Drive Like Your Kids Live Here

Cory first met the old man about a week into his new route, Prime deliveries from one end of Forest Hills Drive to the other. As he sped down the tree-lined street, he caught a glimpse of a frail body in front of a small white bungalow, but he paid little attention. At $16 an hour, Cory wasn’t paid to be observant. He was paid to be fast.

He’d only been at Amazon a few months; it was the quickest and easiest route to a paycheck after his mom made good on a threat to evict him. Still, after years of running deliveries for a vending machine company, he’d taken to it surprisingly well. Already his supervisor was crowing about Cory’s efficiency. “Keep it up and we’ll get you a raise by the end of the quarter,” she said. “We need more drivers like you.”

She’d probably feel differently, Cory thought, if she saw his driving record. Officially, Cory’s file looked fine: a speeding ticket here or there, no big deal. Of course, it wouldn’t look that serious now - not after Cory’s stepdad, as one of two local traffic cops in New Carlisle, made some creative edits. Anything to get Cory’s mom off his ass, he thought smugly - that woman would ride him to the grave until he did Cory a solid.

Cory breezed by a stop sign at the end of Forest Hills Drive and turned left onto Basswood Lane - he wasn’t sure, but thought two of the van’s wheels briefly lost contact with the pavement - and slammed to a stop at the corner house, a neat mid century ranch with a big picture window and kids toys scattered in the yard. He bustled around in the cargo bay behind him for the correct bundle of boxes (judging by the weight and pictures on the box, the Perkins family had just stocked up on diapers and baby formula) and heaved open the rear door with a metallic screech.

Cory gave a sudden, high pitched scream. An old man stood there, just outside the truck door, so close the toe of Cory’s work boot nearly grazed his chest. His head was bald save a white wisp of hair plastered to a protruding forehead. Papery skin hung from his bones, pale and veined against the faded denim button up, which he had rolled to his elbows. His eyes were the dull gray of a decade’s worth of cataracts, peering stupidly into the dark reaches of the van.

“Young man!” he said. His voice was shrill. “Young man!”

Cory hopped down from the truck into the street. The old man gave him a slow, appraising look, and without meaning to Cory glanced down at himself. Crumbs from a Little Debbie snack cake were stuck to his Chewbacca tee shirt. He grimaced and brushed them off.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“This is a nice neighborhood,” the man wheezed. Cory waited for him to continue, but the man stopped, fixated unpleasantly on something just past Cory’s left shoulder. Cory looked too, and saw nothing. Jesus, this dude was creepy, he thought.

“Uh, yes sir,” Cory said. “Very nice.”

“This is a nice neighborhood,” the man repeated. “And there are children.”

“Yes sir, uh huh, I see that.” Cory nodded. He felt impatient. What was this guy’s problem?

“You’re a danger,” the old man croaked. “A danger to those children.”

Cory stared.

“What?”

“A danger!” The old man extended a long, crooked finger and poked at the air in front of Cory, then pointed to his yard, which sat some fifty yards behind them on Forest Hills Drive. Cory looked and saw a large red sign with white block letters: DRIVE LIKE YOUR KIDS LIVE HERE. Cory rolled his eyes.

“I see you!” the man cawed, and Cory jumped a little, feeling guilty. “I see your fast truck speeding down the street! I’m on the neighborhood watch and I know it’s you! You could kill someone!”

“Oh. Right.” Cory glanced at his watch and noticed he was slipping behind schedule. “Listen, man, I got a job to do, OK? They pay me to be fast and I gotta work my way up, you know what I mean?”

“You just wait!” The man stabbed the air again with his finger. Cory’s lip curled as the yellowed fingernail just missed his nose. “You wait! Somebody’ll get killed! I’m on the neighborhood watch! You wait!”

“Yeah, OK, man.” Cory realized he was still holding the Perkins’ boxes filled with baby supplies. He stepped around the old man and placed the packages in the driveway. Sorry folks, he thought, but your crazy neighbor’s not worth the trip to the door. He returned to the van, hopped back inside and yanked the rear door closed, narrowly missing the old man’s face. He slid back behind the wheel and gunned the engine. The old man remained in the street, coughing in a cloud of dust. It took Cory a full 18 minutes to forget him. This time.

***

Cory didn’t return to Forest Hills Drive for another week, but when he did, he saw the old man again. He’d left the sign in his front yard, and now he was sitting next to it in a sagging aluminum lawn chair. As Cory rounded the corner, again heading for the Perkins house, he saw the old man hoist something into the air and aim it at the truck. His heart skipped a beat - holy shit the old guy’s packing - until he realized it wasn’t an actual gun, but a radar gun.

Where did this guy get a radar gun? he thought. Cory mashed the brakes, skidding to a stop in front of the Perkins’ little ranch. Cory gazed in his rearview. The old man lowered the radar gun, consulted the display, and pulled an old clipboard out from under his chair. He’s writing it down, Cory marveled. The old fucker’s tracking my speed.

Cory grabbed the Perkins’ boxes - more diapers, goddamn, how many kids do they HAVE - and hopped out the driver’s side door.

“Hey!” he said loudly. “Hey man! What do you think you’re doing?” He dropped the diaper box with a thud in the Perkins’ yard and approached the old man. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m on the neighborhood watch,” the old man said serenely. “I’ve been watching you. You’re a menace.”

“I’m a menace,” Cory repeated. “A MENACE.” He checked his anger, breathing in through his nose and exhaling slowly through his mouth. “Look, mister, I get it, you don’t want me speeding through here. I’ll try to slow down. OK? Can you just, like, put that thing away?” Cory gestured at the radar gun and clipboard. “I’m just trying to earn a living here. OK? I’m just doing my job.”

“You could kill someone going that fast.”

“Yeah, you said that,” Cory said through gritted teeth.

“You’ll slow down, all right.” The old man stood up, his knees shaking with effort. Cory caught a whiff of cat piss coming from the man’s clothes and felt a sense of revulsion. “You’ll slow down. I’m not warning you again.” He tottered toward his house, leaving Cory in the street with his fists clenched.

***

Weeks passed. Cory continued regular deliveries to the Perkins’ house on Forest Hills Drive, and the old man waited for him without fail. Some days he only sat, staring as the delivery van approached. Cory could feel eyes on the back of his neck as he hurried up the driveway and dropped boxes unceremoniously on the front stoop. Other days he kept up the radar gun routine, aiming it with shaky hands as Cory steered cautiously around the corner.

It didn’t matter how safely he drove, or how slowly. It didn’t matter if it rained, or if the wind threatened to blow away half the neighborhood. The old man remained, planted in his lawn chair, watching. At night, back when he still slept, Cory saw him in his dreams - a boney spectre with red eyes that watched Cory run boxes up a never-ending driveway.

“A menace,” Cory found himself whispering one day as he sat in the van, staring in his rear view mirror. The old man met his gaze in the glass, unblinking.

Spring ended, and Cory dragged himself through the hot summer months. The Perkins’ baby grew rapidly - boxes previously marked newborn now proudly proclaimed the little bundle was a “Size 2.” Cory, meanwhile, was shrinking. His mother and stepdad complimented him during Sunday dinners, thinking physical labor and a job well done had finally taught him a few healthy habits. Cory knew better - on days he went to Forest Hills Drive, he usually forgot to eat. Late at night, in front of the TV after a long double shift, he’d taken to plucking at on his eyebrows, twisting until small brown tufts drifted down his nose and into his palms. Coworkers he’d once been friendly with at the warehouse began to avoid his gaze in the breakroom and cafeteria. Cory didn’t notice.

The last day in August saw record heat in the city and suburbs. Inside the van, Cory baked. Even with the windows rolled down, he could feel the sweat dripping down his company-issued polo. Cory saw the Perkins address listed on his deliveries for the day and felt the unpleasant yet familiar lurch of his stomach. He doubted the heat would drive the old man indoors.

Cory turned onto Forest Hills Drive and brought the van to a crawl, staring up the tidy lawns with foreboding. Sure enough, there he was, a denim-on-denim, rumpled heap in the lawn chair, the radar gun resting awkwardly in his narrow lap. His head, tipped back as though in sleep, snapped to attention and turned slowly to face the approaching van.

Cory took the speedometer down even more, inching his way up the street. He waved out the window with an ugly grin at the old man, who nevertheless kept the radar gun raised. I hope you break your wrist with that thing, Cory thought cheerlessly. Distracted as he was, he didn’t notice the bright yellow Big Wheel trike trundling down the Perkins’ driveway, or the little blonde boy pedaling it, until it was almost too late. He swiveled in his seat and cried out, wrenching the van to the left and colliding with the stop sign. The van crunched dully against the metal post.

“FUCK!” Cory screamed again, scrambling out of the van. “Oh fuck, oh Jesus, what happened?” He lurched his way to the front bumper clutching his chest, certain he’d run the boy down. Instead, he found him frozen with fear behind his plastic handlebars, staring up at the van’s treads. It had missed him by inches.

“Jesus Christ, kid!” Cory shouted. He felt spit fly from his lips as he bore down on the boy, only vaguely aware of a pain flaring in his right arm. He must have twisted it somehow in the seatbelt. “Get out of the street! Where are your fucking parents?! I coulda killed you!”

The boy burst into noisy sobs. He abandoned the big wheel, sprinting up the driveway and out of sight into the open garage. Behind him, Cory could hear the approach of slow feet shuffling across blacktop, and knew exactly who it was.

“THIS IS YOUR FAULT!” he roared, wheeling on his heels at the approaching old man. “If YOU hadn’t distracted me I wouldn’t have-- I would have seen--”

“You almost killed that boy,” the old man said. “And you destroyed the sign. I called the sheriff. They’re sending someone. This is a nice neighborhood and you could have killed that boy. I won’t stand for it.”

“You--” Cory wheezed. His right arm hurt like a real motherfucker now, and it felt like an elephant was sitting on his chest. “You bastard.” He reached with both hands, as though to grasp the old man’s neck. The man batted them away with a surprisingly agile slap. Cory sank to his knees in the gutter; he realized he was having a heart attack quickly, but not in time. He had a crazy last thought - Christ, this’ll put me off schedule - then fell face first in the gravel.

The old man paused for a moment, then nudged the body with his shoe. He couldn’t tell if the fellow was breathing, but judging by his stillness, he guessed not. He shrugged, to no one in particular.

“I told him to slow down,” he whispered. He looked up at the sky, as though checking for rain, and then turned away, trudging slowly to his lawn chair. He did have a neighborhood to watch, after all.