Mr. Calvin Karston was working on a large bowl of soupy cream-of-wheat, sucking the sugarless paste off a large spoon, then swishing it in his mouth, then swallowing. He was watching the clock. Sitting next to his bowl was an overripe peach, and he had used a teaspoon to dig out its pit. Peach juice was oozing out onto the plastic sheet that covered the table-cloth.
Mr. Calvin Karston had plans for the morning.
Every morning on school days, starting around seven-fifteen, teenagers began walking, skateboarding, and biking along the straightest road to the school, which led them past Mr. Karston’s house. Being a stickler for the rules he invented, he opposed much of what they did and from time to time he had even posted signs, attempting to quell the kids’ delinquent behavior.
Most of the teens simply started walking on the other side of the street. But there was a heavy handful of youngsters who, knowing they had the rules of “public right of way” on their side, broke all his rules, and sometimes toyed with trespassing. They skated despite his “No Skateboarding” signs, biked despite his “No bicycles” signs, laughed despite his “No Laughing” signs, and sometimes they even stepped onto his lawn despite the “Keep Off Lawn” signs.
Mr. Karston had taken his complaints to the Town Council requesting that an officer patrol his street from seven to nine and two to five o’clock every day, to account for early students, late students, and students who stayed after school for extracurriculars. His request was denied. The council also told him he couldn’t make the rules for the sidewalk.
Naturally, until the moment the council denied his request, he believed the law was on his side. In the face of betrayal he became livid. The amused council watched while he shouted until his bowed legs trembled under his denim overalls, and his plaid flannel shirt became moistened with his sweat. After a demonstrative monologue he raised a middle finger at the Council, then turned around and repeated the sign at everyone in attendance. A pack of Cub Scouts laughed, and their den leaders — two young mothers sitting at the boys’ flanks on the row of folding chairs — gasped. After that final salutation, Mr. Karston shuffled out of the room in a hurry.
Mr. Karston turned to vigilante-ism, set on enforcing “law and order around here.” By “here” he meant the small patch of lawn, road and sidewalk in front of his little old house.
Knowing his own limits, he decided to choose his battles. Mr. Karston could only fight for justice after 5:00 a.m., when he promptly awoke without an alarm clock, and before 4:30 p.m., after which he could give himself no realistic guarantees. After some consideration, he decided to take the afternoons off and focus on the morning traffic.
And so it was, on that particular morning, he awoke at five-o’clock in the morning, still sitting in a chair at his kitchen table. He bathed, fed the cat, fed the dog, read a newspaper, and prepared his breakfast. The overripe peach — pit removed — rested beside his breakfast bowl.
By seven-fourteen he had been pondering his plan for that day’s activities for over two hours. He had watched the second hand slowly move to the twelve and the minute hand slowly move to fourteen on the clock. When the second hand arrived at the fifty-fifth second he dropped the spoon into the bowl, and it quickly sank into the watery mush. On the fifty-sixth second he wiped the cream of wheat off his chin with his flannel shirt sleeve. Then he stood resolutely, grabbed the old peach, and waddled to the door: fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine. At seven-fifteen —- with not a second spared or wasted —- he was rambling out his front door.
From his little porch he took the three steps down, then shuffled along his cement walkway to the sidewalk, where he stood next to the mailbox. His well-manicured lawn gave him no pleasure that morning. Nor did his well-trimmed symmetrical tree, or his two little round flower beds brimming with their late spring colors.
Neighbors were up, watching through their blinds. A young mother two houses down, who had been sitting on a porch swing with her toddler, hastily gathered her little one up and went inside. Approaching teens, whether walking, skating, biking, or driving, took a sharp left. They avoided Mr. Karston’s block whenever they saw him standing beside his mailbox.
But there was one kid who refused to turn — refused to give up his perceived rights. And it was this young man —- this “damned cursed son-of-a-bitch!” as Mr. Karston would say with his gums whistling and lisping the consonants, upon whom justice would have her due.
The kid’s name was Tad Baxter, and he was a man’s man if ever one actually existed. He hunted, he fished, he played football, he wore his letterman’s jacket every day. He drove a 1978 Ford pick-up with a broken muffler, a flatbed, and a rifle hanging on a rack in the back window. He drove his truck 50 miles per hour or faster in residential zones. And because he was the mayor’s son, the town’s lonely police officer was too afraid to lift a finger. The townspeople commonly reported to one another about hearing the young man laugh while zipping past a home and watching the children run for cover. They too were afraid to get on the mayor’s bad side. So everyone simply settled with the nuisance.
There are moments in history when two despicable creatures come together and we find ourselves, to our own great surprise, rooting for one or the other. And in the moment neighbors began suspecting Tad Baxter was Mr. Karston’s target for the day, they began to wait with anticipation to see if the boy would finally get what was coming to him. The neighborhood was quiet. No breeze rustled the leaves in the trees, and even the birds seemed to pause their songs to watch.
From blocks away, a low rumble echoed through the town. Tad Baxter had started his truck, and he revved the engine three or four times, for fun, before spinning out of his father’s gravel driveway and ripping through the blocks, ignoring yield signs and stop signs, and claiming the right of way in all cases regardless of the law. He tore past the police car, where the officer pretended to enforce the twenty mile per hour zone around the Elementary School, and then, with rubber skidding along the asphalt, he pivoted onto 100 North which gave him a nine block straightaway to the High School. That, he thought, was his own personal drag strip.
Mr. Karston stood perfectly still, staring blankly at the road, as juice from the overripe peach dripped from his right hand. He had made only the slightest moves —- the flicker of an eyelid and a small shift of his head —- at the sound of Tad Baxter’s truck following its ridiculous routine. Even as the old brown truck barrelled past 500 West, 400 West, 300 West, Mr. Karston didn’t budge.
The neighbors hoped he actually had a plan. In the past, with other enemies, such as the bicyclers, loud-laughers, skateboarders and accidental lawn trespassers, he had resorted to profanity-laced rants and threats, which were effective with some teens. But such tactics would not be enough to stop the Baxter boy. Mr. Karston, the neighbors believed, was a disgusting, angry, cynical and perhaps evil old man, but he wasn’t stupid. So they watched in faith, believing he had a well-conceived plan, and they rooted for the toothless soul, in good conscience, under the “lesser of two evils” doctrine all people are forced to adopt from time to time.
Tad Baxter, passing Center Street, saw the old man in the distance and laughed to think that old Mr. Karston was at it again. He floored the accelerator.
Mr. Karston raised his head to reveal a devilish smile, and he slowly looked to his left to watch the rapidly approaching and deafening truck as it sped to 60, then 70, then 80 miles per hour and faster, with its black exhaust billowing into the neighborhood and filtering into all the homes along its path.
Mr. Karston’s fingers squeezed gently at the peach, while he seemed to feel for the best place to hold it. As the truck approached, his nostrils flared, his pupils dilated, and his little toothless jaw became suddenly more square. The gladiator was in the arena, and the emperor seemed to have taken up his sword! Two hundred feet, one hundred fifty, one hundred; Mr. Karston’s muscles tensed. Seventy-five, fifty, twenty-five, ten —-
Nobody saw the slight flicker of Mr. Karston’s wrist, but they certainly saw what happened next. Tad Baxter’s truck suddenly swerved to the left, then overcorrected to the right, then again to the left. Black treadmarks were left to map the truck’s progress as he punched the breaks.It spun around with a prolonged screech, then stopped, facing opposite its original direction of travel. Its suspension made it wobble back and forth for a moment before it finally stood still.
Once the truck stopped, the neighbors could see what happened: from side to side and top to bottom, the windshield was covered with a juicy peach veneer.
Mr. Karston had waited until the perfect moment, tossed the old peach into the street, and it struck the planned target —- the lower center of Tad Baxter’s windshield. The laws of the universe being as they are, the soggy old peach had burst in a nearly perfect splatter.
Tad Baxter, like an angry bull, leapt out of his truck looking like the stereotype he was, and saying the kinds of things jocks say when they’re angry. He used his hand to try wiping the goo off his windshield, which angered him all the more when his hand and jacket sleeve received a fresh coat of peach slime. Then he turned toward Mr. Karston, who remained in his original place at the sidewalk, but had turned to face Tad resolutely. “Are you effing crazy?” Tad shouted, with his hands out and that stupid look on his face we’ve all seen at some point in a too-arrogant teenaged boy.
“What the f —- I mean, seriously! What the f —- ! You stupid old bastard. I mean: What. The. F —- !” He retrieved a stale old gym towel from behind his seat and tried to wash his windshield shouting “What. The. F —- !” every few seconds for a couple of minutes, before getting back in his truck, spinning it around, and driving away at a perfect twenty five miles per hour.
The neighbors watched, confounded that a peach could yield such amazing results.
For his part, Mr. Karston said nothing and did nothing throughout Tad Baxter’s curse-laden tantrum. When the truck turned into the school parking lot a few blocks away, and was out of sight, the neighbors slowly stepped outside and waved hesitantly to the old man, who, they had to admit, was a kind of unlikely savior.
Mr. Calvin Karston paid them no mind. He turned around, walked slowly back up his walkway, up the steps, and into his house, slamming the door behind him.***NOTE: This story is fiction and is not autobiographical.