The Driver's Guide to Hitting Pedestrians Read online

  Huge trees line either side of the street. The street is empty save for an old lady in a loud floral print dress pushing an empty shopping cart. I stand uncomfortably in the middle of the street and wait for the lady’s squeaky approach. She reaches me and pulls the cart to a stop. She’s very skinny with white, aggressively permed hair.

  She clucks her tongue against the roof of her mouth and points to the basket of her shopping cart. I stare absently at her. She’s all bent up and slightly hunchbacked. It makes me think of a question mark. She relinquishes the cart to scamper toward me and kick me in the shin with a soft house shoe.

  She clucks again and points to the cart.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you want.” I search her eyes, filled with something close to fury or fear.

  She pulls her false teeth out and throws them at me. They bounce off and clatter to the asphalt. Not knowing what else to do, I climb into the empty shopping cart, pulling my knees up to my chest. It’s painful and I wonder how I’ll ever get out. I look up at the blue sky. Why is there so much sky if I’m somewhere in the middle of the earth? The old lady begins pushing the cart. She wheezes with the added weight. I guess she’ll just cluck some more if she needs me to get out. Maybe she knows where I live. Maybe she’ll take me home.

  She continues to push the cart down the middle of the road, pausing a couple times to unleash a rheumatic cough and fluff her perm. After making a couple right turns we reach a modest brick ranch house located on a street called Powersport Drive. She stops the cart, points to the house and clucks wildly.

  “I live here?”

  She smacks me on the back of the head with her big, gnarled hand and I take that as a yes. I can no longer stand up so I shift my weight left and right until the cart crashes over onto its side, bringing the old lady with it. I straighten up—nothing more than a few scrapes—and look down at the old lady. She lies on the pavement, sweaty and drooling. Her elbows and knees are bleeding. I stand the cart upright. I pick the old lady up and say, “We’ll take you inside and get those scrapes cleaned up.” She whips her head back and forth, slinging sweat and drool. She points to the empty cart and clucks some more. I put her in the cart and give it a great heave. It rolls smoothly down the street and continues rolling as though guided by an invisible shopper.

  Walking toward the house I feel a great sense of underwhelming blandness. Why do people live in houses like these? Why do I live in a house like this?

  Slightly unnerved, I turn the doorknob to the house but it’s locked. I reach into my pocket for the key. It slides easily into the keyhole and, turning it, the door clicks magically before swinging inward.

  Stepping into the house, I have no idea what I might find. I might have a family. A wife and children could be rushing throughout the house. This could be some fragment of a life I don’t remember. But the house is empty save for a fat man in the same floral patterned dress as the old lady. He looks at me, his mouth creased into a permanent frown, and says, “I was just leavin’.”

  I stare after him, trundling down the walk, looking for something to say and coming up with nothing.

  I close the door and look around the house. It is completely empty. Wallpaper has been ripped from the wall. The carpet has been torn up, leaving glue-covered concrete. A bare bulb hangs from the ceiling and there is a phone plugged into the wall and resting on the floor in the corner. I stare at the phone, its cord coiled like a snake, half-expecting it to ring. It doesn’t and I find myself exhausted. It’s been a rough day.

  I sit down on the floor and survey the dim room. It’s depressing. There isn’t anything to do here. Once again, I stare at the phone. Perhaps I could make some random phone calls. Ask people what they’re wearing. I pick up the phone. No dial tone. Soothing music comes from it. The most soothing music I’ve ever heard. It makes me think of a sleepy coastal town somewhere I’ve never been. Hypnotized, I pass out.

  When I wake up, the phone is back on the hook. My mouth is very dry and my head throbs. My back hurts. The house is filled with a wonderful smell. Like donuts or bread. I walk through the house but it isn’t coming from in here. The only things left in the kitchen are a few cabinets, the doors hanging askew, some of them missing completely. I walk outside into the night and the smell is stronger. I leave the door unlocked. I don’t trust the key. It might not work for me when I come back. This might not even be my house when I come back.

  Outside the night is purple and gray with fog. The fog seems to carry this scent of baked goods and I want to eat it. But I follow my nose instead. The fat man who left my house earlier is sprawled face down in the neighboring yard. He’s immense and dormant. I want to go jump on him, like a trampoline or something.

  I continue walking to the end of the block. There, I see a two story house. On top of the house is a large rectangle, long side down, made from metal mesh. It makes me think of the old lady’s shopping cart on a much larger scale. Maybe it’s an antenna of some sort. Standing next to this contraption is a little girl, maybe seven or eight. She signals toward the sky, a flashlight in each hand. One of them shines green. The other shines red. I’m worried. Little girls should not, I feel, be on the slanted roofs of suburban homes.

  “Hey!” I call, not too loudly. I don’t want to startle her and cause her to tumble from the roof. “You should get down from there.”

  She shines the red-beamed flashlight into my eyes and says nothing.

  Where are this girl’s parents? I walk up to the house and knock on the door. The girl keeps the flashlight beam trained on me. No one comes to the door. I knock again, louder this time. Now I hear coughing and footsteps. A thin disgruntled-looking man with tousled hair, a shadow of beard, and a rumpled brown bathrobe says, “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Actually, no,” I say. And it’s true. I don’t have a clue what time it is. “I just wanted to let you know there’s a child on your roof.”

  “Yeah, so? You don’t think I know that? You don’t think I know what my daughter’s doin’ up there?”

  “Well ... I just ... um, that can’t be very safe, can it?”

  “Hell no, it ain’t safe. But she’s up there doin’ good work. If she don’t stay up there then we ain’t gonna have no power tomorrow. You wanna go a whole day without power?”

  I think about it and realize I don’t really care. I don’t have anything in my house that would require power save the single yellow light bulb dangling from the ceiling. In fact, the light from the light bulb depresses me and I could do without it. It has the glow of mental illness. But I also realize I’ve stepped into the middle of something incomprehensible to me. Things here were done a certain way. And I did not know how things were done.

  “I’m very sorry,” I say, bowing my head in shame. I want to tell him to keep an eye on her but that seems too much like stating the obvious. “You have a good night.”

  “Yeah, you too. And just think about what you’ve done tomorrow when you’re in your house enjoyin’ all that free power ...”

  I’ve already started back toward the sidewalk but swivel back around just as he’s ready to shut the door. “If I could bother you for one more second ...” I say.

  He sighs loudly. His shoulders slump even farther. “What now?”

  “That smell ...” I hold a finger up in front of me, as if a smell is something that can be pointed at.

  “Yeah. What of it?”

  “Do you know where it’s coming from?”

  The man looks down at the ground and shakes his head. “What are you, a fuckin’ alien or somethin’? You really don’t know how things run around here, do ya? That’s comin’ from the bakery.” He says this last word very slowly, like I’m a child learning his vocabulary. “Almost everybody works at the bakery. In fact, I gotta get up in just a couple hours and go in. I’m losin’ out on sleep ... ’causa you.”

  “Thank you,” I say. The man slams the door behind me. I continue toward the sidewalk. Within a few minutes, I
come upon a huge, brightly lit building bellowing the delicious smelling steam. This must be the bakery. I wonder if it’s open. I’m starved. I find the front door, the glass covered in condensation. I don’t see any sign suggesting whether it’s open or closed. I knock on the door. A fat man in chef’s whites opens it. A bell jangles.

  “Can I help you?” he says.

  “Are you open?” I ask.

  “Always open,” he says.

  “I was wondering if I could buy something. I’m very hungry, you see.”

  “You wanna buy a loaf?” The way he says ‘loaf,’ it’s like a bark.

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “Ten ideas,” he states, holding both hands splayed in front of him.

  “Ten ideas?” I say.

  “Yeah, if you ain’t got ten ideas then you don’t get a loaf.”

  “Ideas like ...”

  “Look, if you ain’t got ten ideas then maybe you need a job.”

  Well, that sounded like an idea.

  “I mean,” he says. “If you had any ideas, I woulda heard ’em by now.”

  “Sure. Are you hiring?”

  “Only if your name’s ‘Terry’.”

  “Terry?”

  “Yep. We got all kinds of Terrys here. Terri with an ‘i’. Terry with a ‘y’. Teri with only one ‘r’. Terree with two ‘ee’s.”

  “No. I’m sorry. My name definitely is not Terry.”

  He wipes his hands on his apron. “Sorry, then,” he says. “No ideas—no loaf. Name’s not Terry—no job.”

  I think about standing and arguing with him but ... there’s no point. I hang my head and turn to walk back to my house.

  Dawn is coming up over the neighborhood. The girl is no longer on the roof. Nothing’s happening. Fat Man is still in the neighbors’ yard. I open the door to my house. Someone has filled the house with sticks. They are very dry and all different sizes, covering the floor, piled up to my knees. I can’t deal with all these sticks. I clear out a spot just big enough for myself and, still ravenously hungry, lie down for a nap.

  I sleep well into the day. I dream of eating. Eating everything. Clouds. The sticks. The key. The phone. The fat man, collapsed in the yard while I peel his scalp away from his skull. He screams something that sounds like “Dying” and then I wake up.

  The house is dark. Why is the house dark? Wasn’t it dawn when I came home for a nap? Shouldn’t it be full daylight now? I pull on the chain dangling from the ceiling but the light doesn’t come on. I climb up on some sticks and unscrew the bulb even though I’m sure there are not any replacement bulbs in the house. I shake the bulb. It is not blown. I must not have any electricity. Maybe I didn’t pay the bill. Of course I didn’t pay the bill. I don’t even have enough ideas for a loaf. Besides, here, the power is free. Free because of Princess Electricity, the girl on the roof top.

  I step outside, leaving the door open behind me. All the lights are out. I walk down to the house at the end of the block. The girl is once again atop the house. She sits dejectedly on the roof beside her wire contraption.

  “What’s wrong?” I call up to her.

  She points the flashlight at me but there isn’t any light coming from it. My stomach is still growling in the fog of the night. Then I remember that it isn’t fog. It is steam from the bakery. I bet it’s like this every night. Delicious.

  “We’re disconnected!” she shouts.

  “Disconnected from what?”

  “Everyone,” she says.

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “We can’t get any power if we’re disconnected.”

  “So that thing ...” I say, pointing up at the contraption. “It connects you to the rest of the world?”

  “The world above,” she says.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Whaddya got?”

  “I got some sticks,” I say. I’ve already picked up their regional dialect. I have some sticks, I think.

  “Nah. Sticks won’t do no good. Terry’s been lookin’ to get rid of them things for months.”

  I wonder who she’s talking about and realize she could be talking about anyone if everyone in town works at the bakery and everyone who works at the bakery is named Terry.

  “Give me a minute,” I say.

  “Ain’t ya got nothin’ else?”

  “I got a key. And a phone.”

  “Is it a magic phone?”

  “I guess.”

  “That might help.”

  “Give me a minute. I’ll need to go grab the phone,” I reassure her.

  I walk back to my house. If I had a lighter, I’d set all the sticks on fire, just to teach Terry a lesson. I grab the phone. I have no intention of coming back to this depressing house. I lock the door behind me. On my way to the corner. Fat Man (Terry, I guess) has finally stood up. He begins walking and stops only a house away, goes down onto one knee, and falls onto his back in yet another yard. The owner of this yard comes out of the house. He’s dressed like a cowboy and carries a garden hose. His wife comes out behind him. She is completely naked save for smiley face pasties covering her nipples. She turns the knob to the water and the cowboy begins spraying the fat man. The fat man opens his mouth and catches the stream of water, drinking it all down, growing even fatter.

  I continue to the girl’s house. Spotting me, she says, “There’s a ladder on the side.”

  I walk to the side of the house and climb the ladder.

  “You bring it?”

  “Here you go.” I give her the key.

  “What’m I s’posed to do with it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a key. You open things with it. It’s from the world above. It hit me in the head.”

  “You know I’m Princess Electricity, right?”

  “Yeah. I know that.”

  “I’m a very important person.”

  “Definitely.”

  “You fuck with me, it’s gonna piss a lotta people off. They depend on me.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “How ’bout that phone?”

  I hand her the phone.

  “Looks like a shabby old phone. What good’s it gonna do if you can’t plug it in?”

  “It plays music.”

  “Music?”

  “All the music of the world.”

  She lifts the handpiece from the cradle and holds it up to her ear.

  “I can hear it,” she says.

  “Nice, isn’t it?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  I pull it away from her ear before she falls asleep. I hold the key up to the mouthpiece. Amazingly, this amplifies the sound. It swirls around us, louder and louder. Other neighbors, all named Terry, walk out of their darkened homes and look toward the girl’s house. After a while, the huge wire grid begins heating up, glowing first orange and then an almost cool-looking blue. In my head a voice whispers the word “Destiny” over and over again. The clouds split, the sky splits, and a pink dirigible hovers over the house, a rope ladder descending from the body of it. I offer the phone and the key to Princess Electricity. She takes them and puts them in the giant pocket of her dress, no longer needing them. I climb the rope ladder, my stomach growling as I crawl into the dirigible. I look down at the neighborhood and the girl shining her two lights toward me. The neighborhood is awash with electricity, glowing ferociously. Now it’s daytime again. The Captain scratches his lousy beard, says “Welcome aboard!” and claps me on the back. We sail off into the night and I wait for things to go sour.

  The Balloonman’s Secret

  His real name was Bob but everyone called him the Balloonman.

  He owned a shop at the corner of Main and Wetzel downtown. It was an innocuous building located at the end of a whole row of shop fronts. The facade was drab and brown, the balloons lining the awning the only splash of color to liven the place up. Not many people actually entered the Balloonman’s establishment. Most of his business was done over the phone. One would think it m
ight be difficult to make a business thrive through the sale of balloons but this was not the case for the Balloonman.

  Everyone agreed his balloons were, indeed, the best balloons in the tri-state region. They didn’t know what it was that made his balloons so much better than the ones obtained in a regular store. Perhaps it was the quality of the latex—maybe it was a little stronger, a little more durable than the latex of your average balloon. Or maybe it was the helium. The Balloonman’s balloons certainly seemed to last a lot longer than other balloons. They seemed to float a lot longer.

  Once the quality of his balloons had been proven sufficient, the Balloonman found people needed them for almost every occasion—birthday parties, weddings, graduations—all of the standard celebrations. But the need did not stop there. The Balloonman had supplied balloons for a divorce party and, once, he had delivered two-hundred black balloons for a funeral. Not to mention the regulars—the car lot off the Interstate ordered five hundred balloons each week. That alone would have been enough to keep the Balloonman in business. He had always kept the overhead low.

  As brisk as business was for the Balloonman, his shop had seemed drab and lonely until today. Today, everything was going to change.

  The morning was gray and chilly when the Balloonman awoke and went down to his shop. He usually stayed on the lower floor during business hours even though there really wasn’t much of a reason to. He went about his usual routine for a Monday morning—dusting, vacuuming the virtually unused welcome mat, filling that week’s orders.

  It was interesting he became a balloon salesman because he so resembled a balloon himself. It was very likely, had he never sold a single balloon, some malicious person in town would have taken to calling him the Balloonman based solely on his balloonlike appearance.