Drive

"There's never gonna be a moment of truth for you
While the world is watching."


-- Ben Folds, "Learn to Live with What You Are"


--


It struck me that maybe my favorite part of working here has been the morning drive. Fifteen minutes, always northward, never a need to speed. And I've never written about it. So:


--


It is a Ben Folds morning. Start up and the world moves to "Rent a Cop," the pound of piano in a go-get-'em, push-onward rhythm. My window is down as I navigate my neighborhood, and the bass is intense. When I stop at a corner, a trio of sullen teens glare in the direction of my blare. I set off. The sun seems big, extended streaks of shine on the hood and in the mirror's view of the trunk.


Halfway done with the highway and a state cop SUV pulls up alongside like a protector and a menace. The car is magical, magnetic, magnanimous--it slows all traffic around it. Like a heroic film cliche, the statie pulls out ahead and leaves us in his wake, so much exhaust. It passes a ratty van and in the gust a piece of duct tape peels and flings from the van's body, spinning laterally in the air like a lawn ornament in limbo, standing and twisting in space. It does not hit my windshield. 


I stop for tea at a gas station. I have never been there before. An ethnic man, burly in a blue checkered shirt, stands behind the counter, eying customers. I zero in on the Arizona fridge. A black youth slides through the aisles with stealth. The cashier accuses him of trying to steal some Jolly Ranchers. They argue. The cashier gives up and says, "Seventy-five cents." The youth slaps a dollar bill on the counter. "Keep the change," the kid says, and swaggers out. An elderly black lady is buying cigarettes next. She asks what that was about. The cashier says, "I saw him." He comes around the counter and points at a shelf of candies. "This stack was like this," he shows with his hand, "and then he was there and it's like this now. I saw him. I saw him." He repeats it to himself as he rings up the woman's cigs. "I saw him. I saw him." When it's my turn, he notices my tie and says, "Good morning, sir." I say, "Hey." He says, "I saw him." I say, "Okay."


Back in the car, skirting a construction crew within a block of work, a car comes at me in my lane. It slows to a confused halt, the driver realizing that this is a one-way street that is blocked off behind me, ahead of him. He creeps his car backwards like a small mammal, shifts, and makes a turn.


I get to work. I write about the drive.