and they're not so little; they have no wagon. They may have been watching television at the time, or riding their bikes in the park—where it's safe, where there are no cars.
“No,” the bewildered speeder says. “I saw children, some children. But I don't think I saw those children. Why?”
“Because you almost killed them,” I say.
“But I didn't see them!” the speeder protests.
“You were driving too fast to see them!” I, say. This is sprung on them as if it were proof of their guilt; I always pronounce this sentence as if it were hard evidence. And they're never sure. I've rehearsed this part so well. The sweat from my hard sprint, by now, drips off my mustache and the point of my chin, streaking the driver's-side door. They know only a father who genuinely fears for his children would run so hard, would stare like such a maniac, would wear such a cruel mustache.
“I'm sorry,” they usually say.
“This is a neighborhood full of children,” I always tell them. “You have other places you can drive fast, don't you? Please, for the children's sake, don't speed here anymore.” My voice, now, is never nasty; it is always beseeching. But they see that a restrained fanatic resides behind my honest, watering eyes.
Usually it's just a young kid. Those kids have a need to dribble a little oil; they want to race the frantic pace of the music on their radios. And I don't expect to change their ways. I only hope they'll do it somewhere else. I concede that the open road is theirs; when I train there, I keep my place. I run in the stuff of the soft shoulder, in the hot sand and gravel, in the beer-bottle glass—among the mangled cats, the maimed birds, the mashed condoms. But in my neighborhood, the car is not king; not yet.
Usually they learn.
After my five-mile run I do fifty-five push-ups, then five hundred-yard dashes, followed by fifty-five situps, followed by fifty-five neck bridges. It's not that I care so much for the number five; it's simply that strenuous and mindless exertion is easier if one doesn't have to keep track of too many different numbers. After my shower (about five o'clock), through the late afternoon, and in the course of the evening, I allow myself five beers.
I do not chase cars at night. Children should not be playing outside at night—in my neighborhood, or in any other neighborhood. At night, I believe, the car is king of the whole modern world. Even the suburbs.
At night, in fact, I rarely leave my house, or allow the members of my family to venture out. But once I went to investigate an obvious accident—the darkness suddenly streaked with headlights pointing straight up and exploding; the silence pierced with a metal screaming and the shriek of ground glass. Only half a block away, in the dark and perfect middle of my street, a Land Rover lay upsidedown and bleeding its oil and gas in a puddle so deep and still I could see the moon in it. The only sound: the ping of heat in the hot pipes and the dead engine. The Land Rover looked like a tank tumbled by a land mine. Great juts and tears in the pavement revealed that the auto had rolled over and over before coming to rest here.
The driver's-side door could be opened only slightly, but enough to miraculously turn on the door light. There in the lit cab, still behind the steering wheel—still upside-down and still alive—was a fat man. He looked unharmed. The top of his head rested gingerly on the ceiling of the cab, which of course was now the floor, but the man seemed only dimly sensitive to this change in his perspective. He looked puzzled, chiefly, by the presence of a large brown bowling ball that sat alongside his head, like another head; he was, in fact, cheek to cheek with this bowling ball, which he perhaps felt touching him as he might have felt the presence of a lover's severed head—formerly resting on his shoulder.
“is that you, Roger?” the man asked. I couldn't tell whether he was addressing me or the bowling ball.
“It is not Roger,” I said, answering for us both.
“That Roger is a moron,” the man explained. “We crossed our balls.”
That the fat man was referring to a bizarre sexual experience seemed unlikely. I assumed that the fat man referred to bowling.
“This is Roger's ball,” he explained, indicating the brown globe against his cheek. “I should have known it wasn't my ball because it wouldn't fit in my bag. My ball will fit in anyone's bag, but Roger's ball is really strange. I was trying to fit it in my bag when the Land Rover went off the bridge.”
Although I knew there was no bridge in my entire neighborhood, I tried to visualize the occurrence. But I was distracted by the gurgle of spilling gasoline, like beer down a thirsty man's throat.
“You should get out,” I told the upside-down bowler.
“I'll wait for Roger,” he replied. “Roger will be right along.”
And sure enough, along come another Land Rover, as if they were a separated twosome from a column of an army on the move. Roger's Land Rover come along with its headlights out and did not stop in time; it plowed into the fat bowler's Land Rover and together, like coupled boxcars, they jarred each other another tough ten yards down the street.
It appeared that Roger was a moron, but I merely asked him the expected question: “Is that you, Roger?”
“Yup,” said the man, whose throbbing Land Rover was dark and creaking; little fragments of its windshield and headlights and grille dropped to the street like noisy confetti.
“That could only be Roger!” groaned the fat bowler, still upside-down—and still alive—in his lit cab. I saw that his nose bled slightly; it appeared that the bowling ball had bashed him.
“You moron, Roger!” he called out. “You've got my ball!”
“Well, someone's got my ball, then,” Roger replied.
“I've got your ball, you moron,” the fat bowler declared.
“Well, that's not the answer to everything,” Roger said. “You've got my Land Rover.” Roger lit a cigarette in the blackened cab; he did not appear interested in climbing out of the wreck.
“You should set up flares,” I suggested to him, “and that fat man should get out of your Land Rover. There's gasoline everywhere. I don't think you should smoke.” But Roger only continued smoking and ignoring me in the cavelike silence of the second Land Rover, and the fat bowler again cried out—as if he were having a dream that was starting over, at the beginning—"Is that you, Roger?”
I went back to my house and called the police. In the daytime, in my neighborhood, I would never have tolerated such mayhem, but people who go bowling in each other's Land Rovers are not the usual suburban speeders, and I decided they were legitimately lost.
“Hello, Police?” I said.
I have learned what you can and what you can't expect of the police. I know that they do not really support the notion of citizen arrest; when I have reported speeders to them, the results have been disappointing. They don't seem interested in learning the details. I am told there are people whom the police are interested in apprehending, but I believe the police are basically sympathetic to speeders; and they do not appreciate citizens who make arrests for them.
I reported the whereabouts of the bowlers' accident, and when the police asked, as they always ask, who was calling, I told them, “Roger.”
That, I knew—knowing the police—would be interesting. The police are always more interested in bothering the person who reports the crime than they are interested in bothering the criminals. And sure enough, when they arrived, they went straight after Roger. I could see them all arguing under the streetlamps, but I could catch only snatches of their conversation.
“He's Roger,” the fat bowler kept saying. “He's Roger through and through.”
“I'm not the Roger who called you fuckers,” Roger told the police.
“That's true,” the fat bowler declared. “This Roger wouldn't call the police for anything.”
And after a while they began to call out into our dark suburb for another Roger. “Is there another Roger here?” one policeman called.
“Roger!” screamed the fat bowler, but my dark house and the dark houses of my neighbors were appropriately silent. In daylight, I knew, they would all be gone. Only their oil slicks and their broken glass would remain.
Relieved—and, as always, pleased with the destruction of automotive vehicles—I watched until almost dawn, when the hulking, coupled Land Rovers were finally separated and towed away. They were like two exhausted rhinos caught fornicating in the suburbs. Roger and the fat bowler stood arguing, and swinging their bowling balls, until the streetlamps in our block were extinguished; then, as if on signal, the bowlers shook hands and departed in different directions—on foot, and as if they knew where they were going.
The police came interrogating in the morning, still concerned with the possibility of another Roger. But they learned nothing from me—just as they learn nothing, apparently, whenever I report a speeder to them. “Well, if it happens again,” they tell me, “be sure to let us know.”
Fortunately, I have rarely needed the police; I am usually effective with first offenders. Only once have I had to stop the same driver—and him, only twice. He was an arrogant young man in a blood-red plumber's truck. Lurid-yellow lettering advertised on the cab that the plumber handled Roto-Rootering needs and all plumbing services:
O. FECTEAU, OWNER and HEAD PLUMBER
With two-time offenders I come more quickly to the point.
“I'm calling the cops,” I told the young man. “And I'm calling your boss, old O. Fecteau; I should have called him the lost time.”
“I'm my own boss,” the young man said. “It's my plumbing business. Fuck off.”
And I realized I was facing O. Fecteau himself—a runty but successful youth, unimpressed with standard authority.
“There are children in this neighborhood,” I said. “Two of them are mine.”
“Yeah, you already told me,” the plumber said; he revved his engine as if he were clearing his throat. There was a hint of menace in his expression, like the trace of pubic beard he was growing on his young chin. I rested my hands on the door—one on the handle, one on the rolled-down window.
“Please don't speed here,” I said.
“Yeah, I'll try,” said O. Fecteau. I might have let it go at that, but the plumber lit a cigarette and smiled at me. I thought I saw on his punk's face the leer of the world.
“If I catch you driving like that again,” I said, “I'll stick your Roto-Rooter up your ass.”
We stared at each other, O. Fecteau and I. Then the plumber gunned his engine and popped his clutch; I had to leap back to the curb. In the gutter I saw a little metal dump truck, a child's toy; the front wheels were missing. I snatched it up and ran after O. Fecteau. Five blocks later I was close enough to throw the dump truck, which struck the plumber's cab; it made a good noise but it bounced off harmlessly. Even so, O. Fecteau slammed on his brakes; about five long pipes were flipped out of the pickup part of the truck, and one of those metal drawers sprang open, disgorging a screwdriver and several spools of heavy wire. The plumber jumped down from his cab, banging the door after himself; he had a Stillson wrench in his hand. You could tell he was sensitive about collecting dents on his blood-red truck. I grabbed one of the fallen pipes: It was about five feet long and I quickly smashed the truck's left taillight with it. For some time now, things have just been coming naturally to me in fives. For example, the circumference, in inches, of my chest (expanded): fiftyfive.
“Your taillight's broken,” I pointed out to the plumber. “You shouldn't be driving around that way.”
“I'm going to call the cops on you, you crazy bastard!” said O. Fecteau.
“This is a citizen arrest,” I said. “You broke the speed limit, you're endangering the lives of my children. We'll go see the cops together.” And I poked the long pipe under the truck's rear license plate and folded the plate like a letter.
“You touch my truck again,” the plumber said, “and you're in trouble.” But the pipe felt as light in my hands as a badminton rocket; I swung it easily and shattered the other taillight.
“You're already in trouble,” I pointed out to O. Fecteau. “You ever drive in this neighborhood again, you better stay in first gear and use your flasher.” First, I knew (swinging the pipe), he would need to repair his flasher.
There was an elderly woman, just then, who came out of her house to observe the commotion. She recognized me immediately. I catch up to a lot of people at her corner. “Oh, good for you!” she called. I smiled to her and she tattered toward me, stopping and peering into her well-groomed lawn where the toy dump truck arrested her attention. She seized it, with obvious distaste, and carried it over to me. I put the toy and the pieces of broken glass and plastic from the taillights and the flasher into the back of the pickup. It is a clean neighborhood; I despise litter. On the open road, in training, I see nothing but litter. I put the other pipes in back, too, and with the long pipe I still held (like a warrior's javelin) I nudged the screwdriver and the spools of wire that had fallen by the curb. O. Fecteau gathered them up and returned them to the metal drawer. He is probably a better plumber than a driver, I thought; the Stillson wrench looked very comfortable in his hand.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the old woman told O. Fecteau. The plumber glared at her.
“He's one of the worst ones,” I told her.
“Imagine that,” the old lady said. “And you're a big boy,” she told the plumber. “You should know better.”
O. Fecteau edged back to the cab, looking as if he would hurl his wrench at me, then leap into his truck and back over the old biddy.
“Drive carefully,” I told him. When he was safely in the cab, I slid the long pipe into the pickup. Then I took the old woman's arm and helped her along the sidewalk.
When the truck tore away from the curb, with that stink of scorched rubber and a noise as raw as bones leaving their sockets, I felt the old lady tremble through the frail point of her elbow; something of her fear passed into me, and I realized how risky it was to make anyone as angry as I had made O. Fecteau. I could hear him, maybe five blocks away, driving furiously fast, and I prayed for all the dogs and cats and children who might be near the street. Surely, I thought, modern life is about five times as difficult as life used to be.
I should stop this crusade against speeders, I thought. I go too far with them, but they make me so angry—with their carelessness, their dangerous, sloppy way of life, which I view as so directly threatening to my own life and the lives of my children. I have always hated cars, and hated people who drove them stupidly. I feel such anger toward people who take such risks with other people's lives. Let them race their cars—but in the desert! We would not allow an outdoor rifle range in the suburbs! Let them jump out of airplanes, if they want—but over the ocean! Not where my children live.
“What would this neighborhood be like without you?” the old woman wondered aloud. I can never remember her name. Without me, I thought, this neighborhood would probably be peaceful. Perhaps deadlier, but peaceful. “They all drive so fast,” the old
lady said. “If it weren't for you, I sometimes think they'd be having their smashups right in my living room.” But I felt embarrassed that I shared such anxiety with eighty-year-olds—that my fears are more like their nervous, senile worries than they are the normal anxieties of people my own young middle age.
What an incredibly dull life I have! I thought, aiming the old woman toward her front door, steering her over the cracks in the sidewalk.
Then the plumber came back. I thought the old woman was going to die in my arms.
The plumber drove over the curb and hurtled past us, over the old woman's lawn, flattening a whiplike young tree and nearly rolling over when he wheeled the truck into a U-turn that uprooted a sizable hedge and tore divots from the ground the size of fivepound steaks. Then down to the sidewalk the truck fled—an explosion of tools flying free of the pickup as the rear wheels jounced over the curb. O. Fecteau was off up the street, once more terrorizing my neighborhood; I saw the violent plumber jump the curb again at the corner of Dodge and Furlong—where he grazed the back of a parked car, springing open the car's trunk on impact and leaving it flapping.
Helping the shaken old lady inside, I called the police—and my wife, to tell her to keep the children indoors. The plumber was berserk. This is how I help the neighborhood, I thought: I drive mad men madder.
The old woman sat in a paisley chair in her cluttered living room, as carefully as a plant. When O. Fecteau returned—this time driving within inches of the living room bay window, and through the gravel beds for the baby trees, his horn blaring—the old woman never moved. I stood at the door, awaiting the ultimate assault, but I thought it wiser not to show myself. I knew that if O. Fecteau saw me, he would attempt to drive in the house.
The World According to Garp Page 32