“That thing’s taking up TWO SPOTS, man.” The guy in the BMW was leaning out his window, pointing at my truck.
My disabled placard was hanging right there. I’d lost most of the feeling in my left leg in Fallujah when I was twenty-three. I don’t walk fast. I don’t explain myself to strangers in parking lots.
I said, “I’m legal,” and kept moving.
“You don’t LOOK disabled,” he said. His wife in the passenger seat didn’t say anything. She just looked at her phone.
I went inside, got my prescription, came back out. The BMW was still there, engine running. He’d waited.
“Stolen valor,” he said. “That’s what that is. My tax dollars.”
I’m Darnell. I did two tours. I have a Purple Heart in a drawer at home that I never look at anymore. I didn’t say any of that.
I said, “Have a good one,” and got in my truck.
That’s when the old man appeared.
He’d been sitting on the bench outside the pharmacy the whole time. White-haired, maybe seventy-five. He’d heard everything.
“Son,” he said, “you got a minute?”
We sat on that bench for twenty minutes. His name was Gerald Hicks. He told me he’d been watching that BMW driver for a while – said the man parked there every Thursday, always in the fire lane, always had something to say to someone.
“I got his plate,” Gerald said. “And I know somebody.”
I asked him what that meant.
“City code enforcement. My nephew.” He smiled. “That car’s been ticketed four times this year. He’s been fighting them. One more and they boot it.”
Gerald pulled out his phone and made a call right there. Thirty seconds. Hung up.
We watched the BMW from the bench. Fifteen minutes later, a city truck pulled in. The driver got out with a boot.
The BMW owner came running out of the pharmacy.
“WAIT, WAIT – I was only inside for a SECOND – “
Gerald stood up slowly, straightened his jacket, and said, “Funny how that works.”
What I Almost Did Instead
I want to be honest about the eleven seconds between “stolen valor” and “have a good one.”
Eleven seconds is a long time when your blood is up. I know what I looked like standing there. Forty-one years old, a little thick through the middle now, moving slower than I used to. I was wearing a plain gray t-shirt and jeans. No hat with a unit insignia. No bumper sticker. Nothing that would tell a stranger anything.
That’s the point, actually. I stopped explaining myself a long time ago.
But those eleven seconds. I ran the whole tape. What I could say. What his face would do. Whether his wife would finally look up from her phone. I thought about the Purple Heart in the drawer and whether I’d ever once wanted to use it as a weapon in an argument and the answer, if I’m being straight, is yes. A few times. Early on, when I was still raw about everything.
I didn’t. I said “have a good one” because I’ve learned that the people who talk like that in parking lots are not looking for information. They already know what they know. You could hand them your DD-214 and your medical file and a signed letter from God and they’d find something wrong with the font.
So I let it go.
Except I didn’t really, because my hands were doing that thing where they go very still and I was moving toward my truck with too much focus, the way you move when you’re working hard to move normally. And Gerald saw it.
The Bench
He was just sitting there. That’s the thing. Not waiting for a bus, not on his phone. Just sitting on that wooden bench outside the Walgreens like he had nowhere to be and nothing to prove and all afternoon to spend watching the parking lot.
White hair, short. Jacket that was too warm for the weather, the kind of jacket that old men wear because they’re cold in ways younger people don’t understand yet. Clean brown shoes. His hands were on his knees and he was watching me the whole time I was walking to my truck.
“Son,” he said.
I almost kept going. I’m not proud of that but it’s true. I was still inside those eleven seconds even though I was twenty feet past them, and part of me just wanted to get in the truck and drive somewhere and sit in a parking lot by myself for a while, which is a thing I do sometimes.
But something about how he said it. Not loud. Not calling across the lot. Just “son,” like we were already mid-conversation.
I stopped.
“You got a minute?”
I looked at him. He didn’t look like someone who was going to tell me about his grandson or ask me to help him find his car. He looked like someone who had already decided something.
I went and sat down.
Gerald Hicks, Retired
He didn’t ask me about the placard or the leg or the military. Didn’t ask me to explain myself or verify anything. He just started talking like we were two people who’d been sitting on the same bench for years.
He told me his name. Gerald Hicks. Retired from the city, he said, thirty-two years in public works. He told me he came to this Walgreens every Thursday to pick up his wife’s blood pressure medication because she didn’t like to drive anymore and he liked the excuse to get out of the house.
“Marlene thinks I just go to the pharmacy,” he said. “I also stop at the diner on Fifth and have a piece of pie. Don’t tell her.”
I told him I wouldn’t.
Then he told me about the BMW.
He’d been watching this guy for three months. Same car, same spot, same fire lane, same attitude. Gerald had seen him yell at a woman with a stroller. Seen him block a delivery truck for ten minutes and not move. Seen him, once, get out and actually point at a car that was idling in the lot waiting for a space and tell the driver to move along.
“He’s the kind of man,” Gerald said, “who’s decided that rules are for other people.”
He said it flat, no heat in it. Just a statement of fact like reading a weather report.
Gerald had started writing down the plate number back in February. Habit, he said. “I worked thirty-two years with people who wrote things down and people who didn’t. The ones who wrote things down always won.”
He’d mentioned the plate to his nephew, Dale, who worked code enforcement for the city. Dale had looked it up. Four tickets already this year, all fire lane violations, all contested. The guy had actually hired someone to help him fight the tickets, which struck me as a remarkable amount of energy to spend on being wrong.
One more ticket and they’d boot the car. That was the threshold.
Gerald said this the way you’d describe a train schedule. Matter-of-fact. Already decided.
“I got his plate,” Gerald said. “And I know somebody.”
Thirty Seconds
He dialed on a flip phone. An actual flip phone, the kind I haven’t seen outside of a movie in ten years.
It rang twice. Gerald said, “Dale, it’s me. He’s here. Fire lane, same spot.” Pause. “Yep.” Pause. “Okay.” He hung up.
Snapped the phone shut.
“Fifteen, twenty minutes,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say to that. So I didn’t say anything.
We sat there. The BMW was idling in the fire lane, engine running, hazards blinking in that way people use hazards to mean this doesn’t count. The wife was still in the passenger seat. I could see her through the glass, still on her phone, completely separate from whatever her husband was doing in the world.
Gerald asked me where I was from. I told him. He asked me what branch. I told him. He nodded and said his older brother had done Korea and come back a different person and that their family had spent a long time figuring out what to do with that and mostly they’d gotten it wrong.
“We just didn’t talk about it,” he said. “That was the thing back then. You didn’t talk about it and then one day he was gone and we’d wasted all that time not talking about it.”
He said it looking straight out at the parking lot.
I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say that would fit in the space between us on that bench.
After a while he said, “You doing alright?”
I said, “Most days.”
He nodded. “That’s enough.”
The Boot
The city truck came in from the far entrance, no lights, no drama. Just a white truck with a city seal on the door, pulling up slow.
The guy who got out was younger than I expected. Maybe thirty. He had the walk of someone who had done this enough times that it was just a job. He didn’t look at the pharmacy. He didn’t look at us. He just went to the front left wheel of the BMW and started working.
Gerald watched with his hands on his knees.
The wife in the passenger seat looked up from her phone for the first time. She watched the city worker for a second, then turned toward the pharmacy entrance. I could see her face change.
She knew.
She didn’t get out. She just turned back to her phone.
He came through the pharmacy doors with a bag in his hand, not looking at the lot yet, saying something to himself or to nobody, and then he saw the truck and the guy crouching by his front wheel and he went from standing to running in about half a step.
“WAIT, WAIT – I was only inside for a SECOND – “
The city worker didn’t even look up. He’d heard it before. He’d heard it a thousand times in every variation. He just kept working.
“I’m a CUSTOMER – this is a CUSTOMER parking lot – you can’t – “
Gerald stood up. Slow, the way he did everything. Straightened his jacket. Smoothed the front of it with one hand.
The BMW guy was still going. Something about his lawyer. Something about the mayor.
Gerald looked at him for just a second, not long, and said, “Funny how that works.”
The guy turned. He didn’t know who Gerald was. He didn’t know about the flip phone or the thirty-two years in public works or the nephew named Dale or the three months of Thursdays. He just saw a seventy-five-year-old man in a too-warm jacket who had said something to him.
He didn’t say anything back.
Maybe something in Gerald’s face. I don’t know.
Gerald turned to me, put his hand out. I shook it.
“You take care of yourself,” he said.
“Yes sir,” I said.
He walked to his car. A ten-year-old Buick, parked correctly, in a regular spot two rows back. He got in, pulled out careful, and drove away.
I sat there another minute. The BMW guy was on his phone now, pacing. His wife had finally gotten out of the car. She was standing with her arms crossed, not looking at him.
I got in my truck.
I drove to the diner on Fifth. I didn’t know if it was the same one Gerald meant but there was pie in the case when I walked in, peach and something with a lattice top, and I sat at the counter and ordered a slice and ate it slow.
I don’t know why I did that. It just seemed like the right thing.
—
If this one got you, pass it on. Some stories deserve more than one set of eyes.
For more stories about people who just don’t get it, read about my best friend who planned my wedding for herself, or what happened when my husband told his mistress to delete something. And if you’re in the mood for something a little more dramatic, check out my father’s insurance sales career that ended with a bullet through our window.
