Richard Ford - The Sportswriter

“It sounds great to me. I’ll tell you that. You’re going to take all the I’s out of it, aren’t you?”

“Yes, of course.” A laugh. “What silliness that was. He’s a bore, though, really. Just a mean child who wrote. Occasionally he’s amusing, I suppose. He’s short, leastways. I’ve read Jane Austen now.”

“She’s great, too.”

Angry blue-white smoke spews suddenly from underneath the tires of the black car, though there’s no sound. The carhop turns and steps languidly up onto the curb, unimpressed. The car bolts back, halts, then squeals forward directly at her, but she doesn’t even bother to move as the bumper bulls her way, stopping short and diving. She raises her arm and gives the driver the finger, and the car spurts back again with more white smoke, all the way into the Acme lot, and makes a one-eighty right out of TV. Whoever’s driving knows his business. Adelphia may be where race drivers live, for all I know.

“So, well. Are you married now, Frank?”

“No. Are you? Have you found an industrialist yet?”

“No.” Silence, followed by a cruel laugh. “People ask me to marry them … quite a number, in fact. But. They’re all idiots and very poor.”

“What about me?” I take another mental glimpse out her window into the atmospheric Narragansett town and bay. Plenty of sails. It’s all wonderful.

“What about you?” She laughs again and sips her drink. “Are you rich?”

“I’m still interested.”

“Are you?”

“You’re damn right I am.”

“Well, that’s good.” She is amused — why shouldn’t she be? General amusement was always her position vis-à-vis the western world. There is no harm meant, really. Frost and I are just a couple of cutups. I don’t even mind admitting I feel a tiny bit better. And what has it cost anyone? Two minutes of palaver charged to my home phone.

For some reason the car in the Acme lot has stopped. It is a long Trans-Am, one of the sharky-looking GMs with a wind fin like a road racer. A small head rides low behind the wheel. Suddenly more white smoke blurts from underneath the raised tires, though the car doesn’t exactly move but seems to want to move — the driver is standing on the brake, is my guess. Then the car positively leaps forward ahead of all its tire-smoke and fishtails across the Acme lot (I’m sure the driver is having a devil of a time holding it straight), barely misses one of the light stanchions, achieves traction, flashes by a second stanchion, and whonks right into the empty grocery cart, sending it flying, end-over-end, casters rocketing, plastic handles splintered, red “Property of Acme” sign sailing up into the white sky, and the bulk of the basket atumble-and-whirligig right at the phone booth where I’m talking to Selma in Rhode Island, the Ocean State.

The shattered cart hits — BANG — into the phone booth, busts out a low pane of plexiglas and rocks the whole frame. “Christ,” I shout.

“What was that,” Selma says from Providence. “What’s happened, Frank? Has something gone wrong?”

“No it’s fine.”

“It sounded like an explosion in a war.”

Dust has been shaken all over me, and the Trans-Am has stopped just beyond where it hit the shopping cart, its motor throbbing, ga-lug, ga-lug .

“A kid hit a shopping cart in his car and it flew over here and crashed into this phone booth. A pane of glass came out and broke. It’s strange.” The glass pane is now leaned against my knee.

“Well. I suppose I don’t understand.”

“It’s hard to understand, really.”

The driver’s door on the Trans-Am opens and a Negro boy in sunglasses gets out and stares at me, his head barely clearing the top of the window. He seems to be considering the distance between us. I don’t know if he’s thinking of going ahead and ramming the phone booth or not.

“Wait a minute.” I step out to where he can see me. I wave and he waves back, and then he gets back in his car and slowly backs up twenty yards — for no reason at all, since he’s in the middle of an empty lot — and drives slowly around toward the exit by Ground Zero. As he turns out into the street, he honks at the carhop, and once again she gives him the finger. She, of course, is white.

“What’s actually happening,” Selma asks. “Is someone hurting you?”

“No. They missed me.” With my foot I shove the corner of the shopping cart back out the broken window. A breeze flows in at knee level. Across the lot the carhop is talking to someone about what’s just happened. This would make a good Candid Camera segment, though it isn’t clear who the joke would be on. “I’m sorry to call you up and then have all this go crash.” The cart falls free out the window.

“It doesn’t matter,” Selma says, and laughs.

“It must seem like I live a life of chaos and confusion,” I say, thinking about Walter’s face for the first time all afternoon. I see it alive, then stone dead, and I can’t help thinking he has made a terrible mistake, something I might’ve warned him about, except I didn’t think of it in time.

“Well, yes. I suppose it does seem that way.” Selma sounds amused again. “But it doesn’t matter, either. It doesn’t seem to bother you.”

“Listen. How about if I took the train up to see you tonight? Or I could drive. How about it?”

“No. That wouldn’t work out too well.”

“Okay.” I am feeling light-headed now. “How about later in the week? I’m not very busy these days.”

“Maybe so. Yes.” (Scant enthusiasm for this plan, though who would want me as an after-midnight guest?) “It might not be that good an idea to come, really.” Her voice implies several things, a plethora of better choices.

“Okay,” I say, and find it possible to cheer up a little. “I’m glad to get to talk to you.”

“Yes, it’s very very nice. It’s always very nice to hear from you.”

What I’d like to say is: Go to hell, there aren’t that many better choices in the world than me. Look around. Do yourself a favor . But what kind of man would say that? “I should probably go. I have to drive home.”

“Yes. All right,” Selma says. “You should be careful.”

“Go to hell,” I say.

“Yes, goodbye,” Selma says — Queen Anne house, bright prospects, tidy faculty life, sailboats, leafy streets all spinning around every which way, and all suddenly gone.

I step out of the shambles into the breezy parking lot, my heart thumping like an outboard. A few slow cars cruise Route 524, though the town, here on its outer edge, lies sunk in the secular aimlessness of Sunday that Easter only worsens for the lonely of the world. And for some reason I feel stupid. The colored boy in the Trans-Am slides by, looks at me and registers no recognition, then heads on out to the nappy countryside, running the yellow light toward Point Pleasant and the beaches, more white girls on his mind. His dashboard, I can see, is covered with white fur.

How exactly did I get to here, is what I would like to know, since my usual need, when I find myself in unaccustomed environs, is to add things up, consider what forces have led me here, and to wonder if this course is typical of what I would call my life, or if it is only extraordinary and nothing to worry about.

Quo vadis , in other words. No easy question. And at the moment I have no answers.

“Ahnnn, you aren’t dead, are ya?” A voice speaks to me.

I turn and am facing a thin, sallow-faced girl with vaguely spavinous hips. Her sleeveless T-shirt has a rock group’s name, THE BLOODCOUNTS, stenciled on its flat front, her pink jeans pronounce all out of happy proportion the bone-spread of her hips. She is the carhop from Ground Zero Burg, the girl who gives men the finger. She has come to get a first-hand look at me.