The gash in the tire was the first elephant in the room, or rather facility, or center. Jim had lived at the Wagner assisted living home for three months now, was still calling it a facility or center. It wasn’t home, was his point. It was an institution—a benevolent one, perhaps, and no longer the prison that constituted his first impression—but not yet a place where he’d commit to stay. That’s why he kept getting away for hours at a time, in a four-wheel drive van that he’d owned for a decade and a half. Transposing wheels and limbs, he admitted the car was on its last legs, which recently included the set of four tires, all of which were looking a bit threadbare, so none would take the kind of impact that Jim had given one tire on a Sunday morning.
“I was in a rush, I suppose”, he offered palely.
“On a Sunday morning…why? Where do you have to go to so quickly anymore?” This was Frank, Jim’s curt, middle-aged son, who visited on weekends and was accustomed to fixing problems for his dad—usually problems like a frozen computer, or a frozen bank account. Sometimes a blocked-up toilet dirtied the chore list. Frank looked at the gash in the front driver’s side tire, half-impressed as well as concerned. It was shaped like a goal mouth, or a doorway turned sideways, and it could be peeled backwards to reveal the hollow interior into which goodness knows what had flown. Inconsequential debris, maybe. Strange, how physics works, Frank wondered. What kind of impact makes that kind of tear? Anyway, it didn’t matter. Jim wanted it fixed, and Frank wasn’t inclined to replace the tire himself, though he might have. He could have, he may have wanted to say. Get your hands dirty. Flex those slender, brittle, keyboard-tapping fingers of yours. Show your old man that despite the years of bookish study and interior living, that you can still muster some good-old-fashioned grit and change a goddamned tire!
Anyway, elephants. The issue was whether Jim should be driving at all, not whether Frank could remove and replace a piece of mutilated rubber. While Frank formulated words for a feeble inquiry about living skills and the future, Jim pulled out his Smartphone, another item whose functions he could barely manage, and called for road service. Surprisingly, Jim about managed this next task, having readied his driver’s license and his triple A card, and despite soon being thrown by the gratuitous instructions of an unctuous dispatcher. Text messages and verification codes and such. “What?” and “sorry?” Jim said twice each before the voice on the other end seemed to give up and accede to a past generation’s understandings. “A driver will be there in about thirty minutes”, the voice said tiredly. Jim shook his head and chuckled, pleased to have heard those golden words yet baffled as to why they hadn’t been said until several minutes into the call. Moments later, he was lamenting a complicated new world, speaking as uncharitably about that dispatcher as he had about the construction project that had blocked the main street, forcing him onto a sidewalk curb, hence the u-shaped gash in the front driver’s side tire.
“You drove on the sidewalk?” Frank asked, like he was still collecting evidence for a later argument.
“No, no. Of course not. Not the sidewalk. I mean the…whattadyercallit…the thing that does the water”
A broken, uncomprehending pause followed.
“A hydrant,” Frank said. “You hit a hydrant?”
“I hit something.” Jim shrugged. “There was a stream of water, anyway”. Another complaint, it seemed.
About twenty minutes later, a road service vehicle appeared, flagged down by Frank’s waving arms, and pulled up next to Jim’s van. He stepped up eagerly, pleased by the relatively quick service. This is more like it, he evinced, turning to his son. At that moment, Frank was peering over his father’s shoulder, his eyes fixed upon the service vehicle’s driver’s side. Inside, hands and arms linked to an unseen face scribbled on a notepad and then opened a driver’s side door. Moments later, out stepped a uniformed black man, about six foot six inches tall, and looking like he weighed about three hundred pounds. Frank nodded, seeing the exiting giant first.
“What’s up,” the man greeted. Immediately, he seemed stolid, would likely be terse, if not necessarily rude for the rest of this meeting.
Jim, who moved in all directions slowly and gingerly, at least when not driving, turned from Frank to regard the service worker whom he was eager to have change his tire because his effete, not-anywhere-close-to-three-hundred-pound son would likely demur on the task.
“Whoa”, Jim uttered, followed by, “basketball?”
What? Frank thought. Fleeting denial. A stifled guffaw. The service worker understood immediately, appeared to take it in stride, emitting a small chuckle that contained the protest of race. He raised his chin, striking a slightly affronted pose, and breathily replied: “Football”.
The fix-it job lasted minutes, during which Frank stewed, thinking about the friends and family with whom he’d share this culture clash-capturing moment; this brief exchange that would say everything and nothing…about something he’d give cursory thought, ultimately. Juneteenth was last week. Basketball? Football. Let’s call the whole thing off, the old song goes. Joe, Frank’s now deceased, once obsessively irreverent and probably racist friend, would have had a grand chortle about this scene. Frank’s sister, a somewhat more conscientious, as in bumper-sticker-committed observer of white guilt, would have issued thin amusement, coupled with a prim tsk tsking thought for their elderly an un-woke father. Indeed, Jim would not have awakened to anything but the pleasure of his suppositions, the privileging of physical rigor, physical acts, tacitly working-class ethics, plus the joy of getting his tire fixed so that he might resume his driving. These were final days of his feeling free in his dotage, unworried by his own carelessness. He glanced at Frank, smiling and concluding, “I think he’s done this before” as the worker swiftly completed his job.
Graeme Daniels Psychewriter 