Thursday January 7, 2021

                                              The Fresh-mown Green Grass Smell

 
It was evening in Des Moines, Iowa; June, maybe. KIOA radio was rockin’. He had just got off work at the junk mail factory on the south side and was giving an elderly coworker a ride home. His white 1968 VW beetle with its twin chrome exhaust pipes was running good as he shifted smoothly through all four gears letting the rpms reach their peak, when, about midway across the northbound lanes of E. 14th Street/Hwy 69 bridge, from its intersection with Scott Street, he observed a southbound Des Moines Police car across the median, its driver sucking on a soft drink from some local take-out, who clocked him going about sixty in a forty mile an hour zone, and turned on its flashing lights.
 

The VW driver quickly changed to the outside lane where, at some point beyond the bridge, the road became E. 15th Street, and he could safely pull out of traffic and stop his vehicle so to await the officer’s arrival.
 

That’s what should have happened.
 

Gifting himself the benefit of the doubt, the VW driver thought the officer just possibly turned on his lights to warn him to slow down, and instead had continued on his way south over the Des Moines River toward Army Post Road, when his rear view mirror caught the reflection of the flashing police car lights reflecting on southbound cars nearing the end of the bridge.
 

It was then that the VW driver impulsively took the first right turn, east, onto Dean Avenue and didn’t slow down. This was virtually his own neighborhood, although he was still four blocks from his home. 

 

Downshifting, he turned north on E. 18th at Redhead Park, accelerating well above the posted speed limit. Watching for pedestrians and animals, he ‘Steve McQueened-it’ through sleepy residential intersections, downshifting to avoid using bright brake lights on darkening elm tree-canopied streets; Edna, never relinquishing neither peep or grimace, leaned into turns like a passenger on a motorcycle, alternately gripping the bottom of her car seat or placing her hand on the dash.
 

Making it as far as the unobstructed intersection of Grand Avenue and Hubbell, where the traffic semaphores were red, the VW driver stopped, his heart rate up, hoping he had lost the officer in the melee. Seeing the police lights in his rearview mirror eerily reflect in tree tops and off house windows only a few blocks behind him, he made a right turn onto Grand, now only a block and a half from his home.
 

Seeing vehicles parked along the south curb, below Edna’s apartment building about six doors down, he pulled in ahead of the last car and backed up against it to hide the shiny white-domed top of his VW from view of the intersection; the setting sun all but to the horizon creating long shadows on the city streets and all manners of chrome and mirror casting them awry. He asked Edna to wait a minute before leaving the car; she obliged. He apologized for the wild ride. She smiled and said knowingly, “I’ve raised four boys. See you tomorrow.”
 

The police car sat at the intersection for several light changes the VW driver noted, watching it the best he could through the nearly opaque window glass of the car behind him; the angle of the sun making vision difficult from both directions.
 

He saw the lights on the police car go off, then the vehicle turn slowly west onto Grand. Staying along the curb he ever so slowly pulled ahead before driving away from the curb. 

 

That’s when he saw the cop throw on his flashing lights and make a fast U-turn.
 

Tires peeling, the VW driver upshifted wildly, turning abruptly north onto E. 19th St., then downshifting again, turned abruptly east into a private drive that intersected an alley. Turning north again, he drove his car onto the private drive, along the west side of an adjoining house, straight out the driveway, across the east-west redbrick-paved street called Des Moines Street, into an opposite driveway, pulling in and parking so closely behind the vacant house there that its backdoor nor his passenger door could be opened.
 

Quickly leaving his car, he laid down in the grass, to watch the northbound squad car hesitate at E.19th and Des Moines Streets, then slowly turn east down Des Moines Street and drive very slowly past where he was hiding, and cross the railroad tracks.
 

Green grass never smelled so good, right next door to his parent’s house.