TEXT F
I cry easily. I once burst into tears when the curtain came down on the Kirov Ballet’s "Swan Lake". I still choke up every time I sea a film of Roger Bannister breaking the "impossible" four-minute mark for the mile. I figure I am moved by witnessing men and women at their best. But they need not be great men and women, doing great things.
I remember the night, some years ago, when my wife and I were going to dinner at a friend’s house in New York city. It was sleeting. As we hurried toward the house, with its welcoming light, I noticed a ear pulling out from the curb. Just ahead, another car was waiting to back into the parking space--a rare commodity in crowded Manhattan. But before he could do so another car came up from behind, and sneaked into the spot. That’s dirty pool, I thought.
While my wife went ahead into our friend’s house, I stepped into the street to give the guilty driver a piece of my mind. A man in work clothes rolled down the window.
"Hey," I said, "this parking space belongs to that guy," I gestured toward the man ahead, who was looking back angrily. I thought I was being a good Samaritan, I guess--and I remember that the moment I was feeling pretty manly in my new trench coat.
"Mind your own business the driver told me.
"No," I said. "You don’t understand. That fellow was waiting to back into this space."
Things quickly heated up, until finally he leaped out of the car. My God, he was colossal. He grabbed me and bent me back over the hood of his car as if I was a rag doll. The sleet stung my face. I glanced at the other driver, looking for help, but he gunned his engine and hightailed it out of there.
The huge man shook his rock of a fist of me, brushing my lip and cutting the inside of my mouth against my teeth. I tasted blood. I was terrified. He snarled and threatened, and then told me to beat it.
Almost in a panic, I scrambled to my friend’s front door. As a former Marine, as a man, I felt utterly humiliated. Seeing that I was shaken, my wife and friends asked me what had happened. All I could bring myself to say was that I had had an argument about a parking space. They had the sensitivity to let it go at that.
I sat stunned. Perhaps half an hour later, the doorbell rang. My blood ran cold. For some reason I was sure that the bruiser had returned for me. My hostess got up to answer it, but I stopped her. I felt morally bound to answer it myself,
I walked down the hallway with dread. Yet I knew I had to face up to my fear. I opened the door. There he stood, towering. Behind him, the sleet came down harder than ever.
"I came back to apologize," he said in a low voice, "When I got home, I said to myself, ’what right do I have to do that’ I’m ashamed of myself. All I can tell you is that the Brooklyn Navy Yard is closing. I’ve worked there for years. And today I got laid off. I’m not myself. I hope you’ll accept my apology."
I often remember that big man. I think of the effort and courage it took for him to come back to apologize. He was man at last.
And I remember that after I closed the door, my eyes blurred, as I stood in the hallway for a few moments alone. (618)
Why didn’t the writer’s wife and friends ask him what had really happened to him