Wheeling, Wild and Weird

 

Just when I thought it’d be another dull day at the National Road Spic and Span Dry Cleaners/Laundry, all us bored ladies tending our Kenmore machines got spooked good. Waiting for the drier to eat up my quarters, I looked out the sweating plate glass windows. I witnessed the whole shebang—from start to finish.

The tires of an old green Dodge screeched to a stop long before the rusting body. Out shot a spindly dervish who pulled his energy in a stream behind him. “Blam. Blam.” The two glass doors parted. In he lurched, amidst the Oxydol steam and women in polyester and pink curlers. His right hand, a gnarled claw, grabbed the vending machine in an attempt to steady his swaying body. His left hand fumbled in a pocket. He wore a faded brownish, bluish, greenish plaid hunting jacket, several sizes too small, vintage Sears. A boney wrist extruded maybe five inches from tattered cuffs. He glommed a handful of change, dropping “plink, plink” several on the dusty floor, and began jamming nickels in the vending machine. Down came the lever. Out slid the first green plastic bag then about nine more. I lost count.

As his frantic ritual drew to a close, the other patrons backed off. I glanced at several ashen-faced women near the driers. We flashed each other the “save the children” look.

He pivoted like a cripple on crutches, knocked into the folding table, careened around the wash tubs, and shoved his way through the glass doors, still vibrating from his previous assault. Out he ran to the Dodge, opened the trunk and, after rummaging for thirty seconds, tossed in the bags and his coat.

Again with that automaton-on-roller skates gait, he burst back into the laundry. A halo of thin white hair floated in wisps above his reddened crown. A frown marshaled his sagging, mottled skin. Spittle foamed at the corners of his chapped, blue lips. Intensity hunched his coat hanger shoulders from which hung curved bones. His white shirt bunched at the waist, puckered by the black belt that pleated his now five sizes too big green work pants, rolled up at the ankles, but frayed nonetheless. White socks covered knobs protruding over scuffed but sensible black oxfords. More digging, more frenzied breathing, more nickels, more plastic bags—out he jumped.

I stood transfixed at the window.

He yanked open the car door. At once, he accelerated, then snaked ahead in a violent U turn right in front of the cleaners—into the oncoming traffic on National Road. Escaping catastrophe, don’t ask me how, he chuffed towards the intersection by Rax, jumped the curb at National Tire, but found the road, “clunk,” and zoomed through the red light. As the light turned green, his back bumper sank below the crest of the hill.

Several women bolted. Having to dry jeans on line or bush trumped risking the chance of another encounter with a possible ax murderer in need of bags to bury the bloody pieces.

One of the curler-decked women waved for me to follow, but I sat back on the scarred wooden bench and pondered this latest brush with Wild Wheeling. I decided then and there to use that Sears’ credit card burning a hole in my purse to get me a Kenmore of my own.

As National Road got spiffed, Spic and Span disappeared. Just like the old man, gone . . . but forgotten? Never.

L. N. Passmore

 

L. N. Passmore bids you to come visit Lisnafaer and her other green worlds.