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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 & 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 last 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): fifty-five.
"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 racket; 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 tottered 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.
