for Camille, a Gary story

I have done a lot of stupid things in my life. I will tell on myself that I once kicked a car on a public street. It is only fair to myself to explain that I was crossing the street at the time, a block north of the Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle. The car drove in front of me. This would have been about 1974 and I was young. The car did not hit me or swerve toward me, but I hauled off and kicked it as it drove past. The driver stopped and yelled at me for it. Fair enough. I was not in a crosswalk, he said. But I was crossing at a corner, and pedestrians have the right of way.

Gary does not believe in kicking cars. He speaks respectfully to crows and ravens, doves and pigeons. As a childhood pigeon fancier, he is not overfond of raptors. If he had a choice, he would choose the robin over the hawk every time. However, he has been known to bark at dogs that make him uncomfortable. This is unsettling to dogs who recognize a challenge when they hear one. Sometimes the does not go as well as it might have, if Gary had kept his canine comments to himself. Still, he does not bite.

A year or two ago, we were driving home from our Post Office box in Cannon Beach. We entered highway 101 at Sunset, heading south. It is a scary entrance because visibility is poor and the merge lane is uphill and very short. My mother was in her mid-70s when she confessed she never looked before merging at that entrance. “They can just wait for me,” she said and giggled. That was when I realized I did not want my children in the car with her anymore. (They later confessed that her driving was sometimes frightening.)

Anyway, this one day Gary saw a car coming south on 101 and had to come to a complete stop to allow it to pass. The out of state driver in the car behind us was in a tizzy. He honked and drove up close behind. When we came to a full stop, he lost all patience. He pulled his car out onto the highway, swung around, managed to miss the car on the highway, but passed us. Then he stopped his car in the merging section of the highway right in front of us. Gary had the presence of mind to immediately put the car into reverse. He had backed up about thirty feet when the other driver got out of his car. He was driving a Quantum 45, Q45. I asked Gary just now because I don’t know cars well enough to remember.

So he stood on the pavement, his face twisted in anger.

“It’s a freeway, asshole!” the man shouted. There was a moment we were afraid he might charge at us or shoot us, but then he got back into his car and screeched away.

It was a frightening event. Both Gary and I were rattled and upset. “It’s not a freeway,” I muttered, “it’s a highway, asshole.” Then we were quiet the rest of the way home.

“It was partially my fault,” Gary says now. “I was in his way. If I hadn’t been in his way, none of that would have happened.” You’d have to know Gary to hear his voice.

Since then, the event has come up again and again. The driver of the car stopped behind us honked at us to move, in the Pearl District of Portland. We waited for the pregnant woman to push her baby carriage across the street (in a crosswalk, no less). A tailgater. A not-quite-stop at a Stop sign.

In those moments, one of us is bound to snort with a sort of hysterical glee. “It’s a freeway, asshole!” we shout.

And we laugh like the idiots we are.