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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
September 9, 2012
Previously unpublished fiction.
© 2012 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Man & Van, 1970
© 1970 by Bud Grossmann
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HE AIN’T HEAVY
S
hortly after two o’clock p.m. on Friday, August 7, 1970, within a mile of his own home in Lake Barcroft, Virginia, a newly licensed sixteen-year-old boy, alone in his parents’ 1969 Ford Country Squire with chromed roof rack, halted at a side-street stop sign, watched for an opening in the west-bound traffic coming from his left, then crossed the two westbound lanes and an opening in the grassy median of the four-lane Columbia Pike, entered the first eastbound lane, put on his right turn signal, and stopped. The boy later explained to police investigators that he had intended to turn right into the next side street on the south side of the Pike, but the right-hand lane was occupied by moving traffic.
As it turned out, the left lane, eastbound, contained vehicles as well. A long-haired hippie freak, seventeen years of age, handsomely bearded, wearing a headband but no helmet aboard a 1966 Suzuki X-6 Hustler traveling with the flow of traffic in a zone posted forty-five, slammed so hard into the back of the Ford that the Suzuki’s metal front fender latched onto the Ford’s rear bumper and the bike remained upright, did not fall, while the rider flew up and over, breaking both bones of his left forearm on the station wagon’s luggage rack, somersaulting across the roof, and landing in a seated position facing forward on the hood of the Ford. The force of the impact snapped the Suzuki’s handlebars and popped off its gas cap, sending a spray of fuel across the larger vehicle and soaking the hippie’s hair and clothes.
The brightly chromed gas cap arced over the Ford, landed on the pavement in front of it, skittered almost a hundred feet straight down the traffic lane, and came to rest dead-center in the lane. The boy in the Ford sprang from the car, sprinted up the road, retrieved the gas cap, and sprinted back to the hippie. The boy said meekly, “Here, sir. Here is your gas cap.”
“Far out,” the long-haired motorcyclist replied.
O
n the morning of that same day, a twenty-one-year-old taxi driver had driven his father’s 1969 Ford Galaxie 500 from Annandale to Arlington Yellow Cab, arriving late enough to be assigned one of the last available and least desirable vehicles in the fleet, a battered Checker lacking air conditioning. The taxi driver’s father, a retired soldier, was attending college at that time in another state and was living for the summer in the family’s 1966 Ford camper truck. The taxi driver’s mother, a legally blind homemaker, stayed home that morning, in Annandale.
The Checker cab made it through the morning, but sometime around one in the afternoon, in Georgetown, the automatic transmission began slipping. The driver coaxed the cab back across Key Bridge but he had to radio for a tow from Rosslyn Circle. When the tow truck driver delivered him to the Yellow Cab yard, no replacement taxi remained, so the taxi driver turned in his manifest and the company’s share of his fares and drove back to his parents’ house. He parked the Galaxie in the driveway.
The telephone rang as the taxi driver entered his parents’ home. He crossed the small living room and small dining room and picked up the phone that hung on the kitchen wall. “Hello,” the taxi driver said.
“Mr. Fischer?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Yes!” David Fischer affirmed.
“Mr. Fischer, I am calling from Fairfax Hospital. Your son Richard has been injured in a motorcycle accident. Will you authorize medical treatment?”
“By all means!” said David Fischer, in as deep a voice as he could manage. “Do whatever is necessary. Richard’s mother and I will be right there!” The caller thanked him. Fischer hung up the phone, and to his mother he said, “Mama, Rick has wrecked his Suzuki. Grab your purse. We’re going to Fairfax Hospital.” He knocked on his sister’s bedroom door and asked if Yvette wanted to go along. Their brother Gary was not at home.
At the hospital, a nurse informed Mrs. Fischer that Richard would be all right; his head and internal organs appeared okay. But his arm was broken; an orthopedic surgeon had been summoned. “We need to take care of some things, and then you can see your son,” she said. “But will you”—she looked at David—“please come with me?” Mrs. Fischer and her daughter stayed in the waiting area while the nurse escorted David to an examination room where Richard waited. The nurse left the room and closed the door.
“Quick little bike,” David said.
“Yeah, used to be,” Richard agreed. He was standing. His right arm was in a sling, but David could see the hand was swollen and discolored; the forearm had a dip in the top, deep as a golf ball. The room smelled of gasoline. “Been here an hour,” Richard said. “Wish they would wash my hair!” He told his brother about the gas cap and the kid.
David asked him, “They giving you something for your pain?”
“I’m okay, man.” Richard slyly smiled. “The nurse is cool. I gave her all my stuff.” Then he told his brother, “Y’know, man, you can help me.” He pointed to a specimen cup. “They want some piss, Dave. I can’t do my belt, my button fly.”
“Oh, geez, man. Yeah, I guess. How we gonna do this?”
They fumbled with the task, but, though he tried, Richard passed no water.
A minute more. The cup stayed dry.
At last the older brother suggested, “What do you say we skip it. Actually, I know I can pee. How ’bout I take care of this for you?”
And so he did. David filled the cup. And though the brothers had not contemplated the consequences of a collaboration, they later realized that their team effort had perhaps paid off profoundly. ♦
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This page was updated Sun, Sep 9, 2012, 12:15AM CDT.
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© 2012 by Bud Grossmann
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