Fall and Rise (20 page)

“The
Times
, why not? And magazines. Not
Newsweek
or—”

“So why didn't you try that device when you were drafted?”

“I'm sorry—I said so many things. You mean asking for alternative service?”

“Others did. C.O.'s.”

“Right—C.O.'s. Well. But look, what am I here, on military trial? No, I don't want to joke about it, but you're—or maybe it's just when I get into a conversation that's too loaded or potentially so—”

“I'm talking considerately to him, aren't I?” to the ponytailed man, who nods and shrugs. “Considerately, not maliciously—all you have to do is listen to my voice to know. So don't answer me if you don't want to on anything. That's the prerogative of all free people, which we should be, governmentally and on the street. Because what I like about our talk so far is that we've been so flexible, listening without friction, so please let's not spoil it.”

“It has been easy,” ponytailed man says.

“It actually has, and honestly, no harm meant from here either. Okay. I just didn't want to go into the army—but then, I mean, then. Maybe I shouldn't go on.”

“Finish up,” shorter man says. “I'm interested, and no more interruptions.”

“I didn't say much,” ponytailed man says.

“I meant from us both.”

“Because who knows what one can get into? I was younger—what the hell—it was twenty years ago and I found a way out and bolted. I didn't know what to do with my life but knew I didn't want to not know what I didn't want to do with—Anyway, now I see things clearer, am a lot more confident about my life, want less, struggle more—rather I expect little than want less and what I know I'm willing to put up with for my feelings and ideas, etcetera, and so on. That was no good. I think I'd say to the army now to give me this instead of that, and take it. I would. But if they didn't give me this but that, which was gun-holding and in basic training, bullet-dodging and latrine-cleaning, and later in the service possible man-killing, I'd say no and take the consequences—I think. Though someone has to clean the latrines, you might say. We wouldn't be a good match, the army and I, or that's what their psychiatrist said after I played it to the hilt to get myself psyched out, so I suppose I'd have to be put to the test. Of being called up again and what I'd do. I don't know…”

“Too late for that now,” ponytailed man says.

“The gray shows, eh?” fingering a sideburn.

“What about the accident where you almost died? That's one I want to hear the end of, since I've a long interest in everything automobile. It rules the universe, you know. TV's too.”

“It was the other driver who almost died. And thanks for taking me off the subject—both, my hair too. It—actually, I don't care about my hair except when the sides look like feathers coming out. ‘Bozo the Clown,' my junior high school students, when—”

“You see? TV. So my case is closed. Continue—don't mind me.”

“Come on, you don't want me to. And I've got to go.”

“You crazy? In the middle? Man dying on the road and we're leaving him there? You have to.”

“Okay. Colorado—the accident. Still all right by you?” to the shorter man. He nods. “A few years after the army—psyching out. Probably shouldn't have mentioned it, but so what. And I'm driving drunk down a mountain road—coasting—I was that inexperienced with cars, having just learned how to drive, and I turned off the ignition to save on the gas—I was also that broke. Anyway, the road's dark, though I was smart enough to keep my headlights on—running the battery, if that's what it's called, and I think I also liked the idea of driving soundlessly. None of this would be so clear, by the way, if it hadn't been such an experience. But where was I?”

“Down the road—” shorter man says.

“When my car suddenly stops. No, wheels didn't lock—that's what happens, you're about to say, right? when coasting with the motor off—but my fender's been smashed against the front left wheel. Of course I had to get out of the car to see this. How'd it happen? Must've been in an accident, blanked out. But just before that I was singing to some radio music same time I'm yelling out the window something like ‘Hey stars, beautiful stars, look at me, city slicker in country Colorado, yippie pippie yeh,' so not so soundlessly. But if the ignition was off, radio couldn't be on, at least in that car.”

“That's what I was about to ask,” ponytailed man says. “What year Olds and what style?”

“Good questions. Anyway, I'm looking at my car and think I must've hit a tree. When I see, back up the road a few hundred feet, a tiny car with its headlights pointing to the sky perpendicularly. But this is silly. You don't want me—”

“Don't start. Continue.”

“Some other cars stopped. I'll tell you what kind of guy I was then. Worse than a young idiot and mistakes. I wouldn't do anything like it today. Oh, little lies and mistakes today—but then, before any other car stopped, I got back in my car and tried to drive away, but it wouldn't move. Fender against wheel. So I got out as if for the first time, since some cars had stopped behind me, and with some people walked back to the tiny car.”

“Dead.”

“I won't say yet, for the story's sake, but anyway, we already said he wasn't, but his sports car was totaled. Doors still closed. Windows smashed in a way where they were still in their frames but you couldn't see inside.”

“Safety glass. Supposed to do that. Must have been German- or Swedish-make. For glass, that far back, they were the best.”

“Door windows made of plastic and slashed but intact. Someone said ‘Shouldn't one of us see what's inside?' but no one wanted to open the door.”

“You blame them?” shorter man says.

“No, but I said I think I should be the one since I was the other person involved—‘not that I was responsible,' I said. ‘The other driver was—out in my lane, not that I like putting any blame on him now,' I said—lying, lying. Actually, since I didn't see the accident, I didn't know at the time who was really responsible, but had a good idea. But say both of us were drunk or asleep at the wheel and in the wrong lanes—it's possible. Or I'm asleep in my lane and he's just drunk and in my lane. Anyway, most of me assumed I was the only one responsible, but the rest of me said to myself at the time ‘Well, who really knows?'”

“I take for granted you were the one responsible,” shorter man says, “based on what you said so far. But it is possible, if somewhat implausible—two drivers on the road drunk or asleep at the same time and hitting one another's car, even if it's probably happened a couple of hundred times in America this year. What do you say, expert?”

“One I never heard of but has to have happened. But continue,” he says to me. “You're guilty, but of felonious car crashing or attempted manslaughter we don't know yet.”

“I opened the driver's door. There's one man there, half on the seat, half on the floor.”

“His body in half?”

“From the waist down he's on the seat, the waist up on the floor, his head on the pedals but still connected to the neck and the neck to the rest. I lifted him up, though knew then I shouldn't—broken bones, that sort of thing—till he was flat on the seat. Glass in his head cut my hand in several places, but that didn't matter. In fact it made things look better for me, I thought. A lot of blood, his and mine. Made sure to get some of it, but not too much as if I intentionally smeared it to elicit a sympathetic response, on my face and shirt. He was mumbling something. I said ‘What is it?' and put my ears to his lips, thinking if it's something incriminating about me I should be the first or only one to hear it, especially if he died.”

“That's horrible,” shorter man says.

“Not only that, if he did die—and I hope it goes without saying that I was just about praying he wouldn't—and someone asked what he'd said and it had been critical of me—I was telling myself then I'd say ‘He mumbled, nothing I understood.'”

“Even worse.”

“It was. But I'll stop. I've said too much, besides all your time.”

“What'd the near-dying guy say?” ponytailed man says.

“Yes—momentum—go go go ahead—what?”

“He said ‘Other car did it, was on my side of the road.' I said into his ear very low ‘No it wasn't. You were, on his side, try to remember that, and we think driving without your lights.' Sometimes since then I've thought—as I also thought with a Denver dentist I ran out on the bills around that time—that I'd call him and say ‘Listen, I was drunk and in your lane, so what can I do to make amends?' And to the dentist say ‘How much do I owe you plus interest over the years?' I did say I was sorry then to the accident guy, but inside more sorry it happened to us both and me the inconvenience of going to court and time away from paying work and losing my car in a car-required state when I was strapped for cash. But I never admitted to him my fault in the crash, and to the dentist—well, when I got a lawyer's letter in New York I wrote back under a different name that I was the executor of my estate and that I'd died.”

“I don't get that.”

“I'll explain it later,” shorter man says.

“I used the apartment number and address of a not-so-willing friend and said the man he'd sent the letter to about the bill had died and if there was any money left after the settlement of a very negligible estate, his client was seventh in line. He sent a letter every half year asking if the estate had been settled, but I ignored them, so even to a few years later I was still irresponsible, since by then I had enough to begin paying the dentist back on time. Anyway, the accident guy shook his head, shut his eyes and looked dead and I held his hand—till the police came—while several people patted my back and rubbed my neck. I got a summons—that was automatic in an accident that bad, the trooper said, just as the other guy would have got one if he was even half alive at the time.”

“Wait a second,” ponytailed man says. “You got a summons at the accident?”

“I think so.”

“Colorado? Give me a second to think. No, on that there's almost strict uniformity. You would have been told to expect one, if he didn't arrest you on the scene, and then got it through the mail. So what the trooper might have told you was that the other man would have also got one if he hadn't been near death and if you didn't seem the main cause of the accident. Do you recall him measuring your tire tread marks on the road?”

“Really, I forget. Anyway, I showed up in court hangdog and without lawyer, since I thought the judge would be favorably disposed to that. And pretended, as with the psychiatrist, to be, despite my university connection, which only involved student-teaching to a master's degree I never completed, a bit weak-minded and oversensitive to the point a few times of doing my sincerest best to repress real tears, and very unorganized and alone. I was living with a woman then but left her a block from the courthouse and told her not to give a sign in the courtroom that she knew me. I also saw there the man I hit, still with Band-Aids on his face and walking with a cane. I never asked nor found out if he'd walked with one before the accident. I wasn't questioned in depth about driving while drunk, since I was able, when I got out of the car the second time—and because they also didn't give me the balloon test, since the drunk driver they'd picked up before me got so incensed at what she called a divestment of her civil liberties that she punctured it with her fingernails. Anyway, I was able to make all my alcohol mannerisms and breath disappear. ‘Get stark raving sober,' I told myself when I left the car, ‘you're in trouble up to here.' Impossible, I know. But about drinking, I said to the judge when he asked, ‘Yes, had a wine and a half at that party up the hill, but some yogurt before and a glass of milk after to coat it.' Also, after I said I'm sorry to the guy for what had happened to us, he asked if I'd said anything to him when he was in the car—he seemed to remember it. I said ‘No, except for “Don't worry, you're gonna be all right,” while I held your hand and dabbed blood from your eyes.' ‘Okeydoke,' he said. ‘This is the Wild West so accidents like that can happen, just so long as your insurance company takes care of it.' The judge advised me to plead nolo contendere and I got a twenty-two-dollar fine and they didn't even take my license away for a day. That was it. I walked the two miles home alone in the rain because I wanted to save on the cab fare and not be seen with my woman friend. Story has a rather unuplifting ending, but what can I say? When I got back she called me a louse for everything I'd done that day, wouldn't even run a warm tub for me and soon after that moved out, but more because we were broke and she'd just turned thirty and wanted to get married and have a child right away, while I—”

“You'd think they would have slapped something more than a small fine on you,” shorter man says.

“You're right. But after all my lies to the trooper and judge, I certainly wasn't going to ask for it. Besides, I couldn't afford to go to jail or pay a big fine. Look, I was lucky.”

“Did you watch a lot of TV in those days?” ponytailed man says.

“No, why?”

“When you were young then. Were you affixiated, I like to call it, to the TV screen?”

“No more than most kids my age. Howdy Doody at five every afternoon. There weren't as many stations and programs then. Mostly test patterns and Gorgeous George and Ralph Bellamy as a private eye I think and maybe not even Uncle Miltie yet. But you think there's some connection with my lying and conniving to TV?”

“I've theories, but nothing proven in the lab. But the art of getting away with things or thinking you can—that can be too much TV. That jail isn't real, for instance, but that wouldn't apply to you, since you wanted to avoid a sentence. You said you were lucky. Well, then Mr. Lucky perhaps—a character in the early days of TV.”