The Cadillac That Finally Paid Me Back

It was a Thursday in May. I was in the garage with the door up, pulling the carburetor on Edith Caldwell’s tiller, and I heard that Escalade come roaring out of the driveway and then a sound like a bowling ball going into a kettle drum. I came out wiping my hands and both my cans were flat in the street. One was split down the side. The lid had sailed clear across into the Petersens’ yard. Trash was everywhere, because of course it was Thursday and they were full. Coffee grounds and a busted bag and junk mail all down the gutter.

The Escalade was already gone. Just taillights going over the rise toward the highway.

I stood there a minute. Then I picked it all up. I got a new can that Saturday at the farm store in town, eleven dollars and some change, and I painted my number on it, and I figured it for an accident. Anybody can misjudge a corner once.

He hit them again the next Thursday.

This time I saw it. I was out front with my coffee, and I watched that white truck come down the driveway and swing wide and catch both cans square with the back corner and send them tumbling, and this time I saw his face through the window. He was not surprised. He did not even slow down. He glanced in the mirror at the mess rolling behind him and he kept going.

That was the morning it stopped being an accident. An accident is a thing that happens to you. This was a thing he was doing.

I walked over that evening. I knocked. He opened the door holding a glass of wine and wearing the kind of sweater you are not supposed to get anything on.

“Brent,” I said. “I think you’ve been clipping my trash cans when you back out. Two weeks running now. I just wanted to mention it, no hard feelings, maybe just give that corner a little room.”

He looked at me the way he had looked at the banana bread.

“Those cans are basically in the street,” he said.

“They’re at the end of my driveway,” I said. “Same spot they’ve been thirty years.”

“Well, maybe thirty years ago people didn’t drive real vehicles,” he said, and he smiled when he said it, and that smile is the thing I kept thinking about for a long time after. “Look, they’re township cans. They give you a new one if it breaks. It’s not a big deal. Honestly? Maybe don’t store your garbage where people need to drive.”