Last week I was driving with a guy in my truck. It was raining, and it shouldn't have been -- not at that time of morning, not that much, not on a day when we were doing what we needed to do that day. The guy looked out the window at the rain that was interfering with what we were doing and he said something like, today is one of those days when I just feel like driving through a huge puddle on the side of the road and drenching somebody walking on the sidewalk.
It caught me off guard when he said that. I didn't expect that from this particular guy. I didn't understand why he'd say that and I had no idea what to even say in response to something like that, so I just didn't say anything at all. I was the one driving, so what he said was an idle threat anyway. I cringed when he said it, and I moved on with my day, with the project we were working on.
Thursday I was on my way to the gym, trying to get there and back in the amount of time I had. I usually ride my bike, but it was afternoon and the rain was starting to come down already so I decided to drive. I was happy with the decision because by the time I was heading down First Avenue, it was pouring so hard that the bike lane looked like a stream. There was a black Jeep in front of me and the driver was messing around, drifting into the bike lane near the curb, into the stream, sending a rooster tail of water cascading down onto the sidewalk.
I watched the impressive shower of water churned up by the Jeep's wide tires. It made me think back to last week, back to what the guy I was riding with said about drenching someone on the sidewalk. It made me sad again to think that the guy said what he did. I was glad there wasn't anyone on the sidewalk to catch the Jeep's wake.
I wasn't glad for long, though. The Jeep was still in the bike lane making its torrential spray and I saw a man walking on the sidewalk against traffic, maybe twenty-five years old, soaked from the rain, carrying a shoulder bag with the strap across his chest -- the kind of bag a bike messenger would carry. He had his hands pushed down deep into the pockets of his long baggy cargo shorts, it seemed like as deep as they'd go. His shoulders were rounded down from how deep his hands were in his pockets, but he walked with a straight back and his face looking forward, as if defiant against the downpour.
The Jeep continued on course and I could see the impact on the walker as the heavy wall of water struck his body. He didn't break his stride. He didn't look away even though he certainly saw what was coming, but the weight of the water pushed him a few inches off his course to his left, enough so that I could notice it. He didn't turn to glare at the Jeep or give the driver the finger. He just kept walking up First Avenue with the sack on his back as if the Jeep's spray was as inevitable as the rain falling down from the sky. It didn't even surprise him that a person would do that to him.
Where was that man going? Was he on his way home from the library? Was he going to his girlfriend's house? He was walking near a bus stop behind him. Had he just stepped off the bus? What was in his shoulder bag? Was it his books for summer school he'd had a hard time buying because they were so expensive? Was it the books from the library he'd placed on hold because he needed them for his thesis? Was his ipod in there? His laptop? A notebook he'd started a story in that morning at Bentley's? He was coming from somewhere and he was going somewhere and he was carrying a bag, bearing the weight of its contents on his shoulder and his spine and hips. He was a man somebody decided to hit in the face with a wall of water for no other reason other than they could.
Seeing that man get wet sucked the wind out of me.
The Jeep continued on down First Avenue, moving into the bike lane for a splash and then back into the regular lane -- weaving to the right and back left again. Eventually it turned right into a neighborhood street and was gone.
I thought of the wet man with his shoulder bag, and it reminded me of a girl I saw the week before. I saw her while riding with the guy who wanted to splash somebody. The guy was talking, telling me about something altogether unrelated. It had been more than an hour since he'd made his comment about wanting to drench somebody. I would have thought he'd forgotten even saying what he did. I wanted to think that. We'd been busy for that hour -- we'd been out of the truck and back in. As we drove by the girl he looked out the window at her and said she'd be a perfect candidate for splashing. The girl was just going from one place to another, walking along the sidewalk. She happened to be walking north on First Avenue, just like the man with the shoulder bag I saw, and if circumstances had been a little different, her shoes would have been ruined by the guy I was riding with.
After the Jeep turned off into the neighborhood the car in front of me was a Chevy SUV, like a Suburban or something. Black. I drove behind it for a minute or two after the Jeep turned off and then the Chevy drifted over the solid white line into the bike lane just as the Jeep had done. The truck was so big, and the plume of water it threw out so high and long I couldn't see past the SUV for a few seconds. The truck moved back out of the bike lane just as we passed what the driver was aiming for. A woman on a bicycle riding on the sidewalk towing a baby trailer behind her. The water from the SUV crashed down onto her and the baby trailer. It was so much water it looked like an ocean wave washed over them, a wave you could surf on like the ones I used to see at the north shore on Oahu.
That was the target. A woman on her bicycle with her baby. The SUV driver deliberately moved into the water to drench the woman with her baby. I drove behind the black SUV all the way to my gym and not once did the driver move into the bike lane. It hadn't been an accident, the driver just wanted to make the girl and the baby wet with dirty road wash.
Three times in less than seven days I was reminded of a blackness in the hearts of people, a small blight there that makes them think, at least at some points in their lives, that soaking a person walking on the sidewalk is a funny thing to do, something to do when you're having a bad day. If our brains are wired for that kind of carelessness, if that's the way we're built to treat a stranger having a hard time on a rainy day, what hope is there generally for us as people? If we'll splash a stranger who looks like us and lives in the same city we do, how can we ask the people of Israel or the fighters in the Hezbollah to act with any sense of restraint? If it's in us to soak a woman and her baby with dirty water, who are we to ask anybody to treat his actual legitimate enemy with forbearance or compassion?
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