Why do we spend thousands of hours trying to polish up a retirement that mostly consists of waiting for the mail and wondering which knee is going to act up when the weather turns? Arthur and I had been out of the house for less than an hour when the whole foolishness started down on Commerce Street. The sun was sitting right above the water tower, flat and yellow, baking the pavement until the asphalt smelled like warm roofing tar.
We had gone into town because I needed three yards of unbleached cotton for the quilt I’ve been working on since the first frost, and Arthur needed to see about a new float valve for the toilet tank in the downstairs bath.
We parked the old Buick right behind the feed store where the curb is painted that faded yellow that nobody respects anymore. Arthur swore up and down it was a thirty-minute zone on account of the faded sign hanging sideways from the telephone pole, but I told him right then that sign hadn’t meant a blessed thing since the county put in the new parking meters back when George Bush was still in the White House. He just waved a hand at me like he always does when I try to talk sense into him, that little twitch in his left eyebrow going off because he hates being told he’s wrong about anything involving internal combustion engines or municipal codes.
When we came out of the dry goods store with my brown paper parcel tucked under my arm, there was a young fellow in a pressed blue uniform squatting by our front fender with a little plastic book in his hand. He was writing out a parking ticket with the kind of slow, deliberate care you usually reserve for writing out your last will and testament. Arthur didn’t even drop his bag of brass fittings. He just shuffled right up behind the boy and said, “Come on man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?”
The officer didn’t look up from his little book. He just licked the tip of his thumb like he was counting dollar bills at the bank and kept right on scribbling the license number. He had one of those neat little haircuts that looks like it was done with a lawnmower on a very low setting, and his holster was so stiff it squeaked every time he shifted his weight from one heavy boot to the other.
“That’s twenty-five dollars you’re throwing away on a Tuesday morning,” Arthur told him, louder this time. “Don’t you have a bank to watch or some pigeons to bother down by the courthouse?”
The boy finished tearing the little yellow slip off the pad with a sharp, crisp rip that sounded like dry paper tearing in a quiet room. He didn’t say a word to us. He just stuck it right under the wiper blade and reached for his pocket to get another piece of carbon paper out.
I told Arthur to hush up, but once he gets that stubborn look around his mouth, you might as well try talking to the water tower. “You must be real proud of yourself,” I said, leaning on my canvas bag. “Catching a seventy-four-year-old man who’s just trying to pick up some flannel without having to mortgage the farm.”
The officer looked up then, his face the color of a raw beet under that wide-brimmed hat. “Step back from the vehicle, ma’am,” he said, and his voice sounded like two bricks rubbing together in a bucket.
“I won’t step back nowhere,” I told him, feeling that old stubbornness rise up in my chest the way it always does when some young man with a badge thinks he can wave his arms and make people disappear. “We’ve been paying taxes in this county since before your mother was wearing knee socks, and you’re standing here writing us up for parking five inches too far from a yellow line that some drunk painter put down back in seventy-four.”
Arthur looked at me, and I looked at Arthur, and right then we both knew we were being entirely ridiculous, but neither one of us had the gumption to walk away.
It’s like when you’re a kid and you throw the first stone at a hornet’s nest because you want to see if the stories are true. You know you’re going to get stung, but there’s a part of you that just has to find out how fast those little devils can fly.
Arthur leaned in close to the officer’s shoulder and muttered, “You’re a real butthead, you know that?”
The boy’s jaw locked so hard I thought I heard his back teeth crack. He didn’t say a single word back to Arthur. He just pulled the little book out again, glared at us like we’d tracked mud across his mother’s best rug, and started writing down a second violation right there on the spot.
“What’s that one for?” Arthur asked, craning his neck to look over the boy’s shoulder. “The tires?”
“Worn out tread,” the officer snapped, his voice tight and thin as a wire. “Safety hazard on a public thoroughfare. That’s another fifty dollars.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said, my hands going straight to my hips. “The tread is fine. They’ve got another ten thousand miles in ’em if you don’t drive like a maniac over the cattle guards. You’re just a little jerk with a tin star who never learned how to play nice in the schoolyard.”
That did it. The boy’s face went from beet red to something almost gray, and he reached for his second book, the thicker one with the blue cover that the sheriff uses when someone’s being a real nuisance down by the river bridge. He finished the second ticket, shoved it under the wiper right on top of the first one, and started writing a third one for having an expired county decal even though the sticker was plain as day right there in the corner of the glass, shiny and blue and paid for back in April.
The more we offended him, the more tickets he wrote. It became a kind of game between the three of us, silent and fierce on that hot asphalt under the noon sun. Arthur would think of some little insult about his uniform or his posture, and the boy would scribble another yellow slip with the furious energy of a man trying to dig his way out of a well with a dessert spoon. Every time he finished one, he’d slap it down on the windshield until the glass looked like it was covered in autumn leaves.
Fifteen minutes we stood there on Main Street, going back and forth like two dogs over a soup bone while the heat came up through the soles of our shoes and made our ankles swell inside our socks. The whole town seemed to be watching from behind the clean glass of the hardware store and the diner, nobody coming out to help us, nobody telling the boy to let us be, just watching two old people dig their own graves one twenty-five-dollar fine at a time.
He finally finished the sixth ticket, sneered at us with his top lip curled up like he’d smelled something bad under the porch, and turned on his heel without saying goodbye. He walked away down toward the alley by the dry cleaners, his boots making a heavy, angry thud against the concrete with every stride.
Arthur and I stood there by the hood of the Buick looking at the pile of yellow paper fluttering under the wipers like a flock of sick birds. We were both out of breath, our chests heaving a little in the thin, hot air, and my feet felt like they were full of lead shot.
Just then, the blue county bus came wheezing around the corner by the grain elevator, its old diesel engine rattling the windows in its frames. It pulled up right beside us with a long, wet hiss of its air brakes, the doors folding open with a rusty screech that sounded like music.
We didn’t say another word about the tickets. Arthur picked up his package of fittings, I grabbed my brown paper parcel with the cotton inside, and we climbed up the two high steps into the cool, dark interior of the bus where the driver was reading the morning paper. We dropped our tokens in the box and sat down on the long vinyl bench near the back where the springs were all broken down and leaning toward the window.
As the bus pulled away from the curb and headed out toward the county road, we could still see those little yellow slips flapping in the breeze against our windshield, six of them in a neat little row like soldiers on parade. We didn’t laugh right away, but by the time we passed the water tower and the shade trees started getting thick along the creek, Arthur reached over and took my hand where the skin is all thin and spotted like old parchment.
We try to have a little fun each day now that we’re retired, because the truth of the matter is that when you’re seventy-four years old, nobody’s looking at you anyway unless you give them a reason to turn around. It’s so important at our age to make sure they know you’re still standing there, even if it costs you six tickets and a ride home on the county bus.
