Genre

Monday, May 17, 2010

Reminiscence: A Summer Job

***
1

My first summer job came when I was thirteen years old, between the seventh and eighth grades. I did yard work for several different families, my parents driving me back and forth from home. Miss Mattie, Miss Edilene, Miss Louisa and her husband Rev. H----. These were all members of our church; I don’t know if it was my mother or my father, the well known Dr. Derrick, who lined them up. I also kept the yard for a neighborhood family during their month-long vacation. Their daughter Jeri was a school acquaintance, and I had probably told her what I was going to do for the others.

My most memorable summer job was between eleventh and twelfth grades, when I worked as a bell-boy in a historic guest lodge in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. It was the grown-up son of a church member who hired me, which by this time seemed normal. How else would a kid get a summer job except through church contacts, set up by his dad?

So it was Mom and Dad, mostly Dad, who arranged for my many summer occupations… Or at least that was true until the summer after my high school graduation.

Boy, did I feel like a grown-up! Not only was I preparing to go 1,100 miles away to college in three months, but also my job that summer had come along entirely because of my own efforts. All my life I had been my parents’ son. I wanted to be “Byron Derrick,” not “Dr. Derrick’s son,” and the time for that was coming soon. What a good feeling.

2

At the beginning of my junior year, my seventh grade English teacher, who had also been advisor to the junior high newspaper, replaced the retiring high school journalism teacher and advisor to that schools’ newspaper. To be frank, we hadn’t gotten along very well in English class. Most of us had found Mrs. M----- boring if not incompetent.

Looking back I realize that the state curriculum had seventh graders read quite unsuitable literature for youngsters. Maybe Longfellow’s Evangeline might have held some interest, at least for the girls, but the curriculum emphasized the fact that this was POETRY, to which reverence was due. We concentrated on learning what a dactyl was and counting feet. It seemed an interminable time we spent on this magnus opus. But even less suitable for kids our age (and high energy level) was the novel we were assigned: George Eliot’s Silas Marner, which is about a very old man and a very young child. None of us could relate to that, even those of us who were dedicated readers.

(I think this was just at the end of the period when Mother would take me to the children’s room of the downtown public library once a week, and I always checked out six books - the maximum number allowed. I preferred Kazan the Wolf dog and White Fang over Silas Marner, and I read biographies of great Americans more than any other one thing.)

So it was suprisising to discover how well Mrs. M----- and I got along in second-year journalism in high school. Toward the end of that year, in fact, I was named Co-Editor of the high school newspaper for the senior year. I was to write a regular column and whatever other stories I wanted. I was the reporter-editor; K------- was the copy-editor; all the staff had to sell ads.

I figured I must have done well when, in April of the senior year, Mrs. M------ told me about a local weekly paper that was starting up; she was the editor-in-chief. She showed me a copy of the first issue; it looked like a real newspaper. It was called The Women’s Press. I showed it to my father, who was always interested in local papers. He said it looked good.

Well, Mrs. M----- wanted to pay me for reporting for TWP, starting right away but working full-time in the summer. Mom and Dad said it was all right, so this was my first job that I had earned for myself.

3

It was a local election year, with the real action being in the Democratic Party since the Republicans ran someone only for Mayor (and never won). My job was to write stories about the candidates for City Council. There was an enormous number of candidates; the districts must have been large and the number of seats small in comparison. I plunged in, first reviewing all the candidates’ printed material, not ignoring what the daily papers were writing, of course. Then, dividing them up I focused several articles on the opponents for each seat. It seemed like a heck of a lot of work for a guy finishing his senior year, but I really liked it. All the candidates and all of their little staffs took my stories seriously and gave me what seem like a lot of time every time I called them up.

We were planning on much more in-depth reporting for the summer leading up to the primary. I was going to interview some of the top civil servants about the issues mentioned to me by the candidates, and eventually I was going to interview randomly-selected voters to see which ways they were leaning and why. It all seemed real authentic and was pretty impressive for an inexperienced high-school kid.

And then, very suddenly it was all over.

Mrs. M----- called me at home one afternoon a week or so before the end of the school year and asked me to come over to her place right away. It wasn’t far from my house and since there was no car to drive, I wrote a note for Mother and walked over. Mrs. M----- had apparently been crying and did not seem herself at all. Now that I think back, I wonder if she had had a couple of drinks. She told me flat out that we were both out of jobs. The business manager had disappeared with all the money, there was little hope of tracking him down, and the owner - who may have been Mrs. M----- herself - had decided to bag the whole enterprise.

4

Now, I was up a creek. All the usual church contacts were all played out that late in the year, and this time it was important since the family had all been counting on me to earn most of my spending money that summer for the college freshman year.

Dad got on the telephone right away and called an acquaintance at the local book publisher. They weren’t looking for anyone to read proofs or that kind of thing for just a summer, but he had Dad bring me in for an interview, which seemed pleasant enough but didn’t seem very hopeful.

So, there I was, thinking I was on my own, earning my way by my own devices, only to find that I wasn’t going to be earning anything at all! I think Dad was unhappy too, feeling he had let me down.

The week before high school graduation, however, Dad told me his friend had just called and there was an opening, not on the publisher’s editorial staff, but at their print factory. It would be hard work, but the pay would be good. I had nothing to lose, so the next day I drove myself out to the factory on the far edge of the city at exactly the right time, and opened the one door I saw off the big parking lot; the noise bursting out was overwhelming.

But a guy wearing a white, short-sleeve shirt and a tie met me just inside and led me by the huge four-color printing press to his little office in the back. Closing the door helped a lot. I had to fill out a few papers and sign a couple of others. He mentioned that I would be the only non-union employee, but for one summer that was no problem.

He said he would take me to my work station. The noise again. He cupped his hands over my ear and said that it was so humid in the factory because the air conditioning was set up to keep all the presses running. We went by another huge press, this one a web press with big spools of paper winding up and down from one end to the other.

After the noise and the related vibrations, the most noticeable feature of the factory was how dirty it was. It seemed dim too, with only the work stations scattered here and there being brightly lit. In-between the presses were stacks and stacks of paper on wooden pallets. As we made our way toward a back corner, I thought I may have seen a rat shuffling around among the paper.

Wow, I was thinking, isn’t this great! I’ll bet my dad never worked in a huge, noisy, dirty factory like this. This was me. I was doing this, making my own way.

We came at last to what seemed by comparison a tiny press, only about 10 feet wide by 20 feet long and 8 feet tall at the highest spot. That was where a white-haired, wiry little Hispanic man was transferring this black wax-like ink from a tray balanced on his arm to a big, long tray at the top of the press.

The man in the tie cupped his hands around my ear again and said he would introduce me and pulled on the other’s trouser leg. The little man looked me over as he came down from his ink-spattered step ladder.

This is real life, I was thinking. I’m on my own, and I’m going to make it!

Cupping his hands around Frank’s ear, the supervisor said something at which the dark, wiry old guy started, looked back at me, turned and bounced over.

Ink-spattered hands around my ear, he said in a bright, loud voice:

“Not Dr. Derrick’s son?!”


***

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Freedom in America: Who Cares?

***

1

A political leader recently stated that his party was “based on freedom” (with emphasis), and his audience clapped and cheered. Virtually every political party in American history would no doubt say it too was devoted to freedom, but this speaker – and, alas, also his adoring audience – seemed to believe that this statement was both clear and deeply meaningful.

Statements are clear and meaningful, however, only if they answer clear and meaningful questions. Saying that one is committed to freedom, while it sometimes pleases a crowd, does not answer questions; the key questions are in fact raised by such a claim.

Every sane and responsible leader – including this speaker, I am sure – acknowledges that people are not and must not consider themselves free to do anything they want. Are you free to sock your boss when he takes credit for an achievement for which you alone are responsible? Are you free to take that laptop left on a table in a Wi-fi café while the owner is getting another cup of coffee? Are you free to incite violence? To drive through a stop sign? To make lewd advances to a child? To deny a woman the health care she wants and deserves by law? To walk around naked in public? To give poisoned candy to trick-or-treaters? To burn down a church preaching a doctrine you don’t like? To lie on your income tax return? Are you free to break a law because you do not think it should have been passed?

Perhaps no one would say that his political party is based on such preposterous “freedoms” as these. And no one even in the audience who wildly cheered thought this speaker was referring to limitless freedom, irresponsible and anti-social freedom harming or endangering others or others’ property. But what did they think was being referred to?

The key question they should have been thinking about – although at that moment they may not have been in a thoughtful frame of mind – is, Freedom from what?

2

The American leaders who have preceded us, regardless of party, have all maintained – in deed if not in words – that the freedoms  to which all of us are entitled include:

1. Freedom from fear


2. Freedom from want


3. Freedom from intolerance


4. Freedom from violence, force, and intimidation


5. Freedom from injustice

and

6. Freedom from the cruel bondage of unequal opportunity.

We do not have to fear that we will be arrested for no reason, separated from our families, and taken to work camps or death camps. We don’t have to fear that our property may be damaged or stolen without serious consequences to the vandal or the thief. We don’t have to fear that we will be abused because of the position we take on a public issue. As much as is allowed by life itself, with all its inherent uncertainties, we may live free from fear.

Our “unalienable rights” include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Life is threatened by hunger, homelessness, lack of adequate clothing, or lack of necessary health care. None of us should have to fear extreme want – or poverty – to such an extent that our very lives are threatened. That is one of our basic rights in this country, promised by the Declaration of Independence, guaranteed by the Constitution, and bolstered by generations of law-makers and judges.

We are free to worship as we please, or not to worship at all; we do not have to fear religious intolerance. We are protected from discrimination against us based on race or gender. We will not be punished because we support the losing party in an election or a controversial point of view in a public debate. We will not be assaulted or spat upon because of the color of our skin, at least not with impunity. Our Constitution and our laws free us from intolerance – whether racial, political, or religious.

We will not be forced to work in somebody else’s fields for little or no pay. No one may use force to prevent us from doing anything, at least anything that is not against the law. We may legitimately expect to be protected from violence by those who disagree with our moral values, so long as our values do not put others at risk and are not contrary to law, or by those who want us to change our opinions on a matter of public debate, or by those who want us to vote for a candidate whom we do not support. We will be free of threats of harm if we do not conform, except to civil law, free from intimidation. We are free to think for ourselves.

We will not be imprisoned without a fair and public trial. Someone who owes us money will not be permitted to simply walk away from the debt. We will not do the work for which we are hired only to see our employers successfully avoid paying us our due wages. Laws will be applied equally to us and to those poorer than we and to those richer and more politically well-connected. All that would be unjust, and we in our country will live free from such injustice.

That final natural right cited in our Declaration of Independence, “the pursuit of happiness,” would be violated if we were denied the schooling needed to get a decent job because we are poor and powerless, or if we were denied the opportunity to compete on equal terms with others of different races or religions or gender. We would not have the right to pursue happiness if our socio-economic status prevented us from being able to compete fairly with others more fortunate than we, or if our own businesses were not able to compete with big corporations because anti-trust laws are not enforced, or because prices are fixed among our competitors, or because suppliers collude with the big businesses to deny us what we need in order to complete fairly. Our national values protect us from unequal opportunity, and in so doing make us free.

3

A political party based on these six freedoms – from fear, want, force and violence, injustice, and unequal opportunity – and that actively, proudly, and aggressively pursues them would be one we could
enthusiastically support.

Yet, somehow, I am inclined to think that the actions of the party referred to in the recent speech are not in fact founded on principles of freedom as I understand it, or at least not on freedom for all.


*****

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Wise Sayings 2

* * *


Plan
For the best

Have a
Back-up plan

Or
Two
………………………………Ron Lucius


* * *

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The Present Implications of the Constitution (essay)

***

1

Whenever we consider or debate an issue of national significance, it would be very good for everyone to use the same frame of reference and vocabulary in the dialogue. Bringing my own religious tradition to bear on such an issue, for instance, is helpful to me and believers like me, but once we have made up our own minds as to right or wrong in the matter, that frame of reference is not likely to be useful in a public discussion.

And what better frame of reference could we all use than the U. S. Constitution?

Preamble to the U. S. Constitution

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defence, promote the General Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Constitution to which this introduction is attached was "ordained" and "established" in order to improve the rather loose affiliation established among the states by the Articles of Confederation. In other words, these concepts – establishment, make more perfect – are matters of history; this is what the Constitution did when it was ratified.

The other concepts – "promoting the general welfare" and the others – are the purposes for which the Articles were replaced by the Constitution; and since the Constitution, as amended, is still in effect today, these purposes remain the goals and responsibilities today of our democratic republic.

In somewhat more current language, that is, our government exists today in order to do (at least) the following:

1. Establish justice
2. Keep peace within the nation
3. Provide for the nation’s defense
4. Promote the people's general wellbeing, and
5. Guarantee freedom to ourselves and our descendants.

Actions that jeopardize any of these worthy purposes - whether public or private, individual or group-led, executive or legislative or judicial - are reprehensible and should be stopped and punished. Laws and proposed laws that threaten any of these goals should be rejected or repealed. Leaders, media, and public figures who advocate or promote actions contrary to these fundamental goals of our nation’s government should be criticized and prevented from such behavior.

Let's look at these founding notions one at a time.

2. Justice

One has the impression that the concept of justice was unambiguous to the nation's founders. The colonies' experience with the government of England in the decades preceding the outbreak of the Revolutionary War had been filled with injustice. The colonists' lack of the ability to participate in governing themselves at home and in the mother country was unjust. Without a modicum of democracy, they felt, there could be no justice. "Taxation without representation" was a particularly onerous injustice to all the colonies.

At the micro-level too, the concept of justice seems to have been clear. It is unjust to imprison an individual and refuse to tell him (or her?) why. Conviction of a crime without a trial by a jury of one's peers is unjust. Establishing laws capriciously or arbotrarily is unjust. Punishing an individual for breaking a law that was not adopted until after the individual's offensive behavior is unjust. This was all clear.

Whether or not the concept of justice can be applied to all of society (a claim called "social justice") is not determined by the Constitution or its preamble. Can all of a society be said to act unjustly, or only individuals? But this question too could not even be debated, as it has been and is today, unless the concept of justice itself were understood with reasonable clarity.

Perhaps like us, two and a half centuries later, the citizens of the new United States agonized over precisely what was or would be unjust in their world. Would it be just to establish a high tariff on manufactured goods, produced mainly in the North, without doing the same for agricultural products, most of which came from the South? Would it be unjust to require every able male citizen to serve for a term in the military? Was it just for the right to vote to be limited to land-owners?

But in order to debate these questions and others like them, or even to deliberate within oneself over such questions, what justice is has to be reasonably clear, as it was and still seems to be.

3. "Domestic Tranquility"

This essential concept, on the other hand, seems somewhat less clear. We can note at least that this concept seems intended to contrast with the following purpose of the federal government: protection from external threats or defense. If peace with other nations should be maintained by the federal government, peace within our own country should likewise be maintained.

An armed insurrection by one group of citizens would certainly be a threat to internal peace, which may explain President Washington's firm and decisive response to "Shay's Rebellion." (Shay and the others were outraged by what they as poor farmers, of course, saw as the injustice of high taxes applied to rich and poor alike and unrelieved debt leading to debtors' prison. Work to insure that their representatives in both the state and national legislatures voiced their concerns and peaceful demonstrations in public would have been a "tranquil" or peaceful, non-violent means of overcoming such perceived injustices.)

On the other hand, injustice affecting large numbers of citizens with no voice in their government and continued over a long period of time would perhaps also be a threat to peace in the nation, because widespread and prolonged injustice provokes potentially violent public outbursts (like the American Revolution itself!). Taking this line of reasoning leaves to the individual the determination of precisely what social conditions are just and what are unjust and are not the responsibility of government. But the responsibility for maintaining "domestic tranquility" implies the responsibility to avoid creating wide-spread and enduring conditions that a significant proportion of the citizenry consider unjust.

In order to provide for the domestic tranquility, that is, the government must establish just laws, enforced justly.

At the micro-level, threats to the domestic tranquility may come simply from individual criminals. Interstate connection between crimes would naturally make it a responsibility of the national government to respond, as would violation of federal laws - such as income tax fraud or the denial of equal opportunity to a woman because of her gender (a violation of federal anti-discrimination laws) - despite these crimes' occurring entirely within one state.

Insuring peace and security within the nation thus requires federal action protecting against mob violence as well as individual crime.

4. Defense

The responsibility of the federal government for defense was apparently unambiguous to our nation's founders, as it still seems today. The original phrase, about providing for the common defense was evidently necessary to clarify that the national government is responsible for protecting the entire nation, all states in common, from external attack.

5. "The General Welfare"

The term "welfare" in the Preamble is not to be confused with public support to a disadvantaged individual (as in the phrase "a welfare check"). With this simple understanding, however, the concept of "promoting the general welfare" does not seem particularly ambiguous.

It is the duty of the U. S. federal government to insure relative prosperity for the people generally, not just for a few.

Even before the Constitution, our Declaration of Independence had declared that among the "inalienable" or inherent rights of every individual is the right "to pursue happiness" or wellbeing. Over the generations, it has become if anything even more apparent that guaranteeing an equal opportunity for all individuals to achieve personal prosperity is a key to maintaining the prosperity of the nation generally. Of course, all will not succeed equally well, but each must have a reasonable chance to succeed in order for the general welfare to be sustained over time.

(The first inalienable right is the right to life itself; the "general welfare" of the nation cannot be maintained over time, it seems obvious, if every individual does not have the wherewithal simply to survive.)

6. Liberty

And the other unremovable right of everyone is to liberty, the blessings of which it is the government's duty to insure are available to all. The meaning of this emotion-laden concept seems clear. Liberty is freedom from control of others, freedom to decide for oneself what one will do.

It is also apparent, on the other hand, that the freedom of one may actually threaten the freedom of another. In 18th-century America it was natural for some to feel they were free to own slaves, as many of the founders - and we today - understood and understand is self-contradictory. One cannot be allowed to feel free to infringe on the freedom of any other adult.

The freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, since 1791 a part of the Constitution, list what seemed to the nation's founders the most important liberties to cite individually: freedom of speech, freedom from an established religion, and so on. But in listing these specifically it was not thought necessary to clarify what the term "liberty" means, other than to use it interchangeably with the term "freedom."

Although in practice a complex matter, liberty or freedom is still well understood as a concept.

7

These are the most basic purposes, then, which the United States' government is designed to serve. I have written elsewhere that the cardinal American values are peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty and justice for all. "Peace and prosperty" are identified in the Preamble to the Constitution by the terms "Domestic Tranquility," "Defense," and "The General Welfare." "Equal opportunity," too, is addresed by the purpose of our national government to "promote the general welfare." The two phrases from the Pledge of Allegiance to the U. S. flag, promoted by presidential decree in 1892 and formally recognized by the Congress in 1942, "Liberty" and "Justice" are named explicitly in the Preamble.

As issues arise in the public debate, it seems obvious that these founding principles should be the first considerations in our minds as we attempt to decide where we stand. We should not argue, that is, for a proposal merely because it "seems right" to us at the time. The prohibition against one person's freedom impinging on that of another must be considered as well. What is obviously right from my point of view is not necessarily what seems right from another's perspective; I do not have the right to impose my belief on others, unless my view of what is right also serves the national purpose as described in the Preamble.

A proposal benefitting one group of people should be considered first in terms of whether or not to do so may reasonably be expected to address an existing injustice and in terms of whether or not the wellbeing of our society generally will be promoted by such a move.

A social condition that deprives any group of individuals an equal opportunity to participate in the general prosperty of the nation should be considered a threat to our shared value of justice and to the goal of insuring the wellbeing of all.

Whether or not to approve or endorse an individual's or a group's actions that may reasonably be expected to threaten the internal peace within the nation must be rejected (even when I sympathize with the individual or group in question).

And these are only a very few examples of issues the discussion of which could be clarified and focused by keeping in mind the Constitution's purposes, which should be considered as shared by us all.

***

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Story: Co-Incidents

***

It was very hot. They would have agreed about that. Even though it was dry. Even though there wasn't a whisper of a cloud and the sky curving overhead was more blue than white. There was no wind, and the intensity of the pervading, penetrating sunlight was like a broad, blunt- ended iron pressing down on the pavements and sidewalks, pressing down the tired foreheads, sticky shirts, and hunched shoulders of the afternoon traffic.

The man in the first car had already remarked to himself that it was actually pleasant to be so hot. He liked to feel himself sweating. He estimated 96 degrees at least.

The man in the second car wasn't even aware that he was ready to explode. He didn't notice his midweek weariness and he didn't notice the heat. His hand was still stinging where he had already banged his fist on the steering wheel, cursing aloud, when a car in front of him had slowed to make a left turn at an intersection without a light. There was no traffic at all going the other way so he hadn't even had to slow down. But he wasn't aware of the stinging either.

Now the traffic stream was moving along as quickly as it could, on a wide boulevard with three lanes going each way. There was a light every four blocks. They were set to let a car traveling twenty-five miles an hour right through. Of course, the rush hour traffic could never move faster than about twenty. The man in the first car had noted this immediately. He never had to drive in rush hour traffic and it didn't seem too important. He was just thankful that the back window of the car in front of them now, if he let it go about two car lengths ahead, did not reflect the sunlight back into his eyes. Even his sunglasses didn't prevent that from being unpleasant. Of course, driving that far behind tempted the cars in the right lane to turn in front of them. Then he would have to slow down a little so that the back window of the car that had changed lanes wouldn't reflect the sunlight into his eyes.

The beautiful young woman sitting next to the man in the first car had been looking silently forward since she had answered him two lights earlier that they would be turning left.

He didn't like changing lanes in that traffic, but a car just next to him had slowed to turn left at a corner where there was no light and he had been able to turn into the empty spot in the stream ahead of it.

The man in the second car had never liked little imported cars, although he was not aware of this prejudice. His frustration and anger increased slightly as he saw a car from the right lane pull in front into the left lane ahead of the little car in front of him. He raised his hand abruptly to push the horn ring, but hesitated. At least he would be turning soon. It was only a two-lane road, but it led away from town and shopping centers, toward open country, off to the left. Every day after he made the turn he zoomed off along the open two-lane road, racking the motor through the gears and exulting in the noise and the rushing wind through the windows. He was aware of that.

The left turn light at the intersection was very quick, even though there was never any traffic in the opposite direction. Sometimes when it was especially hot, or when the man in the second car was especially angry or frustrated, or happy (as on Fridays), he looked around quickly for a policeman and then whipped around the turn anyway, without waiting for the light. Almost no one turned at that corner, so the man in the second car was almost always the only one who turned into the left turn lane there.

The man in the first car had the habit of checking the rearview mirror every few minutes.

"It's the next corner," the woman said. "To the left."

The man did not reply but turned on his signal blinker. When he glanced at the rearview mirror, the sunlight glinted off the windshield of the car behind them and pierced through his glasses. He slowed down a little turning into the left turn lane. The green arrow was showing but it might change at any minute.

The second car was an older model American car, one of the most popular and less expensive brands. It was the best four door model of that brand, however, and was quite large and heavy, especially when compared to the first car. The first car was less than a year old, a deep blue, recently washed and polished.

The second car was a hardtop convertible, brown and cream. The paint was chipped in several places on the front fenders and around the grill, even on the front part of the hood. The grill and even the windshield was spotted with the smashed corpses of dead hard bugs, and the whole car was filmed and crusted with various layers of dust and dirt.

And it did change to amber just as the first car was reaching the end of the left turn lane. The man in the first car eased to a stop, noting how smoothly he had slowed as he turned into the lane, and stopped, as the light changed to amber.

There was a little toot on the horn somewhere behind. The man in the first car had raised his eyes to the rearview mirror before he remembered. The light flamed out at him again.

"Ha!" the young woman laughed next to him, as she screwed around in her seat to look back. She was suddenly revitalized. "We were cursed at, that time," she said and chuckled again turning back around. She was a little awkward in the cramped quarters of the small car. Both of them in the first car also had seat belts buckled around their waists and diagonally across their chests.

The man in the first car acknowledged the toot with a snorting sound noting surprise, but not amusement.

The woman lapsed into immobility and silence again.

When the light finally changed, the first car very gradually inched forward into the intersection. The man inside was completely aware that the movement was not only smooth and graceful. It was also remarkably slow. He wondered briefly if the young woman would be amused by this also. He smiled slightly himself, but didn't look into the rearview mirror.

The first car inched into the intersection and around the turn. The mouth of the two-lane road into which both cars were turning was very wide, almost like a four-lane road. There was no traffic anyway. The first car moved gradually out of the intersection toward the far right edge of the right lane. The man inside figured that by then his reply was sufficient. The woman next to him had apparently not realized that he was going slow on purpose, or for what reason. But they would laugh about it later.

The second car, just as the first car inched clear, thundered out to the left. As it zoomed alongside and ahead, it seemed to hesitate for an instant and the red, sweating face of the young man inside could be seen turned toward the man in the first car, apparently shouting angrily. He leaned toward the other car as he shouted and as his car jumped ahead.

The road narrowed.

The young woman was tall and dark. Her deep brown hair fell over her shoulders and down her back, touched at places with a lighter shade in the front and in faint, irregular streaks away from her face toward her shoulders. She was wearing a thin, smooth dress with a short skirt and no sleeves. The pattern was of magenta, muted orange, and violet flowers strewn across a pale pink ground. Her knees in the tiny car raised up off the floor above her waist. The thighs below her skirt were smooth and tan. She was turned toward the man beside her, looking beyond into the second car zooming by and the man inside shouting. Her eyes were dark and wide with long dark lashes, and her mouth was large and sensual. She was not laughing this time. Her face was quiet, inscrutable.

She saw the man next to her raise his left hand toward the top of the steering wheel as the second car reached a position in which the front door of the brown and cream hardtop convertible was two feet or so ahead of the front seat of the little blue car. The red-faced young man was still looking back and could see them clearly.

The man in the blue car was looking straight ahead. He raised the middle finger of his left hand off the steering wheel pointing it up, forward, and to the left.

He was slight and not tall. He had light brown hair combed neatly and closely trimmed, thick and curly beard. His sunglasses fit tightly around his eyes. They had heavy, black rims. He was wearing a light blue sports coat and black slacks, a neat white shirt with wide cuffs and a silver tie with flakes of red scattered on it. He might have been twenty-five or -six. The woman was somewhat younger.

She quietly regarded the man next to her. He didn't look over at her, or speak, looking blankly ahead down the road and lowering his left hand as the brown and cream hardtop convertible roared in front of them and on ahead down the road. There was a slow bend to the left, and after a minute the second car, which was now ahead, had disappeared around the bend.

The young woman turned back toward the front of the car, smiling slightly and tranquilly, and folded her hands on top of her knees.

The red-faced young man in the brown and cream hardtop convertible had still been shouting as his car moved ahead of the imported blue car, when the man inside had slowly and smoothly raised his left hand toward the top of the steering wheel and pointed his middle finger up, forward, and to the left.

The man in the hardtop convertible was tall and slender, but his shoulders were broad and his arms muscular. His face was long and rectangular, sweating, red, and wreathed with a rough late-afternoon stubble. He had big, hard hands with knobby knuckles and calluses on the palms and on the fingers below the joints. He was wearing a faded brown and white sport shirt with the top two buttons not buttoned, and a tee shirt underneath which was loose and irregular at the neck and soiled with perspiration. His slacks were dirty and tan and fit close to his legs and hips.

He had already roared ahead of the little blue car and around a slow bend to the left when he began to be aware of the full implications of the bearded man's gesture.

Still the couple in the imported blue car did not speak. The man did not know where they were going. The woman ran one hand over her knee and along her shin.

The car was moving faster now and the breeze whipping through the windows was loud in their ears. The man had remarked some time before that, in that dry climate, even on the hottest days, a little shade--such as that provided by their car's roof--and a little breeze was enough to cool one off. He decided it was even pleasanter than sweating in the stymied flow of traffic on the boulevard.

The little blue car entered the slow bend to the left.

The young woman looked toward the man next to her. He turned toward her for a moment and smiled briefly, looking back at the road. She smiled too and put her left hand on the seat behind his head and stroked his neck gently, turning her face back toward the front.

As the blue car came around the final section of the bend to the left, it suddenly came upon a brown and cream hardtop convertible which was blocking both lanes of the road ahead. A red-faced, ill shaven young man wearing dirty tan slacks and a faded brown shirt open at the neck was standing about ten feet before the car in the left lane, moving forward, with both fists clenched and his eyes squinting at the sunlight so that his teeth showed. There were black skid marks on the pavement behind and under the back tires of the brown and cream car across the road, swerving out from the right lane into the left lane.

The blue car had been moving fairly rapidly but came to a smooth stop, without skidding, before it reached the side of the brown and cream hardtop convertible. It had had to turn slightly off to the right, however, although there was not enough room for it to pass on the shoulder. The motor died with the suddenness of the stop.

The young man standing on the pavement approached the left side of the blue car, his fists still clenched at his sides. He was now shouting curses at the bearded man inside the blue car. The man inside did not look at the young man outside. He turned his head the other way instead.

There was a young woman in the seat to his right. She was looking ahead toward the front end of the car that was blocking the road before them.

"Roll up your window," the bearded man said quietly. As she began to do this, he rolled up his window and closed the wing window and clamped it shut. The woman did this also on her side.

"Is your door locked?" the man asked in the same quiet voice.

"Yes," she said and looked toward him.

"Mine too," the man said and for the first time turned to look at the red-faced young man who was steadily approaching from behind and to the left.

The young man was shouting louder now and as he did he waved his arms in front of him, clenching and unclenching his fists. His words were now almost unintelligible. When he saw the bearded man in the blue car roll up his window, he began to run forward shouting more rapidly. He slapped his hand, palm first, on the window at the side of the other man's head. He hit it several times with the heel of his hand.

Then he tried to open the door, but the handle would not move.

The man inside was no longer looking at him, but was looking blankly ahead. After a moment he reached across the knees of the young woman sitting next to him and took from a tray underneath the dash a clipboard with lined paper on it. He began to write with a ball point pen he took from his shirt pocket.

The man outside was banging his fist on the window next to the other man's ear and shouting with his face next to the glass. Perspiration ran down the sides of his face and off his nose and beaded up on the underside of his eyebrows threatening to drip into his eyes. He shook the drops away, however, by pounding the glass and stamping his feet on the pavement.

Inside the man said a few words to the woman next to him. She nodded and turned back around to face the front.

Outside the man could not make out what the other man was writing, and he couldn't hear what he said. He began to bang on the roof of the little car, the sound echoing with his shouts into the sky.

The couple sat quietly inside. The only movement was the man's writing.

The man outside hesitated a moment. Then he suddenly reached toward the front of the car and in two brisk movements had bent the left windshield wiper up from the glass and had torn it out of its socket.

Grinning fiercely the red-faced young man looked through the glass. The man inside had stopped writing and was looking forward. But his sunglasses completely masked his eyes. The other man beat the windshield with the bent wiper and screamed unintelligible curses at the other man's expressionless face.

He moved toward the back of the little car, pounding on the roof but not shouting quite so much. Through the window over the small back seat he saw the man inside suddenly hand his clipboard to the young woman and reach for the ignition key. The motor didn't start at once and the man outside had time to drop to his knees on the hot pavement on the left side of the car and begin to pound on the side of the left rear tire with the jagged edge of the windshield wiper. It bent around his fingers and cut them, but one corner of the torn hinge mechanism caught in a rough place in the edge of the tire. He kicked it and kicked it, holding it still with his left hand as the ignition whirred again.

It popped in, and the tire began to hiss.

The man grinned and pounded on the back fender as he pried his fingers loose from the bent pieces of metal in the tire.

As the ignition ground up again, he suddenly jumped to the rear of the car. The lid was not locked and, oblivious to the whirling pieces under the lid and the grinding noises they were making, he began to jerk out wires and to pound with his fist on the flat surfaces in the motor. They were hot and burned the side of his hand.

He straightened up and looked through the back window at the backs of the heads of the man and woman inside. The man was still working the ignition key. The woman was turned slightly toward him, holding the clipboard.

The man outside did not shout now.

He left the little car and walked slowly back out toward the center of the road, a spring in his step and his arms swinging loosely at his sides. His faded brown shirt was now deeply stained with perspiration under his arms in wide circles and all over his back. He felt the sweat trickling down the inside of his thighs as he approached the rear of the brown and cream hardtop convertible.

It was quiet except for the hissing of the left rear tire of the little blue car.

He felt his shirt pocket standing away from his body as he walked jauntily across the pavement. He touched it and the pack of cigarettes inside. His fingers happened to touch the book of matches he had slipped under the cellophane on one side of the pack. But when he stood behind the car, at the trunk, he did not take a cigarette.

Instead, he opened the trunk lid and surveyed the anarchic, dusty material strewn around the inside. He was not aware of the cuts and bruises on his left hand and fingers or of the burn on the side of his right fist. The heat of the pavement seared through the soles of his shoes, but he did not notice that either.

He pulled from under old pieces of cardboard and canvas a short, heavy chain that had dirt and grease caked on the inside of its links. And from behind the smooth old spare tire at the left he took a heavy black iron rod that had a wide, hexagonal socket on one end and was slightly bent in the middle toward the flattened tip at the other end.

He looked back at the little blue car at the other side of the road. The hissing was already fading away and the car sagged a little, off-balance to that side. The man inside was no longer trying the starter. Yet he remained in the car. Once he had looked out the back window, peering back down the road. He and the young woman next to him now sat motionless, facing directly ahead.

The young man outside, smiling again to himself, returned to the little blue car, carrying the heavy chain in his right hand (swinging it slightly as he walked) and the bent black rod in his left.

He had perhaps expected the other man to get out of the car, perhaps to run away, abandoning the car and perhaps even the woman. He perhaps expected now the other man to plead with him to stop since they could no longer drive away.

The clipboard had been replaced in the shelf in front of the young woman's knees. The couple sat immobile, looking ahead.

The man outside approached the front of the little blue car. He smiled proudly and held the articles in his hands up before the left side of the windshield, close to the glass. First he held up a dirty, heavy chain in his right hand, and then he held up a heavy black rod in his left hand. His face was red and sweaty.

A man inside the car was wearing sunglasses which hid his eyes. He didn't move and there was no expression on his face.

The man outside suddenly struck at the face behind the window with the heavy rod in his left hand. The glass did not shatter, but the end of the rod smashed a small round pattern into the window just in front of the other man's face. The broken glass in the circle was white. White cracks extended out several inches on all sides of the center like a spider web.

The man outside could not be sure if the man inside had flinched, and now he couldn't see his face at all. A young woman on the other side of the car was looking toward him now. Her eyes were wide and dark. After a second, the man outside smashed the window in front of her too.

On a particularly hot day, late in the afternoon on a seldom used two-lane rod, a brown and cream hardtop convertible was blocking the road to a small, imported blue car. A sweating and dirty young man, evidently seized by some frenzy, was fiercely attacking the little car, beating it on top and at the windows with a heavy chain and a bent black iron rod.

The windows were all smashed, although they would not collapse completely. The man shouted, hysterically at first, as he pounded the little car, jumping up before each blow with the chain in his right hand. He worked around and around the car, smashing the headlights and denting the fenders, hood, and roof.

He kicked the car also.

There were two people inside the car sitting motionless and looking ahead. Once, the young woman in the seat on the right had looked toward the back window and down the road behind them, but just then the man outside had begun to strike that window too with his chain, and then the smashed glass became opaque.

On one of his trips around the car, the red-faced young man stood for a few moments at the left rear fender striking again and again in front of and above the wheel. The fender buckled and banged. The man kept striking regularly, no longer shouting but grunting or snorting as he delivered each blow.

After a few minutes he suddenly stopped pounding the car. He was then in front of the car and to the left. The headlights were smashed and the glass on the pavement. The front hood was dented so badly that the front of the lid was open and bent off to the left. Even the left side of the bumper was sagging.

The man in front of the car panted deeply and dropped the chain and the heavy rod to the pavement. Then he began to stagger toward the rear of the car, staring open-mouthed at the damage he had done and looking blankly back down the road behind the little car.

He could not see a bearded man and a pretty young woman inside.


A man was leaning on the left rear fender of a ruined imported blue car toward the right edge of a narrow bending road in the late afternoon heat. He had his left foot propped on the left end of the rear bumper behind him, and he was looking back down the road appearing hot, sweaty, and tired.

The car he was leaning on was empty.

The red-faced young man tapped out a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket. As he struck the match to light it, looking down, he noticed a thin stain trickling from beneath the little car below his foot on the bumper. He slowly realized as he looked at it that he had been smelling gasoline for a time.


A man suddenly jumped away from the back of the car he was leaning on as though it was suddenly hot and burned his back and shoulder.

The gasoline was a tiny, irregular trickle on the pavement, slowly emerging from behind the flattened left tire.


Light the cigarette from three feet away. Toss the match toward the left rear wheel of the little blue car. Run back for the other car and around to the other side.

The first car exploded, sending up first a yellow flash and then orange flames and dense black smoke into the sky. In an instant the first car itself was completely hidden in the fire and smoke.

Another car, a dirty, brown and cream hardtop convertible roared to life, swung back toward the right lane, and headed away toward open country.

***