Then everything was still.
I pulled out my handkerchief and began to wipe my fingerprints off everything I had touched. My hands had the adrenaline shakes, so I worked with care. Covering my hand with the handkerchief, I turned off the lights and ignition and let the keys drop to the floor. Then I picked up the length of pipe and tossed it onto the road.
Stepping down from the cab, I rolled my ankle on a stone the size of a softball. I grabbed the stone and slammed it onto the hood of the truck. The sound was satisfying in a primal way. Shouting with each blow, I swung the stone again and again, leaving a lot of dimples but no real damage. I hurled the stone over the hurricane fence, then picked up the pipe and went after the windows. They exploded into tiny, glittering cubes. I got all four: front, driver’s side, back, and passenger. Then around again for the mirrors and lights. When I stopped, my tension was gone.
I stood back to look at the damage and recalled my interest in the license-plate number, which was why I had gone outside in the first place. Now I might be able to use it to learn the owner’s name and address, and maybe his criminal record. Feeling for my pen and notepad, I walked around to the back of the truck and found the license plate in its bumper recess behind the tow ball. Then I realized that the registration papers—if I could find them—would be even better.
I went over to the passenger door and reached with the handkerchief through the broken window to open the glove box. Sure enough, inside was a tire warranty envelope holding several folded sheets of paper. I took it all. After wiping my prints from the glove-box lid, I folded the envelope and shoved it into my wallet pocket. I picked up the length of pipe and started walking toward home but stopped before the first curve for one last look. There is a deadness to a vehicle with no glass. It seemed likely that the truck belonged to the thieves, but if not—if they had been cruising around in something stolen, something that couldn’t be traced back to them—I could see how I might be held responsible for it ending up in a ditch, all battered up.
Around the curve and another hundred yards up the next straight stretch, I came to a vacant lot surrounded by thick brambles. The narrow gravel entry crossed a culvert half choked with silt. Using the pipe, I poked my handkerchief deep into the culvert, and then, with a two-hand hurl, I sent the pipe rotating into the brush at the back of the lot. Now only the envelope tied me to the truck.
There was enough ambient light to illuminate some of the vacant lot, though most of it was dark. The gravel was strewn with bottles and pieces of wood and rusted metal. I found a scrap of plywood the size of a cutting board and slipped the envelope beneath it, then left the lot and started again for home. I had no idea whether the cops would think I was a good guy or a bad guy. Perhaps, like myself, they would have a mixed opinion.
A couple miles from home I started jogging. I had to work up a story for the cops, and it was becoming apparent that my running—my having run—could only help. If nothing else, I could say I was worried about Marla. Which was true. And this concern might tip me toward being a good guy, help me atone for abandoning her in the first place, then making her wait so long for my return.
I opened up and ran hard. My feet found a rhythm, but there was nothing natural about it. I ran until my side began to ache. When I stopped to catch my breath, my pulse pounded in my face. My clothes were damp with sweat. The stitch in my side receded, and I started walking again.
I didn’t want to admit to Marla that I had taken the truck. It had been foolish and impulsive, and nothing in her sense of social order allowed for such an act. She would be torqued that I had disappeared for whatever reason; I should have stayed and called the cops and let things take their course. This is why civilized people pay taxes and have insurance. The premiums and deductibles are small prices to pay for protection.
But this is a male quandary: If we just stand there and watch we feel like idiots; but (depending of course on what we do) we can also feel like idiots for having acted. There might be a narrow window of involvement that can keep us from feeling like idiots, but in the moment we can’t know whether our course of action will make us appear heroes or fools.
Approaching Fulton, I started jogging as if on my wake-up run. I wasn’t wearing sweats, but you see this now and then, guys jogging in their street clothes. While the light was red I ran in place, trying to appear concerned about keeping my heart rate up, working on my breathing. At this ridiculous hour. It must have been two or two thirty. Well, you see this too, the lone jogger at night because his job has him on an odd schedule.
Any situation offers choices (this being part of my explanation to Marla), and I was tired of hearing about guys stealing cars and taking a slap on the wrist for it. If the courts couldn’t solve the problem, maybe it should be up to the citizens. I knew this argument had holes in it—vigilantism being the most obvious—but maybe holes were good; maybe they would distract her from my having been gone so long.
I was in our neighborhood, a dozen blocks from home. I still couldn’t figure out why I had taken the truck. Usually I make the right decision—the civilized decision—but between sneaking closer to look at the plate number and finding myself in the truck, I’d had a glitch in my decision-making process. Maybe this was the way to look at it: I had followed an instinct because none of my self-preserving or ethical governors had been activated. In this sense taking the truck may have been the natural thing to do.
I wondered if there was something in me, perhaps in all guys, that sparked bad decisions and got us into trouble. Something that ten thousand years ago had gotten us out of trouble but over the ages had become obsolete and, as we became more civilized, illegal. The call of the wild. Tapping the feral side of the brain. Eliminating the brain.
I had been gone a long time. An hour? No, probably not an hour but longer than a half hour. Let’s say forty-five minutes. I should have been gone five minutes total and gotten back before the cops arrived. I was forty minutes late and not home yet.
Walking faster again, I wondered what had happened to the thieves. It didn’t seem possible for them to have taken our Camry—they hadn’t gotten the engine started before I’d driven off in their truck, and the cops had come so soon afterward. Most likely they had tried to get away on foot.
What if they had eluded the cops? I looked up the street and saw a hundred hiding places. But no, if the car thieves were still at large, cop cars would still be in the area.
It bothered me to think I might have destroyed an innocent person’s vehicle. Maybe their insurance would cover them for the loss. But if I were held responsible, given the situation and my clean record, perhaps the worst that would come of it would be some kind of fine and probation (basically a slap on the wrist). The owner of the truck would collect on the insurance, minus the deductible, which I would gladly pay. In fact, I would insist.
I was at 40th and Juniper, looking two blocks down toward our house. All was quiet. Still, I didn’t want to be seen arriving from the direction in which the truck had gone, so I trotted over to Cedar, then turned west, paralleling Juniper until I was behind the Ferguson house, which faces ours. Their garage and fence blocked my view, so I continued up to the next corner and turned toward Juniper; a moment later I was home.
It was as if nothing had happened. Our car sat there alone, unlocked. I looked in through the passenger-door window and saw that the ignition switch cover had been torn away.
This was when I came up with my story for the cops. It would be the truth up to where I had been on the far side of the street, maneuvering into position to look at the rear plate. And then one of the guys spotted me, and I panicked and ran. I hid for a while, trying to calm down. I didn’t know how long (I would explain), but I might have been followed, so I stayed hidden… . No, I didn’t see what happened to the truck because the guy chased me the other way.
Them: But they say no one chased you.
Me: They’re lying.
Them: They don’t have any reason to lie … at least about chasing you.
Me: Neither do I.
Them: You would if you took the truck.
Me: If I what?