published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on January 22nd, 2010.
Last week's column was about the stooped old man who cleared our driveway of snow. His accent made him difficult to understand. After his exertion in the cold, I invited him in to warm up with a cup of coffee, and my sons (aged 14, 11, and 4) and my 7-year-old daughter introduced themselves. (My husband and teenaged daughter were busy watching something on History Channel upstairs.) The old man's topic of conversation made me uneasy.
He learned we were from India, and he mentioned he knew several Indians, one of whom had owned a business and suffered a violent end due to unpaid debt. Or, at least, that was what I could gather from his accent and garbled speech that made him sound like he was speaking with marbles in his mouth.
He pointed his index finger right between his own eyebrows to simulate a pistol going off. I glanced at my four-year-old. Lord, let him not pick up and repeat this gesture. (I knew the kids were somewhat insulated; no one else could understand him well.) Repeating this gesture would be risky at school where his sweet, sweet, teacher had once asked that he refer to killer whales by the less violent term, “orca.”
Then, my teenaged daughter came down, introducing herself as I like the children to do. The moment she arrived, the man's face lit up. Way up.
He promised reduced-rate services. His voice rose and he drew his words out long, so everyone, unfortunately, could understand him. “How old you?” he inquired enthusiastically. She said “seventeen,” and his response was, “Dang! I thought you 21 or 25 or sumpin'.” He proceeded to make smacking sounds as if he had just consumed some delectable dessert. Even if my precious, flesh-and-blood had been 25, that would still make her about 40 years too young for him, I wanted to say.
He asked that I cool his coffee with a little half-and-half, which I hurriedly did. He himself could have used a little cooling off, I thought, as he continued to look my daughter up and down. She had been doing homework and college applications all day, and was thankfully shabbily dressed with no makeup and a sloppy ponytail. My daughter crossed her arms high over her ample bosom, in what she terms the “protective stance.”
“Tevy,” my high-pitched voice came from behind gritted teeth encased in a fake smile, “why don't you go get your FATHER?” I emphasized the father part, because that would take my too-delightful daughter out of view and replace the lovely sight of her with someone bigger, grouchier, and loaded with angry testosterone.
My daughter disappeared, and the man prepared to leave. (He had wanted me to cool his coffee so he could drink it and get out of our way.) He had suffered partial paralysis in 1991, he told us in the foyer, after being hit in the head with a baseball bat. I wonder whose daughter he had been checking out then, and why that lesson hadn't been enough the first time around.
He felt compelled to corroborate his story by showing his epilepsy medications. His good hand fished around inside his jacket, and he produced a water bottle to prove that he had to swallow his meds. Then he continued fumbling in his jacket before producing a bottle. Unfortunately, the last time he had taken his medications, he must have forgotten to close the container or perhaps he had used his bad hand, because right then, tiny pink and white capsules tumbled all over the floor and inside of his jacket. We immediately crated our little dog Betty Lou.
“Doan wan y'all thinkin' Ahm no drug attic nor nuthin'.” Yes. A pedophile on prescription drugs is so much more tolerable than a child molester who is also abusing drugs. By this time, my husband partially descended the stairs and was on the scene. I helped pick up the man's medications, and when he was unable to retrieve the capsules from inside his jacket, I was in the uncomfortable position of having to delicately pluck them off his person without touching his body. Remember that game called “Operation” where you had to remove bones with the forceps without touching the metal and making the buzzer go off? This man's buzzer had obviously already gone off quite enough.
I spied my daughter hiding in the darkened living room, and gave her a fierce eyeball. This was her cue to hold her position till the coast was clear. Once the man got back onto the porch with his shovel, he promised to return the next time it snowed.
My husband, who had only come down at the end of this meeting, just glared at me and went back upstairs in complete silence. The poor man knows that anything he says, can and will be published in a future column.
As I write, we are expecting 20 inches of snow in the worst storm in decades. I'm scared – and it's not of the snow.
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