Louisiana Street

by Stephen Dean Ingram

Houston 1988

Andrew gasps as he emerges from the revolving door and steps out onto the sidewalk. Gone is the over-chilled air which condenses and streams down the inside of the floor-to-ceiling office building windows. August’s soggy heat drapes around him like an unwanted blanket.

He’s spent the morning in a conference room defending a deposition. Simple collection matter, really. His client, the person being deposed, was a former suburban bank president. Respected in his gulf coast community, he was always dressed in a banker’s blue pinstripe suit, side-parted short banker’s haircut. But collapsed oil prices and the ensuing S&L crisis took the bank down, the bank directors hounded him about their underwater loan portfolio, and he had a nervous breakdown. The man was fired by the board, gained a hundred pounds, and lost the ability to count. Now he sat in the conference room clad in a windbreaker, with dark baggy eyes and unwashed hair clinging to his forehead. Any questions about numbers, and it’s all about numbers, pushed him to the brink of tears. Andrew had to pull him into a darkened room periodically and watch him pace in circles until he calmed down. He felt sorry for the man. Then again, the man opened twenty credit card accounts and took out a dozen personal loans from bank friends in town, knowing he had no means to repay any of it. Who is to say who the bad guy is.

Andrew looks up to the block of Houston sky visible above the building tops. The coastal rainclouds haven’t yet moved in for the day’s summer afternoon deluge. Hazy sunlight glares from green glass towers. Sidewalks burn and shimmer the heat back up to the sky.

Beads of perspiration pop from his forehead. He turns and walks to the corner. A red hand greets him from the pedestrian signal on the opposite corner. Others bunch around him waiting for the light to turn. A trash can overflowing with lunchtime discards stands next to them.

He glances around him. Typical mid-day sidewalk crowd: another guy in a glen plaid suit like Andrew’s, Ray-Bans on; sidewalk cleaner slouches with his broom and sweep catcher; runty Rastafarian with dreads stuffed into a Jamaican flag-colored knit hat; delivery guy with shaved head and messenger bag swung across his chest, earbuds in, head rocking forward in pulses. Andrew guesses death metal, judging from the flying skull tattoo wrapping the guy’s neck. The rest are nondescript office drones, coming back from lunch, dropping off papers, going for a smoke, namelessly stoking the fires of the engines of commerce.

There is also a young woman, probably mid-20s, somebody’s admin, pretty, dark brown hair pulled back for business, white dress, flats. Andrew’s gaze rests on her for a second longer than he intends. She glances sideways at him and gives a weak smile of acknowledgement. He looks down and shifts his weight to the other foot, clears his throat and adjusts his grip on the handle of his briefcase, palm sticky. 

He hopes he isn’t going to sweat through his suit again. He had a trial in the old courthouse last year and the air conditioning wasn’t working. Salt stains from the sweat made white ovals down each side of his coat. In the old days, so he heard, the judges would post a summer notice at the courthouse that coats for attorneys were optional in the courtroom in June, July and August. Like Clarence Darrow in those old photos, in suspenders, with a hand-held fan. They don’t do that anymore.

He glances toward the woman again and tries to think of something to say that won’t make her immediately roll her eyes. “So, hot enough—”

The light changes. He turns to the pedestrian signal. Flashing numbers count down the time to cross. He knows not to push it, because Houston drivers will run you down if they’ve got the green, or any bit of yellow. Everyone on the corner begins to edge forward.

A siren rings out just as Andrew steps off the curb. He quickly steps back and looks for the source. Traffic is packed up to the stop light on northbound Louisiana. Cherry red lights rotate on top of a vehicle some distance back from the intersection. It’s an ambulance. Cars pull to and fro to make way for it. The red light weaves between the cars, and the ambulance comes up just behind the first row of vehicles facing the intersection. 

Andrew scans the row of vehicles. A Volvo SUV in one lane, a Ford Explorer next – and in the lane immediately in front of the ambulance, a Chevy pickup, dusky brown. Maybe mid-1950s. Whatever color it was originally is lost to the ages. Front grille gone, rust-crusted fenders, bulbous hood strapped down with wire. Homemade wooden frame protruding up from its bed. The pickup’s windows are down, and he can see the driver, an elderly Black man wearing a brimmed straw hat, shoulders stooped, knobby hands on the large steering wheel. You would still see old men like that, down from Tomball or over from the east side, in overalls, driving old trucks, still working a leftover patch of fescue and peas or grazing a couple of old cows on some unloved land near a highway. The driver doesn’t move, doesn’t seem to notice the commotion behind him. The ambulance’s siren echoes off the canyon walls of the office buildings, lights flashing expectantly. 

Andrew leans forward from his perch on the corner with crumpled brow, as if signaling to the driver with his body language. Move! A bead of sweat rolls down his forehead. The driver of the pickup remains motionless. Clumps of pedestrians are at all four corners of the intersection. All eye the old man.

Nothing.

A klaxon blares from the blocked ambulance.

Still nothing.

Finally, the pickup edges forward. Very slowly. But cross traffic still has the green light and cars are streaming across, unaware of the ambulance, and unaware of the old man in the pickup. First car, second car, third car - is he going to stop - they don’t see him - Oh, God - fourth car; then a white sedan crosses just as the pickup, heedless, rolls into its lane.

Skrraak! 

The pickup pushes the white car sideways. Not enough to stop it, but enough to make it into a spinning top as it loses its momentum. It skitters to one side, then swings the other way toward Andrew’s corner. Everyone on the corner instinctively draws back. The white car then swings back again, toward the opposing sidewalk. 

A young girl in a plaid skirt walks down the sidewalk, a man – her father? – walking behind. The car veers directly toward her. She turns toward the car and freezes, arms straight down by her side.

Andrew can’t move, can’t speak. Nor does anybody else. It all plays out before them, this sudden performance of a tragedy, this street now a stage, they the audience. All other sound falls away but for the scrape of metal and the whirr-whirr of the tires as the white car thrashes about.

The man behind the girl scoops her up, her thin legs flopping behind her. He runs forward with her in his arms. The car jumps the curb and smacks into the marble wall of the building in front of which the girl had just stood. Smoke squeezes out from under the car’s crumpled hood. The man continues to run down the street, the girl dangling from his arms like an unwieldy toy.

The light changes again. All clear to walk. Other sounds return. Lots of people talking. Several people approach the white car, its driver nodding to them. The man with the girl is gone. The ambulance moves around the pickup, its siren scolding him and dissipating in the heavy air as it continues on. Somewhere there is a shooting, or a heart attack, or a fall off a roof, where it is needed. The pickup sits alone in the middle of the intersection, the old man’s head bowed down, hands still on the wheel.

No point in staying there. There are lots of witnesses, nothing he can do, nothing he can add. He looks to where the admin in the white dress had stood. She’s gone back to her particle-board cubicle or rosewood reception desk. Everyone else moves on. There is dry cleaning to pick up, there are meetings to get to, copies to make, trouble to make, money to make. The stream of pedestrians envelop and move past the accident scene, as if washing away all traces of the incident.

He shrugs and walks to his car in the parking garage a couple blocks down. Wet, putrefied smells assault his nostrils in intervals each time he passes a sewer grate. He looks up into the hazy sun and lets the nimbus of light overtake him, the heat radiating through his body, so hot that he feels coldness. A cleansing feeling. He sighs as he turns on the ignition to his car and lets the air conditioning blast his face. He shudders agreeably as the cold air evaporates the sweat on his skin. Then he shudders again, but this time not from the air conditioning. Something wells up inside of him and he chokes it back, gulping, and hugs himself. He looks up to see if anyone sees him.

BIO: Stephen Dean Ingram’s writing has appeared in Gulf Stream Magazine, Santa Barbara Literary Journal (Pushcart nominee), Synkroniciti (Best of the Net nominee), Blood & Bourbon, and other publications. Stephen Dean Ingram ingsteph05@gmail.com