Independence Day

by Richard Ford

  But if you’re driving through at 2:19, “town” slips by before you know it, and you’re too quick through it and out onto Route 7, having passed no place to stop and ask or caught no glimpse of a friendly motel sign—only a pair of darkened inns (Le Chateau and Le Perigord), where a fellow could tuck into a lobster thermidor across from his secretary, or a veal scarpatti and a baked Alaska with his son from some nearby prep school. But don’t expect a room. Ridgefield’s a town that invites no one to linger, where the services contemplate residents only, but which makes it in my book a piss-poor place to live.

  Exhausted and disappointed, I make a reluctant left at the light onto 7, resigned to sag into Danbury, fifteen miles farther on and by now full to the brim with darkened cars nosed into darkened motel lots. I have done this all wrong. A forceful stand at Sally’s or at the very least tarrying in Tarrytown would’ve saved me.

  Yet ahead in the gloom where 7 crosses the Ridgefield line and disappears back into the hinterland of scrub-brush Connecticut, I see the quavery red neon glimmer I’ve given up hoping for. MOTEL. And under it, in smaller, fuzzier letters, the life-restoring VACANCY. I aim at it like a missile.

  But when I wheel into the little half-moon lot (it’s the Sea Breeze, though no sea’s near enough to offer breezes), there’s a commotion in progress. Motel guests are out of their rooms in bathrobes, slippers and tee-shirts. The state police are abundantly present—more blue flashers turning—while a big white-and-orange ambulance van, its strobes popping and its back door open, appears ready to receive a passenger. The whole lot has the backlit, half-speed unreality of a movie set (not what I’d hoped for) and I’m tempted just to drive on, though again that would mean conking out on the car seat and hoping no one kills me.

  All the police activity is going on at one end of the lot, in front of the last unit in line; so I park near the other end, beyond the office, where lights are on and a customer counter is visible through the window. If I can be assigned a room away from the action, I may still get one-third night’s measure of sleep.

  Inside the office the air-conditioning’s cranked up high, and a powerful cooking smell from a rear apartment beyond a red drapery makes the air dense and stinging. The clerk is a slender, dull-looking subcontinental whose eyes flicker up at me from a desk behind the counter. He’s talking on the phone at a blazing speed and in a language I recognize as not my own. Without pausing, he fingers a little registration card off a stack he has, slides it up onto the glass countertop, where a pen’s attached to a little chain. Several hand-lettered and unequivocal instructions have been pressed under the glass, relating to one’s use of one’s room: no pets, no calls charged, no cooking, no hourly rates, no extra guests, no operation of a business (none of these is currently in my plans).

  The clerk, who has on a regulation dirty-collared, short-sleeved white shirt and black slacks, goes right on talking, even becoming at one point agitated and loudly vociferous while I finish filling out the guest card and slide it across with my Visa. At this instant he simply puts the receiver down, clears his throat, stands and starts scribbling on the card with his own ballpoint. My needs are apparently enough like other guests’ that we can skip pleasantries.

  “So what’s happened down at the other end?” I say, hoping I’ll hear everything’s all over and wasn’t any great shakes to begin with. Possibly an on-site demo of police practices for the benefit of the Ridgefield town fathers.

  “Don’t worry,” the clerk says in a fussy voice guaranteed to make anyone worry. “Everything is fine now.”

  He whips my Visa through the credit-check box, glances at me, doesn’t smile, just takes a weary breath and waits for the green numbers to certify I’m a fair risk for $52.80.

  “What happened, though?” I feign absolute no-worry.

  He sighs. “It’s just best to stay away.” He’s used to answering questions only about room rates and checkout times. He has a long, slender neck that would look much better on a woman, and wisps of little mannish mustache hairs that shadow the corners of his mouth. He does not inspire wide trust.

  “Just curious,” I say. “I wasn’t planning on wandering down there.” I look back through the window, where the police and ambulance lights are still buffeting the dark. Several gawker cars have stopped on Route 7, their drivers’ faces lit by the flashes. Two Connecticut state troopers in wide Stetsons are conferring beside their cruiser, arms folded, their stiff, tight-fitting uniforms making them seem brawny and stern though unquestionably even-handed.

  “Some people maybe got robbed down there,” the clerk says, pushing a Visa receipt out for my Frank Bascombe. At this moment a short, round-waisted thick-haired woman in a red-and-black sari and a badgered expression appears at the doorway drapery. She buzzes something to the clerk, then vanishes. For some reason I sense she’s been talking via extension to whomever he was talking to, and he’s now required again—possibly to catch hell from relatives in Karachi about whatever’s happening outside.

  “How’d it happen?” I say, putting my name on the dotted line.

  “We don’t know.” He shakes his head, comparing signatures, then pulling the delicate leaves off the receipt, having never even acknowledged the woman who came and left. She, I’m sure, is the person responsible for the venomous cooking smell. “They check in. In a little while some big agitation in there. I don’t see what happened.”

  “Anybody get hurt?” I stare at my Visa receipt in his hand, wishing I hadn’t signed it.

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” He hands me my card, receipt and a key. “Get the key deposit when you check out. Ten o’clock is the time.”

  “Swell,” I say, and smile hopelessly, thinking of heading to Danbury.

  “It’s on the other end, okay?” he says, pointing toward the hoped-for wing, smiling perfunctorily and showing his straight little teeth. He has to be freezing in his short sleeves, though right away he returns to the phone and begins muttering in his tangly tongue, his voice going to a hush in case I might know a word or two of Urdu and spill some important beans.

  Back out on the lot, night air feels even more electrified and stoked. Other motel guests have started to drift back, but police radios are crackling, the bugged-up red MOTEL sign hums and an even denser feeling of subsonic noises vibrates off the cruisers and the ambulance and the cars stopped along the highway. Somewhere close by a skunk has been aroused, its hot scent swarming out of the trees beyond the lights. I think of Paul, not so far from here now, and will him to be in bed asleep, as I should be.

  The last door in the line of motel doors has been opened now, and harsh lights are on inside, with shadows passing quickly. Several policemen, local Joes, are standing around a two-tone blue Chevy Suburban parked directly in front of the room, all its five doors open, its interior lights on. A Boston Whaler is in tow behind the Suburban and is filled with recreation gear—a bicycle, water skis, some strapped-together lawn furniture, scuba tanks and a wooden doghouse. The local cops are shining flashlights around inside. A big leering Bugs has been stuck to a back side window with suction cups.

  “Y’ain’t safe no mo’ nowhere,” a man’s thick voice says, and actually makes me jump. I look around fast and find an immense, heavy-breathing Negro standing behind me wearing a green Mayflower moving van uniform. He’s holding a black attaché case under his arm, and above his breast pocket, under a red Mayflower, the word Tanks is stitched within a yellow oval. He’s watching what I’m watching.

  We’re right behind my parked Crown Victoria, and the instant I see him I also notice his Mayflower van parked across Route 7 in the turnout for a seasonal produce stand, closed at this hour.

  “What’s going on down there?” I say.

  “Kids broke on into some people’s room owns that Suburban, and robbed ’em. Then they killed the guy. They got ’em both over there”—he points—“in that po-lice car. Somebody oughta just go over there and pop ’em both in the melon and be done with
it.” Mr. Tanks (first name, last, nickname?) breathes in again momentously. He has a lineman’s wide smudge-pot face, a huge big-nostril nose and all but invisible deep-set eyes. His uniform includes ludicrous green walking shorts that barely manage around his butt and thighs, and black nylon knee socks that show off his beefsteak calves. He is a head shorter than me, but it’s no chore to feature him bear-hugging an armoire or a new Amana down several flights of stairs.

  The two troopers, I determine, are standing guard at their car, which is stopped in the precise middle of the lot with its headlights still on. Through the back window I can make out in the darkness first one white face and then a second one—boys’ faces, tilted forward to indicate both are handcuffed. Neither is talking, and both seem to be watching the troopers. The boy I can see more clearly seems to smile in reply to Mr. Tanks’s having pointed him out.

  The sight of the two faces, though, causes me a sudden jittery interior flutter like a fan blade spinning in my belly. I wonder if I’m about to wince again, but I don’t. “How do they know they did it?”

  “’Cause they run, that’s why,” Mr. Tanks says, confidently. “I was out on number seven. And the police car come around me going a hundred. And two miles on down, here they all were. Two of ‘em spread out on the hood. Hadn’t been five minutes. Trooper tol’ me about it.” Mr. Tanks breathes another threatening breath. His thick truckdriver’s smell is a nice leathery fragrance mingled with what must be the scent of moving pads. “Bridgeport,” he murmurs, making port sound like pote. “Killin’ to be killin’.”

  “Where are the other people from?” I say.

  “I guess Utah.” He is silent a moment. Then he says, “Pullin’ that little boat.”

  Just then two male ambulance attendants in red shirts appear in the motel door, horsing a collapsible metal stretcher out into the night. A long black plastic bag that looks like it should hold a set of golf clubs is strapped on top and lumpy from the body inside. A moment later a small, thick-necked, tough-looking white man in a white short-sleeved shirt and tie, and wearing a pistol, and a badge on a string around his neck, escorts a blond woman in a thin blue flowered dress out the door, holding her upper arm as though she were under arrest. They walk quickly toward the state troopers’ car, where one of the troopers opens the back door and starts to pull out the boy who’s smiled before. But the detective speaks something out in front of him, and the trooper simply stands aside and lets the boy stay put, while the other trooper produces a flashlight.

  The detective directs the blond woman to the open car door. She seems very light on her feet. The trooper shines his flash straight into the face of the boy closest. His skin is ghostly and looks damp even from here, his hair buzzed almost bare on the sides but left long in the back. He gazes up into the light as if he’s willing to expose everything there is to know about him.

  The woman only briefly looks at him, then turns her head away. The boy says something—I see his lips move—and the woman says something to the detective. Then they both turn and walk briskly back toward the room. The troopers quickly close the car door, then climb in the front seat, both sides. Their siren makes a loud wheep-whoop, their blue flasher flashes once, and their car—a Crown Vic just like mine—idles forward a few yards before it makes an engine roar, skitters its wheels and shoots out onto 7, where it disappears to the north, its siren coming on again but far out of sight.

  “Where you tryin’ to get?” Mr. Tanks says gruffly. He is now carefully unfolding two sticks of Spearmint, which he inserts into his large mouth both at once. He goes on clutching his attaché case.

  “Deep River,” I say, nearly silenced by what I’ve just witnessed. “I’m picking up my son.” The jittery flutter has stopped in my stomach.

  The watchers out on Route 7 are starting to creep away. The ambulance, now closed, its interior lights out, backs cautiously away from the motel door, then eases off in the direction the troopers have gone—to Danbury is my guess—its silver and red lights turning but with no siren.

  “Then where you two goin’?” He is crushing his gum wrapper and chewing vigorously. He wears a great chunky diamond-and-gold-crusted ring on his right ring finger, something a large person might design for himself or possibly get by winning the Super Bowl.

  “We’re going to the Baseball Hall of Fame.” I look around at him amiably. “Did you ever go there?”

  “Uh-uh,” he says, and shakes his head, his mouth emitting a loud Spearminty sweetness. Mr. Tanks’s hair is short and dense and black, but doesn’t grow on all parts of his head. Islands of his glistening black scalp appear here and there, making him look older than I’m sure he is. We’re probably the same age. “What line of work you do?”

  The VACANCY sign goes silently off, then the MOTEL sign itself, leaving only a humming red NO illuminated. The clerk lowers the blinds inside the office, switches them closed, and the office lights go almost immediately out.

  We aren’t socializing here, I realize, only bearing brief dual witness to the perilous character of life and our uncertain presences in it. Otherwise there’s no reason for us to stand here together.

  “Real estate,” I say, “down in Haddam, New Jersey. About two and a half hours from here.”

  “That’s a rich man’s town,” Mr. Tanks says, still chewing rapidly.

  “Some rich people live there,” I say. “But some folks just sell real estate. Where do you live?”

  “Divorced,” Mr. Tanks says. “I ‘bout live in that rig.” He swivels his big midnight face in the direction of his truck.

  There in the shadows Mr. Tanks’s enormous trailer displays a jaunty good ship Mayflower in green, abreast a jaunty sea of yellow. It’s the most nearly patriotic sight I’ve seen in the Ridgefield area. I think of Mr. Tanks snugged up in his high-tech sleep cocoon, decked out (for some reason) in red silk pj’s, earphones plugged into an Al Hibbler CD, perusing a Playboy or a Smithsonian and munching a gourmet sandwich purchased somewhere back down the line and heated up in his mini-micro. It’s as good as what I do. Possibly the Markhams should consider long-haul trucking instead of the suburbs. “That must not be so bad,” I say.

  “It gets old. Cramped gets old,” he says. Mr. Tanks must weigh 290. “I own a home out in Alhambra.”

  “Does your wife live there, then?”

  “Uh-uh,” Mr. Tanks grunts. “My furniture stays out there. I pay it a visit once in a while when I miss it.”

  Down at the lighted room where a murder has taken place, the local cops shut the Suburban’s doors and wander inside, talking quietly, their local-cop hats pushed back on their heads. Mr. Tanks and I are the last observers left. I’m sure it’s close to three. I yearn for bed and sleep, though I don’t want to leave Mr. Tanks alone.

  “Lemme just ask you a question.” Mr. Tanks is holding his attaché still under his giant arm and gravely chewing his Spearmint. “Since you’re into real estate now” (as if I’d only been in it a couple of weeks). He doesn’t look at me. It may embarrass him to address me in terms of my profession. “I’m thinking about selling my home.” He stares straight away into the dark.

  “The one in Alhambra?”

  “Uh-huh.” He breathes again noisily through his big nostrils.

  “California’s holding onto its value is all I hear, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “I bought in seventy-six.” Another big sigh.

  “Then you’re in great shape,” I say, though why I’d say that I don’t know, since I’ve never been in Alhambra, don’t know the tax base, the racial makeup, the comp situation or the market status. I’ll probably visit the Alhambra before I visit Mr. Tanks’s Alhambra.

  “What I’m wonderin’ is,” Mr. Tanks says and wipes his big hand over his face, “if I oughtn’t not to move out here.”

  “To Ridgefield?” Not an obvious match.

  “It don’t matter where.”

  “Do you have any friends and family out here?”


  “Naw.”

  “Is the Mayflower home office out here someplace?”

  He shakes his head. “They don’t matter where you live. You just drivin’ for them.”

  I look at Mr. Tanks curiously. “Do you like it out here?” Meaning the seaboard, the Del-Mar-Va to Eastport, from the Water Gap to Block Island.

  “It’s pretty good,” he says. His cavey eyes narrow and flicker at me, as if he’d caught a whiff suggesting I might be amused by him.

  But I’m not! I understand (I think) perfectly well what he’s getting at. If he’d answered in the usual way—that his Aunt Pansy lived in Brockton, or his brother Sherman in Trenton, or if he was positioning himself for a managerial charge inside corporate Mayflower, home offices, say, in Frederick, MD, or Ayer, Mass., and needed to move nearer—that would make sound sense. Though it would be a whole lot less interesting on the human side. But if I’m right, his question is of a much more omenish and divining nature, having to do with the character of eventuality (not rust-belt economics or the downturn in per-square-foot residential in the Hartford-Waterbury metroplex).

  Instead, his is the sort of colloquy most of us engage in alone with only our silent selves, and that with the right answers can give rise to rich feelings of synchronicity of the kind I came back from France full of four years ago: when everything is glitteringly about you, and everything you do seems led by a warm, invisible astral beam issuing from a point too far away in space to posit but that’s leading you to the place—if you can just follow and stay lined up—you know you want to be. Christians have their grimmer version of this beam; Jainists do too. Probably so do ice dancers, bucking-bronco riders and grief counselors. Mr. Tanks is one of the multitude seeking, with hope, to emerge from a condition he’s grown weary of in pursuit of something better, and wants to know what he should do—a profound inquiry.