The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

One of those built-up pickup trucks with the oversize tires and the roof-lights on the cab swerves into his lane, wanting to get all the way left in time to turn before the green arrow goes out. There’s no taillight blinker; this Sanderson notes just as the left front of his Subaru collides with the rear of the pickup truck. He and his father are both thrown forward into their locked seatbelts, and a ridge suddenly heaves up in the middle of his Subaru’s previously smooth hood, but the airbags don’t deploy. There’s a brisk tinkle of glass.

‘Asshole!’ Sanderson cries. ‘Jesus!’ Then he makes a mistake. He pushes the button that unrolls his window, sticks out his arm, and wags his middle finger at the truck. Later he will think he only did it because Pop was in the car with him, and Pop was on a roll.

Pop. Sanderson turns to him. ‘You okay?’

‘What happened?’ Pop says. ‘Why’d we quit?’

He’s confused but otherwise fine. A good thing he was wearing his seatbelt, although God knows it’s hard to forget them these days. The cars won’t let you. Drive fifty feet without putting one on and they begin screaming with indignation. Sanderson leans over Pop’s lap, thumbs open the glove compartment, gets out his registration and insurance card. When he straightens up again, the door of the pickup truck is standing open and the driver is walking toward him, taking absolutely no notice of the cars that honk and swerve to get around the latest fender-bender. There isn’t as much traffic as there would be on a weekday, but Sanderson doesn’t count this as a blessing, because he’s looking at the approaching driver and thinking, I could be in trouble here.

He knows this guy. Not personally, but he’s a south Texas staple. He’s wearing jeans and a tee-shirt with the sleeves ripped off at the shoulders. Not cut, ripped, so that errant strings dangle against the tanned slabs of muscle on his upper arms. The jeans are hanging off his hipbones so the brand name of his underwear shows. A chain runs from one beltless loop of his jeans to his back pocket, where there will no doubt be a big leather wallet, possibly embossed with the logo of a heavy metal band. Lots of ink on his arms and hands, even crawling up his neck. This is the kind of guy, when Sanderson sees him on the sidewalk outside his jewelry shop via closed-circuit TV, who causes him to push the button that locks the door. Right now he would like to push the button that locks his car door, but of course he can’t do that. He should never have flipped the guy the bird, and he even had time to rethink his options, because he had to roll down the window in order to do it. But it’s too late now.

Sanderson opens the door and gets out, ready to be placating, to apologize for what he shouldn’t need to apologize for – it was the guy who cut across, for God’s sake. But here is something else, something that makes little quills of dismay prickle the skin of his forearms and the back of his neck, which is sweating now that he’s out of the AC. The guy’s tattoos are crude, straggling things: chains around the biceps, thorns circling the forearms, a dagger on one wrist with a drop of blood hanging from the tip of the blade. No skin shop did those. That’s jailhouse ink. Tat Man is at least six-two in his boots, and at least two hundred pounds. Maybe two twenty. Sanderson is five-nine and weighs a hundred and sixty.

‘Look, I’m sorry I flipped you the bird,’ Sanderson says. ‘Heat of the moment. But you changed lanes without—’

‘Look what you did to my truck!’ Tat Man says. ‘I ain’t had it but three months!’

‘We need to exchange insurance information.’ They also need a cop. Sanderson looks around for one and sees only rubberneckers, slowing down to assess the damage and then speeding up again.

‘You think I got insurance when I can barely make the payments on that bitch?’

You have to have insurance, Sanderson thinks, it’s the law. Only a guy like this doesn’t think he has to have anything. The rubber testicles hanging under his license plate are the final proof.

‘Why the fuck didn’t you let me in, asshole?’

‘There was no time,’ Sanderson said. ‘You cut across, you never blinked—’

‘I blinked!’

‘Then how come it isn’t on?’ Sanderson points.

‘Because you knocked out my fucking taillight, nummy! How am I supposed to tell my girlfriend about this? She fronted the fucking down payment! And get that fucking shit out of my face.’

He strikes the insurance card and registration, which Sanderson is still holding out, from Sanderson’s hand. Sanderson looks down at them, stunned. His papers are lying on the road.

‘I’m going,’ Tat Man says. ‘I’ll fix my damage, you fix yours. That’s how it’s going to work.’