Dad pulls the Accord onto Beverly Glenn with an even turn, braking and accelerating without much change. You will later review this as a mechanism by which he means to distinguish himself from his own father—who was intensely even and methodical elsewhere, but, behind the wheel insisted on stops-and-goes with a lead foot and on being the only driver at all times.
A year from now, this first Accord will be stolen somewhere off Rodeo under circumstances about which you will never be too clear. Dad will return in the middle of the night without calling. Mom will seem anxious and pissed but your impression will be of mild concern and nonchalance.
A hundred yards onwards, Dad slows and nears the curb.
“Mitch, what are you doing?”
He nods for silence and glares at some action on the sidewalk, slowing to a stop.
“Mitch?” she says louder.
You try to sit up straighter, but you’ve already maxed out your seated height, freshly out of a carseat.
“What?”
Neither of them acknowledges you. Dad rolls up the windows.
“Mitch—no.”
“Dad?”
Outside you hear what you’ll later recognize with the easy admiration and romance of a scuffle. Shuffling; raised, indeterminable voices.
“Hey, man, I’m not botherin’ nobody,” “You’re botherin’ everybody just being here,” these kinds of things.
Dad chooses to step out into the dusk and slam the door.
“Keep your head down and be quiet, honey. Don’t worry,” Mom says. She shrinks into her seat and you eye her left hand claw into the center console, searching in vain for a grip.
Without a second thought about rule-breaking, you unbuckle and stand on the floor of the back seat, maybe a net-three inches. The voices are muffled but the figures illustrate.
Two men and their shadows stripe the brick exterior of an apartment building several blocks from home; you recognize it from walking down here with Mom to Andrew’s house – your part-time friend whose mom works at the office. You’ve not seen this part of the neighborhood (or many places at all) in the dark before and wonder if it’s always like this.
One man, dad’s height, faces the other, who hunches half-turned out of sight under the meek light of a lone, dim street lamp. The first man wears a sweater vest, khaki pants, a clean face like how dad’s looks on Monday mornings after you watch him shave. The small, hunched man has a beard down to his chest, an old polo shirt pulled below his waist by its hem, its collar stretched low, a blue baseball cap, dirt everywhere. The vested man looms over the dirty man as dad steps toward them.
“Gentlemen,” you hear Dad raise his voice through the window, “How’re you doing this evening?”
Mom sighs and clutches the steering wheel from across the seats. She must have been inching her hand there for something more grippable since last you checked.
“Doing just fine, brother,” the vested man answers.
The cowering man says nothing.
This should be the end of it—come on, Dad, let’s go home.
“Oh, good,” Dad says, “From back there, it looked like there was some kind of problem over here.”
“Well, no problem here. Thanks.” He puffs his chest up through his blue vest.
You hate this man but aren’t sure exactly why.
“Sir, are you alright?”
The cowering man stares at Dad in disbelief, then appears to look back at the vested man for permission to speak. The vested man glares at him and he remains silent, pouts and shrinks to the ground.
“Alright, why don’t you just move along, there,” Dad says to the vested man. “Seems like a good place to call it a night.”
Mom looks back and forth in the car and off to the other side of the road, anywhere but the action. You can’t take your eyes off it.
“Listen, buddy, I don’t know who gave you the idea this was any of your business, but why don’t you head on home yourself?”
“No, I don’t think so, friend.”
Their stand-off seems to last ten minutes. At one point of static, frightening silence, stillness, you look again at the cowardly man. He is bloody under his nose, his left eye is shut and puffy, his left leg gives out each time he struggles to stand a bit.
Dad seems to notice this also.
“Sir, let me help you up.”
Before his reach can be met, the vested man screams, “Hey!” and lunges into him.
You let out your own guttural yell and pound the backseat passenger side window.
“Shush!” Mom has resumed her watch and grabs you and plops you down on the seat hard.
For several terrifying seconds you cannot see or hear outside. When she’s distracted enough herself, you pop your head back up.
Dad stands fast and decisively. He’s thrown the vested man off rather than being brought down.
“Get out of here,” he says calmly.
“Fuck you.” The vested man swings at him.
Dad moves out of the way and the vested man hurls himself into the empty sidewalk past him.
The cowering man staggers away during the fight.
“Hey, get back here, you little—”
Dad interrupts the vested man’s chase with a fist to the face. The vested man goes down. Dad turns to the cowering man, but he’s disappeared down the street.
The vested man gets to his feet. His nose bleeds like the other man’s. “Ah, fuck this—fuck you, man,” he mutters, holding his jaw as he starts away opposite the cowering man.
“Too late to save face,” you will chuckle to yourself, years later, remembering the story to some friends in college.
Dad lets him beat it and returns to the car. You stare in awe as he sits down in the driver’s seat, unscratched and unphased. He sees Mom’s face as he turns to ignition.
“I’m sorry, Wanda,” he says, though his expression doesn’t change. He checks for traffic before merging back onto the street.
Mom is quiet. Shakes her head.
You’ve buckled back up without being asked and think of Dad fighting bad guys and aliens from TV. You will imagine this every time you get bloodied up after school or out in the city, over girls and money and drunkenness and nothing in particular, flailing through the last of your youth, unsure if, since last you spoke, Dad has become the vested or the cowering man.
