Story 10 | A Quiet Little Saturday
Two odd-couple neighbors are thrust into a wild life-or-death situation that forces them to set aside differences and work together.
This September, when walking through the Fan neighborhood of Richmond, I passed a most singular character lounging in front of a local market. I was fascinated by his entire demeanor: bare feet dangling brazenly into the sidewalk, sipping on a High Life at noon, entirely at ease.
Immediately, I wanted to write a story about him, so I covertly snapped his photo (apologies, sir) to help me later with details.
Driving home from there, I passed a clean-cut man blowing leaves on his block, while wearing a baby. I only have a mental picture of him, but I knew these two gents needed to meet, interacting in a comedic way, perhaps a light “The Hangover” vibe.
The only question was what would happen…
A Quiet Little Saturday
It was a quiet little Saturday. Just now noon, Darren had already cleaned up their townhouse’s front yard and was now blowing the fall leaves with his 10-month-old son Oliver strapped to his chest. The little champ was obsessed with watching the blower, so Darren figured he’d clean up the block while he was at it and keep the peace a bit while his wife was at Target. He had already missed College GameDay, but there was plenty of time to watch the afternoon games. It was good for Oliver to see his father serving the family first, then they could continue his son’s football indoctrination. Or maybe the little guy would go down for a nap – win win.
With his protective earwear on, Darren only noticed his neighbor thanks to a flicker of movement across the street. Given how late last night’s part had raged on, Darren was surprised the guy was moving this early. Their homes faced each other, though one side of the block decidedly had a higher property value; the blocks in this downtown neighborhood fluctuated like that. The music hadn’t been that loud, so Darren decided against calling 311. All part of city life, he decided. He had been young once, too.
The neighbor pushed through his wonky screen door and crossed his mossy patch of patio to plop onto a lawn chair, kicking off his flip-flops and cracking open a High Life. Darren would recognize that can anywhere. Bare feet dangling into the sidewalk, he was the picture of an overgrown frat boy, sporting visor sunglasses, a rumpled floral-bordering-on-Hawaiian button-down and teal shorts with a progressive inseam. It was a look, underscored by the man’s obvious need for a shower.
Darren glanced down at his paired athletic wear, work gloves and boots – and his son sucking his thumb, eyes fixed on the leaf blower. He realized he was the one making noise now. But it was noon, a completely acceptable timeframe. Speaking of noise, Darren thought he heard something and shut off the blower’s motor to assess.
“Hey man!”
It was the neighbor.
“I was thinking if you put that baby on your back…”
Darren still couldn’t quite hear, so he pulled off his headphones.
“Sorry, what’d you say?”
The neighbor cupped his hands around his mouth and started shouting, “IF YOU PUT THE BABY ON YOUR BACK, HE WOULDN’T BE TWISTING SO MUCH TO WATCH YOU WORK.”
“Whoa, I can hear you now!” Darren looked both ways and jogged across the street so they wouldn’t have to shout over passing cars or disturb their neighbors.
“Don’t you think that would work better? And then jack him up so he can see over your shoulder.” The neighbor mimed pulling on backpack straps.
“Oh, that’s not how these things work from a safety perspective. That would be more of a hiking carrier. And he has to be a certain weight before we graduate him.”
“Cool. Yeah, sure.”
Darren felt bad for rejecting his idea outright, but there were rules for babywearing.
“We’ve not met yet. I’m Darren, and this is Oliver. We live right there with my wife, Lindsay,” he said, pointing back at their home.
“Cool to meet you. I’m Ryan.”
“So, Ryan, where do you go to school?”
“Dude, I graduated years ago. I own this house. Aren’t we the same age? I’m 29.”
“Huh. So am I.” That was unexpected.
Darren was trying to figure out how best to proceed, when Ryan suddenly seemed distracted.
“What is that? Do you hear that?” Ryan set his beer down and rose to his feet, as Darren paused to listen. There was a faint sound in the distance, moving toward them. Not a siren. More like…
…a screaming kid on an out-of-control rental scooter. They couldn’t see him well yet, as he was a couple blocks off, but he was barreling down the middle of the street, his cry vacillating wildly but favoring terror over joy.
“Holy shit!” Ryan exclaimed. “We gotta help him. Blow him over with your blower. Or hit him with it.”
“Are you mad? He’s going too fast to handle that crash! I’ll call 911.”
Darren squinted at the distance to get a description of the boy to give to the police, though calling in a screaming child on a scooter would probably be sufficient for identification. The child was probably six or seven, had brown hair and was wearing a green tee.
“He doesn’t have that kind of time!” Ryan said. “We have to get him.”
“You going to run after him in flip-flops? Take Oliver, I’ll chase him.”
“You’ll never match a scooter’s velocity on foot. I’ve got this.”
“Did you just use the word velocity?”
Darren didn’t think he had uttered the question quite so loudly, he had meant it rhetorically, but Ryan called back “I’m an engineer!” as he ran over to a ramshackle garage next to his house. He pulled the door up to reveal piles of boxes and junk surrounding a golf cart that was giving serious “Caddyshack” vibes – as in, appearing to be original to the early 80s, thanks to the classic shape, mildew and general state of disrepair.
Scrambling into the driver’s seat, Ryan turned the key already in the ignition and peeled out into the street in front of Darren, what with the tires being bald, just as the kid blew past them, screaming in distress but maintaining a precarious balance.
“Get in, Darren!”
“I can’t bring Oliver in that!”
“You wanna leave him on the sidewalk? Come on!”
True, he couldn’t just leave Oliver there, and there was no time to run him inside. But riding with his son in a golf cart through city streets? There was no time to think it through, so against his better judgment, Darren jumped in the cart and began looking for a seatbelt or grab handles. Ryan floored the cart with a jolt.
“My wife would murder me if she saw us doing this,” Darren muttered.
“What, rescuing a child from imminent danger? No way, you tell this story right, and you’re getting laid tonight, brother.”
“Is this thing street legal?” Of course, there were no seatbelts or restraints, so Darren braced between the seat and dash. He checked Oliver to see if he was going to freak, but the infant was completely relaxed. He tightened the straps on the carrier, a feeble precaution but it offered some comfort. Meanwhile, the kid was a block in front of them but starting to build on his lead.
“Do you really care right now? We gotta figure out how to stop this kid. These scooters can push 12-15 miles an hour, which would outpace most golf carts. But, lucky for you, this isn’t most golf carts. I installed some modifications.”
Ryan pulled on a suspiciously homemade-looking gear shift, and the cart responded with heavy lurch that did actually get them moving faster. Oliver gave a coo from the carrier, unbothered by the change of pace.
“I’ve never wanted my wife to take her sweet time at Target more than right now. Oh God, the kid’s going to blow through that red light.”
The intersection looming ahead had a steady flow of traffic crossing their street. This residential neighborhood of townhouses didn’t see too much speed off the main drags, but the kid wasn’t exactly aiming. And if they stopped at the light, he’d gain on his distance.
“Don’t worry, I won’t lose him.”
“Not really the response I was looking for!” Darren said as he realized Ryan had no intention of stopping at the light. He reached over and hit the cart’s horn to warn other drivers they were coming through. Conway Twitty’s “Rocky Top” started blaring from a speaker of an undetermined location.
Ryan grinned at Darren and said with a head nod and a wink, “That’s also custom.”
“Is it playing the whole song? Oh no, here he goes…”
The kid plowed through the intersection with no finesse and managed to miss a car coming from the left, just as a truck coming from the right hit the brakes to avoid hitting the unexpected traffic. The kid zipped through unscathed, but leaving a wake of chaos for their cart to navigate. The light turned green in their direction, but with the truck blocking the lane, the car ahead of them didn’t move.
Without letting up on the gas, Ryan pulled into the opposing traffic’s lane and skillfully skirted around the car and truck, before the traffic heading their way could react. Darren braced with one foot on the dash, one hand on the seat and an arm wrapped around Oliver. He had to admit he wouldn’t have pulled that off, whereas Ryan had a surprising command of the wheel.
“I don’t feel safer, but that was impressive,” Darren said. “Where’d you learn to drive like that?”
“I play a lot of Gran Turismo on PlayStation. It’s really paid off.”
“Yup, definitely not safer.”
“We’re closing in on the kid.” Ryan pointed out the scooter, now just 10 yards ahead of them.
“Hey kid! Ease off on the throttle!” Darren shouted as loudly as he could. Maybe the boy could slow himself down.
“You think he knows the word throttle? If he could figure out how to slow down, he would have already.”
“Do you have a better idea?! We need him to stop the scooter. I’m not exactly going to jump on behind him like a Bond stunt.”
“Best I’ve got is I’ll pull up next to him, and you grab him off the scooter.”
Darren considered the plan. It could work, the kid didn’t look too heavy to pick up, but they were on moving vehicles, a major complicating factor. And, oh yeah, Darren already had a child strapped to him.
“I can see you overthinking this. Hold on to the cart with one hand and lean out, grab the kid with your other hand. I’ll hang on to a back strap on your backpack, so you don’t fall out. Cool?”
Darren could feel his adrenaline pumping, resurrecting a memory from high school when he and his friend caddied for a summer and took a golf cart for a joy ride more than once. He could do this. Oliver still seemed chill, seeming to enjoy the wind through his wispy hair. And this kid was someone’s Oliver. This would be a story he and Oliver could share together later. Maybe without ever telling Lindsay.
“Let’s do this,” Darren said with new confidence. He edged to the side of the cart and moved into a crouch when he felt Ryan’s hand grab a strap on the carrier. “You ready, Ollie?” Darren whispered to his son.
“I’m pulling up next to the kid. You gotta snatch him clean off the scooter, so it doesn’t knock back into us.”
On approach, Darren could see the kid’s white-knuckle grip on the scooter and the tears sliding back from his eyes. Poor thing. The kid suddenly clocked the golf cart’s presence, causing him to pull on the scooter’s handle and veer into them. Ryan anticipated the move and swerved, but didn’t let go of the carrier, helping Darren and Oliver keep their footing. Resuming direction, Ryan deftly pulled back up next to the kid.
“Hold us steady!” Darren shouted. “I’m going to grab him!”
“You got it, chief!”
The golf cart finally lined up with the speeding scooter. Darren recalled Ryan’s advice about kid vocab. He leaned lower into his squat, like a surfer riding a wave, leaned his body out and feeling Ryan’s counterbalance, grabbed the kid around the waist and pulled back.
“Let go now!”
The kid did as commanded, the abandoned scooter clattering dramatically on the street behind them as Ryan hauled the three of them back, collapsing together on the golf cart bench.
Ryan immediately slowed the cart and pulled to the side of the road. The kid turned and clutched Darren and Oliver, clearly grateful for his rescue.
“We got you, kid,” Darren said. “You’re okay.”
“That was awesome!!” Ryan jumped out of the golf cart and started gesticulating wildly on the sidewalk, evoking a dog chasing his tail. “Darren, you lost your shit for a minute there! You just leaned out and scooped him – no fear! I was fully extended between the wheel and you. I wish someone got that on video. That was insane!”
“I can’t believe we just pulled that off! That was crazy driving! Thank God you had this rust bucket and thank God that plan worked. Kid, you okay?”
—
An hour later, Ryan, Darren and Oliver were being interviewed by the local news, with a police cruiser and ambulance behind them heightening their heroics. Ryan still had his visor shades on, and Darren realized his blower headphones were still around his neck.
“The kid found the scooter on the sidewalk, they’re lying around everywhere,” Darren explained. “He was just messing around, but this one was already activated, so when he hit the throttle, he was off. The ride was more than he bargained for.”
“How were you able to rescue him?” The reporter pushed the microphone back toward the trio. Ryan jumped in to answer.
“My man Darren here just leaned out of the golf cart with no fear and grabbed the kid. It was incredible, very Bond-like.”
“But you should have seen Ryan’s smooth driving!” Darren interjected. “He kept it all steady, so it was a clean operation.”
Ryan slung his arm around Darren’s shoulders and held up Oliver’s arm in victory. “We make a great team.”
“That we do,” Darren said, nodding and grinning at his new friend. What a wild, exciting afternoon.
Turning back to the camera, the reporter resumed her broadcast, “And there you have it. These local heroes saved a six-year-old boy from what could have been a very serious accident and returned him to his very grateful parents. It pays to have good neighbors.”
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