Richard Ford - Independence Day

The sight of the two faces, though, causes me a sudden jittery interior flutter like a fan blade spinning in my belly. I wonder if I’m about to wince again, but I don’t. “How do they know they did it?”

“’Cause they run, that’s why,” Mr. Tanks says, confidently. “I was out on number seven. And the police car come around me going a hundred. And two miles on down, here they all were. Two of ‘em spread out on the hood. Hadn’t been five minutes. Trooper tol’ me about it.” Mr. Tanks breathes another threatening breath. His thick truckdriver’s smell is a nice leathery fragrance mingled with what must be the scent of moving pads. “Bridgeport,” he murmurs, making port sound like pote. “Killin’ to be killin’.”

“Where are the other people from?” I say.

“I guess Utah.” He is silent a moment. Then he says, “Pullin’ that little boat.”

Just then two male ambulance attendants in red shirts appear in the motel door, horsing a collapsible metal stretcher out into the night. A long black plastic bag that looks like it should hold a set of golf clubs is strapped on top and lumpy from the body inside. A moment later a small, thick-necked, tough-looking white man in a white short-sleeved shirt and tie, and wearing a pistol, and a badge on a string around his neck, escorts a blond woman in a thin blue flowered dress out the door, holding her upper arm as though she were under arrest. They walk quickly toward the state troopers’ car, where one of the troopers opens the back door and starts to pull out the boy who’s smiled before. But the detective speaks something out in front of him, and the trooper simply stands aside and lets the boy stay put, while the other trooper produces a flashlight.

The detective directs the blond woman to the open car door. She seems very light on her feet. The trooper shines his flash straight into the face of the boy closest. His skin is ghostly and looks damp even from here, his hair buzzed almost bare on the sides but left long in the back. He gazes up into the light as if he’s willing to expose everything there is to know about him.

The woman only briefly looks at him, then turns her head away. The boy says something — I see his lips move — and the woman says something to the detective. Then they both turn and walk briskly back toward the room. The troopers quickly close the car door, then climb in the front seat, both sides. Their siren makes a loud wheep-whoop , their blue flasher flashes once, and their car — a Crown Vic just like mine — idles forward a few yards before it makes an engine roar, skitters its wheels and shoots out onto 7, where it disappears to the north, its siren coming on again but far out of sight.

“Where you tryin’ to get?” Mr. Tanks says gruffly. He is now carefully unfolding two sticks of Spearmint, which he inserts into his large mouth both at once. He goes on clutching his attaché case.

“Deep River,” I say, nearly silenced by what I’ve just witnessed. “I’m picking up my son.” The jittery flutter has stopped in my stomach.

The watchers out on Route 7 are starting to creep away. The ambulance, now closed, its interior lights out, backs cautiously away from the motel door, then eases off in the direction the troopers have gone — to Danbury is my guess — its silver and red lights turning but with no siren.

“Then where you two goin’?” He is crushing his gum wrapper and chewing vigorously. He wears a great chunky diamond-and-gold-crusted ring on his right ring finger, something a large person might design for himself or possibly get by winning the Super Bowl.

“We’re going to the Baseball Hall of Fame.” I look around at him amiably. “Did you ever go there?”

“Uh-uh,” he says, and shakes his head, his mouth emitting a loud Spearminty sweetness. Mr. Tanks’s hair is short and dense and black, but doesn’t grow on all parts of his head. Islands of his glistening black scalp appear here and there, making him look older than I’m sure he is. We’re probably the same age. “What line of work you do?”

The VACANCY sign goes silently off, then the MOTEL sign itself, leaving only a humming red NO illuminated. The clerk lowers the blinds inside the office, switches them closed, and the office lights go almost immediately out.

We aren’t socializing here, I realize, only bearing brief dual witness to the perilous character of life and our uncertain presences in it. Otherwise there’s no reason for us to stand here together.

“Real estate,” I say, “down in Haddam, New Jersey. About two and a half hours from here.”

“That’s a rich man’s town,” Mr. Tanks says, still chewing rapidly.

“Some rich people live there,” I say. “But some folks just sell real estate. Where do you live?”

“Divorced,” Mr. Tanks says. “I ‘bout live in that rig.” He swivels his big midnight face in the direction of his truck.

There in the shadows Mr. Tanks’s enormous trailer displays a jaunty good ship Mayflower in green, abreast a jaunty sea of yellow. It’s the most nearly patriotic sight I’ve seen in the Ridgefield area. I think of Mr. Tanks snugged up in his high-tech sleep cocoon, decked out (for some reason) in red silk pj’s, earphones plugged into an Al Hibbler CD, perusing a Playboy or a Smithsonian and munching a gourmet sandwich purchased somewhere back down the line and heated up in his mini-micro. It’s as good as what I do. Possibly the Markhams should consider long-haul trucking instead of the suburbs. “That must not be so bad,” I say.

“It gets old. Cramped gets old,” he says. Mr. Tanks must weigh 290. “I own a home out in Alhambra.”

“Does your wife live there, then?”

“Uh-uh,” Mr. Tanks grunts. “My furniture stays out there. I pay it a visit once in a while when I miss it.”

Down at the lighted room where a murder has taken place, the local cops shut the Suburban’s doors and wander inside, talking quietly, their local-cop hats pushed back on their heads. Mr. Tanks and I are the last observers left. I’m sure it’s close to three. I yearn for bed and sleep, though I don’t want to leave Mr. Tanks alone.

“Lemme just ask you a question.” Mr. Tanks is holding his attaché still under his giant arm and gravely chewing his Spearmint. “Since you’re into real estate now” (as if I’d only been in it a couple of weeks). He doesn’t look at me. It may embarrass him to address me in terms of my profession. “I’m thinking about selling my home.” He stares straight away into the dark.

“The one in Alhambra?”

“Uh-huh.” He breathes again noisily through his big nostrils.

“California’s holding onto its value is all I hear, if that’s what you want to know.”

“I bought in seventy-six.” Another big sigh.

“Then you’re in great shape,” I say, though why I’d say that I don’t know, since I’ve never been in Alhambra, don’t know the tax base, the racial makeup, the comp situation or the market status. I’ll probably visit the Alhambra before I visit Mr. Tanks’s Alhambra.

“What I’m wonderin’ is,” Mr. Tanks says and wipes his big hand over his face, “if I oughtn’t not to move out here.”

“To Ridgefield?” Not an obvious match.

“It don’t matter where.”

“Do you have any friends and family out here?”

“Naw.”

“Is the Mayflower home office out here someplace?”

He shakes his head. “They don’t matter where you live. You just drivin’ for them.”

I look at Mr. Tanks curiously. “Do you like it out here?” Meaning the seaboard, the Del-Mar-Va to Eastport, from the Water Gap to Block Island.

“It’s pretty good,” he says. His cavey eyes narrow and flicker at me, as if he’d caught a whiff suggesting I might be amused by him.