A Suburban Frame

As always, tell me what you think, preferably that which you dislike. There'll be three more big ones like this by December.

A Suburban Frame

“…That foolhardy laugh, that call of the mad,
How I would that seed lay but in my spleen.”

I was driving home from Oakland University in the afternoon drizzle on four brand new wheels. On reaching my subdivision, I turned onto Webster. I normally take this street, or one of two parallel streets, when returning home from school; it’s not a shortcut, but you don’t have to deal with any lights. I then turned off Webster and headed down Torry, towards my street. There was a police car parked on the other side of the road facing me. I didn’t have to check my speed, though I did, three times, within a hundred yards. When I got my only ticket it was for going 28 in a 25 zone. I don’t speed per say. I’ve been pulled over a total of five times and of the five times, only once was it due to speeding; if you can count three over as speeding.

Passing the parked car, I turned onto my street and was immediately pulled over by another cop car, a black S.U.V. It had been following, but for how long? Where had I gone wrong? I watched in the mirrors, as I dug my wallet out of my knapsack, the cops get out of the car slowly and head towards me even slower. The driver came forward, passed my trunk and then slapped it. His partner was creeping along the starboard side of my car, gun drawn, held at his crotch. I began wishing I had scissors to cut my hair, and a nice business suit to slip on. As it was, with hair down to my shoulders, covered on top with a wool ski cap, a shaggy beard, a worn flannel and jeans with holes in them, I looked the part of a stoner. The fact that I tossed out a burning cigarette butt aided me in no way. The interrogator approached my window, which I had rolled down, looked at the cigarette butt, stamped it out, and began the formal inquisition by removing his hand from the butt of his gun; though his partner still stood stock-still, gun drawn at his crotch.

The cop at my window asked for my license and registration. I felt more than obliged to comply. Do you know why you were pulled over? No, I didn’t do anything; I was forward and pushing a fine line. Well, we pulled y’over for a broken tail light. But, we’ve been getting calls about ya. Me? It seems you’ve been speeding down some residential streets. Did you see us following ya? No. Well, we’ve been staking out Webster at this time for the past week trying to catch ya. Ya’ve wasted a lot of our time! He stood glowing and glowering down at: Me?, I didn’t do anything. Well, this lady thinks otherwise and we’ve got her word versus yours. Exactly, this lady’s crazy; I kept my composure. Sir, thinking my temper was escalating, we take these things very seriously. This person gave us your license plate and was able to describe both you and the car. Just because she’s got eyes…And when you’re speeding down residential streets, we’re going to catch ya. He said a few more words, something about running my license and registration, and that I shouldn’t move. He walked back to his car, and I saw his partner turn back as well.

There wasn’t anything on my record; the speeding ticket was from when I was a minor. But that didn’t matter. I was public enemy number one: prowling and cruising the residential streets of Birmingham. I imagined some old lady or a stay-at-home mom watching the road with binoculars, peeking through closed blinds and clutching fists and smashing them down on glass coffee table tops. ‘The future’s bleak, but it’s by no cause of mine. While this hag calls the cops on me to stake out her residential street, not five miles south in the city of Highland Park, the cops working the entire city, who are lucky to see pay, are writing tickets on ketchup-stained napkins. Birmingham cops should be so lucky to waste their time trying to catch me.’ There was enough free time to send two cars to bring me down, on the whimsical claim that I speed down side streets. Tax payers’ money wasted on staking me out! They had my license plate, why didn’t they just call me, write me, tell me the situation; we’re civilized people, after all. They had my license plate…

***
A week earlier, on a chilly spring Monday morning, I was ready to head out for class at Oakland University. I had my Literature class for Fiction at 9:30a.m. and it was 9:00a.m., a half hour, and that is how long it takes me to commute to campus. I was armed with my Starbucks mug full of Meijer brand Columbian Roast and a new pack of Camel Lights. I had a few days earlier written a strongly worded e-mail to my professor about how much I despised page 280 of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses (1992), where melodrama in the Mexican outback changes the rugged John Grady Cole’s outcome for the better when he should be dead there and then. ‘But it’s good fortune, deal with it. Well, I can’t, not in a book; good luck doesn’t exist, not in a National Book Award winner!,’ I told myself. The anger was grating my quarrelsome nerves as I walked out to my car, and stood in the middle of the street for a while, staring at what was left of my tire and thinking about luck.

On the front port side there was a flat wheel. I decided to back up and pull into the driveway and change the flat there as opposed to the middle of the street. I jacked the car up and removed the hub cap, then bolts from the wheel. Still the wheel wouldn’t budge. I pulled to the extent that the jack was moving more than I’d like and still, nothing. I went to the glove box for the manual. It told me that there is such a thing as a safety bolt, which I had taken for a large, pointless adornment in the center of the wheel. The jack lever was able to unscrew the other bolts, but this lever was not near the size of this bolt. I tried our biggest wrench, the size of my forearm, it was the only one that could open wide enough, yet it couldn’t fit within the circle depression encompassing the safety bolt. I decided to confer with my father, a car connoisseur. After 20 minutes of minor cursing, grunting and: Boy, it’s cold, he concluded that the wheel was going nowhere. My only intelligent option was to have the car towed to the closest tire place, that being Goodyear, a half mile away.

So I decided to drive there, axel damage be damned; frugality has always been there to define my moment. I went at a lagging pace down side roads. People stared at the idiot passerby, the very picture of humility. As I was turning off Webster a passing car slowed down and the driver yelled, saying: You’ve got a flat tire! Yes, I was quite aware of that, but: Thank you. A minute later I turned into the parking lot of Goodyear.

In the waiting room, the funeral of Pope John Paul II was being televised. There was no more coffee in the pot and I had forgotten my mug on the kitchen counter. I didn’t feel like burdening the mechanic that would be changing my tire to also put on a fresh pot of coffee; I didn’t need anymore accidents. So I sat down and took from out of my backpack some French homework, but couldn’t quite put pen to paper and instead watched the cumbersome funeral. It was so garish. The funereal festivities, the reds and the golds, the children crying, it reminded me of a circus. I once saw at a circus an elephant pee. The urine came out like a crumbling damn and filled a third of the ring. Then the clowns skidded in on elliptical routes at high speed with bags full of sand…
***
Rolling down Webster at five miles per hour, the hag saw me, didn’t know if driving with a flat, or maybe just driving suspiciously, was illegal, but called the cops anyway and due to her indecision about the legality of the situation decided it best just to say I’d been speeding. How could she have caught my license plate had I been speeding at even 35 M.P.H.? Physically, she couldn’t have: the wave of her wattle would have snapped her neck. Ergo, she couldn’t have called the police. The only thing that didn’t fit was the difference in time, the morning versus the afternoon, a round-about of five hours. Were my assumptions wrong?

The cop was standing next to my window again, and he was tenting. When he crouched over with his right forearm resting on the top of my door, his crotch became even more pronounced. I looked down at my concave crotch and turned to the other side-view mirror and saw that the second gunman was no longer there. I was cleared. Well, we’re going to give y’a warning this time. But, if I were you, I wouldn’t go speeding, we’ll be watching you. Really? Y’ better not go down Webster either; I don’t want to have to take anymore calls from this lady, this person. I don’t want to have to deal with you anymore; ya’ve wasted enough my time as it is! If we get another call from this person, he shrugged as if it was a mild mannered threat, ya won’t be so lucky next time. Alright, thanks. I let the officers leave first.

I didn’t want to think about the precedent affair. It’s not very comfortable being on the hot seat, and what for? Who did I have to give my word to, whose bible did I have to swear on, is it I that needed to do this? Not in my eyes. I was an innocent, and the cops were threatening me not to trip up or they’d catch me. What had I done? I hadn’t thought much about the consequences of this event. Not so much that the cops would be watching me, but the fact that I knew there was a woman who lived on Webster, that had a speed radar in one hand, held binoculars to look at license plates in another, slammed her fist down on a glass table top as unsuspecting drivers passed by and then called the cops. This woman, clearly, had four arms! This was the Hindu god, Shiva, who saw what was best for her children, and my existence only stunted their growth.

I turned the engine over and passed ten houses on either side, thinking entirely of proprietors behind blinds and shades, watching me, wondering if they have a dangerous criminal living on their block. I couldn’t block it out, the imagery was manifesting. The paranoia was contagious. I felt everyone’s eyes in my direction. The streets were empty, but hordes stood at bay, as I pulled into my driveway. I was ready for doors to burst when I opened mine; I expected a citizen’s arrest, and then a mock trial, with a neighbor, to whom I never said hello, to be the judge. This was all possible in the world of Webster’s femme fatale, and now mine, too. She had reeled me into to this life of paranoia over control. I had crossed into her boundaries, and she had tagged me like a dishonest farmer with his neighbor’s calf. This was what happened to those that stood as public enemy number one and get out of a conviction. The crazed droves take justice into their own hands and create, what could be called, an equilibrium. This was my conviction as I raced into the house to tell my mother everything and to avoid the rain.

Upon entering, she stood at the top of the stairs, in the kitchen, looking at the phone mounted on the wall. Hello, she elongated with a flighty pitch. Now, how does this thing work?, as she pushed buttons with great emphasis. Her finger, visibly trembling from those nerves that I inherited, flew off the button, showing that she had pushed it, yet nothing had occurred. So, how does chili sound for tonight? Mom, I was just pulled over for doing nothing. I went on to tell her the story, but didn’t get near the reaction I was hoping for. I wanted tears and hatred to be blending. I wanted the questioning of authorities, the questioning of unchecked powers; I wanted support, but all I got was: So some lady called the cops on you because you were speeding or because of your tail light? I didn’t doubt my mother’s maternal affection, but I did doubt my oratorical ability. So, I ran through the story again. Huh, that is weird. Indeed; they were staking me out over some lady’s idea of exacting righteousness or ideal of suburban monotony; this is insane! Huh… I started down the stairs, still displeased. Well, chili sound good, are you going to be here for dinner? I don’t know!

I thought about telling my father. He would have heard about the broken tail light and then say: Well, James, we’ll just have to get that tail light fixed; they had right to pull you over like that ((I heard this the following evening at dinner.) And for fact’s sake, there was no problem with my car’s tail lights).

To hear that this situation had been pure lunacy or that I should be guillotined with the four-armed lady as the executrix, how reassuring that would have been.