Mystery

Grinding noises and the screech of metal against metal came up the street. Two blocks down from the post office, the back half of the powder blue Cadillac jutted out into the traffic. People in bright vacation clothes covered the plank sidewalks on both sides of the street, looking as if they were watching a parade.

Tom walked down the planks and saw that the Cadillac had ploughed into the back ends of several cars, crumpling in the first one so badly that it looked as if it had been hit by a truck. The driver had tried to get out of trouble by bulling through the obstructions, and when that had failed, had backed athwart the traffic halfway across the street, and killed his engine. Tom got to the edge of the growing crowd, and began working his way through. The man in the pink shirt got out of the Cadillac and looked around like a trapped bear. People began shouting. A policeman in a tight blue uniform ran down the middle of the street, yelling, “Break it up! Break it up!” He looked like a hero in a movie, with short blond hair and a square perfect jaw. A scrawny old party in a Hawaiian shirt popped out of the crowd around the wrecked cars and began yelling first at the drunk in the pink shirt, then at the policeman. The policeman strode toward him, put his hands on his hips, and spoke. The old man stopped yelling. The drunk drooped over the side of his car. “It’s all over,” the cop said in a loud voice that was not a shout. “Go back home.”

The drunk in the pink shirt straightened up and tried to explain something to the cop. He pointed his finger at the cop’s wide chest. The cop batted his hand away. He stepped to the side and pushed the drunk into the side of his car and grabbed his wrists and handcuffed him. He opened the Cadillac’s rear door. Then he pulled the man backwards, put his right hand on the top of his head, and propelled him into the back of his car.

A few cheers and one or two scattered boos came from the sidewalks. The policeman straightened his hat, tugged on his Sam Browne belt, and swaggered around the car to get in behind the wheel. Gears ground, and the Cadillac drifted backwards. The cop spun the wheel and pulled forward. The battered Cadillac moved down the street at the head of a row of cars and turned left.

The crowd had turned cheerful and gossipy. It had no intention of leaving the scene. Tom stepped around a family of four that were chewing on sandwiches and staring at the cars beginning to pick up speed, and threaded his way between two couples who were arguing about whether to go into the Red Tomahawk for a beer or to buy a new shirt for someone named Teddy. He stepped into an empty space at the edge of the sidewalk and considered moving across the street, where the crowd looked thinner.

Someone whispered, “Watch it, kid,” and before he could look around someone kicked him hard in his left ankle and someone else banged him in the back and shoved him into the traffic.

His arms flew out before him, and he staggered a few steps before his ankle began to melt. Screams and shouts came from the sidewalk. Horns blew. His heart stopped beating. A man and a woman with wide eyes and open mouths appeared behind the smeared windshield of a station wagon piled with suitcases lashed to its roof with bright green netting. Tom took in the expressions on their faces and the color of the netting with great clarity, and then saw only the massive hood and the bugspattered grille of the station wagon. His ankle bent like a green twig. He struck the ground, and the air turned black and cacophonous.

A roaring noise filled his ears, and then a dim music replaced it, and the memory of a piercing harmony encased him, and his ten-year-old self bent toward him and said: Music does explain everything. Then dust and gravel sprang up in front of his eyes, and each speck of gravel threw a speck-sized shadow.

A high-pitched voice, the voice of a cartoon goose, called, “That boy’s drunk!”

He pushed himself up. His ankle sang. In front of him, a startled man in a baseball cap stared out through the windshield of a Karmann Ghia. Tom looked over his shoulder and saw the rear end of a station wagon piled high with bags and cardboard boxes. Then a man with a crew cut and trembling arms was helping him stand. “That car just went right over you,” he said. “You’re one goddamned lucky son of a gun.” The man’s arms were trembling.

“Somebody pushed me,” Tom said.

He heard the crowd repeating his words like an echo with different voices.

The man and woman got shakily out of the station wagon. Each of them took a step forward. The woman asked if he were all right.

“Somebody pushed me,” Tom said.

The couple took another step forward, and Tom said, “I’m all right.” They got back into the station wagon. The man in the crew cut helped Tom back to the sidewalk. The traffic began to whoosh past.

“Do you want to see a cop?” the man asked. “Do you want to sit down?”

“No, I’m okay,” Tom said. “Did you see who pushed me?”

“All I saw was you, flyin’ out into the street,” said the man. He released Tom and stepped backwards. “If somebody pushed you, you oughta see a cop.” He looked around as if trying to find one.

“Maybe it was an accident,” Tom said, and the man nodded vigorously.

“You got dust all over your face,” the man said.

Tom wiped his face and began brushing off his clothes, and when he looked up again the man was gone. The other people on the sidewalk stared at him, but did not come near. His head felt as light as a balloon, his body as weightless as a thistle—a breeze could have knocked him over. Tom slapped the worst of the dust off his knees and limped down the sidewalk toward the highway.