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.

***