volume one IN THE D U D L E Y C L A R K - Ohio Vine Tours

He’s already bought the groceries.
He arrives at the intersection of Mel’s street. In the middle of
the intersection is this Seattle sight—a traffic island. A traffic
island is a small, round, concrete-curbed hump of earth filled
with plants. This particular traffic island has a banana tree in its
center crowded around with camellias.
Roy steps off the curb just as two vehicles approach. One is
a beat-up, hand-painted black Toyota pickup driven by a ravenhaired
girl, her exposed arms covered with tattoos. The other
is an almost new, sage green Lexus SUV, its driver obscured
behind smoked glass.
Roy, his mind clotted with mounting dread, fails to notice
either of these two vehicles. He steps off the curb with the
confidence of a professional pedestrian. And he walks like one,
too—slowly—with the gait of a sloth.
The black Toyota pickup noses into the intersection first, its
left turn indicator flashing like a caffeinated firefly. But the
street it wishes to turn into, narrow in its original design, made
more so by the presence of parked cars along both its curbs, is
occupied by the sage green lump of smoked-glass Lexus, its own
lovingly sculpted right turn indicator blinking insistently.
The correct procedure would be for the black Toyota pickup
to move into the intersection and circle the island to the right,
allowing the SUV to make its right hand turn onto the narrow
street currently occupied by the black Toyota pickup. The black
Toyota pickup could then, in turn, proceed along the street of its
choosing—the one currently occupied by the sage green lump of
smoked-glass Lexus. But this is Seattle, and in Seattle such an
act of consideration would be construed as cowardice. Therefore,
the black Toyota pickup’s tattooed, raven-tressed driver scowls
and holds her ground, while the taciturn, obscured driver of the
Lexus follows suit.
Again, all this takes place without Roy’s knowledge or interest,
so that he is startled when angry horns bleat behind him as he
pushes his way through the faded white picket gate attached to
the faded white picket fence surrounding Mel’s faded yellow,
tumbledown house.
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY