Stanchley

[The following is a true story, but I have changed the names.]

I used to work for the Forestry Department of my hometown during the summers of my college years.

The term "Forestry" sounds grand and Romantic.  It conjures images of swarthy men inspecting the scat of moose along game trails to determine the health of an animal population.

But in Elmhurst, there are no forests.  There are only suburban parkways, public green spaces, a median strip on York Road, trees in front of houses that needed care.

And there was Rick Stanchley, among others.  Rick was either stoned all the time, or wont to speak as though he were stoned all the time.  He drank coffee from a beat-up plastic travel mug--at least a quart of coffee each morning.  He smoked cigarettes.  So many, in fact, that his side lip seemed to have a permanent indent where the cig sat all day long.

Rick hated loud noises.  He'd reach in and turn the key of your truck engine if he needed to talk to you at your window.  Turn this damn thing off! 

He'd scowl when the part-timers returned at the end of the day and--rowdy kids!--shuffled in, joking, laughing, on our way to the tool shed to hang the shovels up--Would you all just shut up?!  Man, I mean why do you have to be so loud?

[That's what first captured my imagination about him: how he said, Man.  He made it sound like about 5 cuss words wrapped up in one modest syllable.]

We part-timers figured this distaste for noise was related to his experience in the Vietnam War--he always wore his Vet ball cap--but I got to know him one summer and learned that he had served at a supply base and had not seen combat.

"Was it ever terrifyingly loud on your base?" I asked him, trying to get to the bottom of it.

He looked at me with his beautiful--no, gorgeous eyes--they were pale baby blue, the color people wear fake contacts for--but eyes that were inside a face of leather, creased through, with gray whiskers and long, straggly gray hair.  A full 15 years beyond his age, in fact, when I finally learned he was only 42. 

He looked at me with those impossible eyes and said, "What are you talking about?  It's terrifyingly loud almost everywhere almost all the time."

The other thing Rick hated was traffic. 

He was living and working in Elmhurst!  What did he ever see of traffic?

But he'd be grinding out a stump (with the stumper--the loudest machine in the Department) and he'd stop after only a second or third car had gone by to say, "Would you look at the traffic?"

One day, circumstances collided in Rick's world. 

He was driving the big ole cherry picker truck, and was waiting in the middle of the intersection at West and St. Charles, ready to turn left through the green light.

The on-coming line of cars on West never let up for him to make that turn.

"Would you look at this?" he said to Jeff, his partner that day who sat in the passenger's seat.  Or maybe Rick was just remarking.  "Would you look at this traffic?"

The on-coming cars didn't stop.  West Avenue!  It was not even a through-street!  Why so many cars?

"This is unbelievable," Rick said.  "I mean, I don't even believe this."  Jeff didn't say anything.

The light turned yellow.  Rick sat up, ready to turn.  But the cars kept coming.

"What?. . .What is with this traffic?"  Confusion turned to anger.

Then the light turned red.  The cars kept coming.

Anger turned to fury.

Rick rolled down the window of the cheery picker, he shook his hand out, giving each driver the finger.  He pulled the string of the air horn at them, scourging them with blasts that covered over all his own cussing.  Oh, that traffic.

Then it stopped.  The intersection cleared.  He turned left onto St. Charles.

Moments later, he rolled his window back up.

Moments after that, he said to Jeff, silent and stalwart, "Could you believe that traffic?"

Jeff nodded and said, "Yeah, Rick.  That was a funeral."