Forty-One Feet

Frederick Elmer Tyson is eighty-two. He sees just fine with his spectacles, each lens a half-inch thick. He hears just fine when he puts the aid in. He walks just fine. He’s got a cane for support, but mostly to stick up somebody’s ass if need be. He’s got a slight arch in his back, a touch of arthritis in each knee, just enough to let him know when it’s about to rain. Otherwise, he doesn’t feel all that different than he did thirty years ago.

He’s got some glorious hair, silver and curly, some Morgan Freeman freckles about his face and neck. He wears a dress shirt and overalls and a gold 1972 Rolex wristwatch.

Freddy’s house has slat wood siding and a twenty-year-old roof starting to ringworm the bathroom ceiling. It’s got the walkway to the porch and a driveway to around back, where he parks his 1982 Buick Grand National. Freddy drives over to the post office for bills and advertisements, mostly for the brief social interactions.

He’s got a newspaper box out front, though they haven’t delivered the paper a couple years now, for their own cost-saving, but he’s an old man and figures he can take his sweet time getting around to things, like digging up a useless newspaper box. For the same reason, plastic still covers the windows from the winter before last.

There’s a wheelchair ramp to the porch he built for Queen Althea a decade prior. She passed two years come July. A heart attack took her out of the blue one night. They were watching NCIS, their favorite show. He can’t watch it anymore. He sometimes wonders, if she were alive, if she’d agree it’s not good like before.

The house sits right in front of the traffic fatality, the only one with a direct view, which is why the Georgia boy heads his way.

Because the porch is screened in, the cop doesn’t see Freddy until he’s right up on it.

“Hello?” Trooper Mattox calls out.

When Freddy doesn’t say anything back, the cop tries again. “My name is Trooper—”

“Hello,” Freddy interrupts. He gets a kick out of keeping them on their toes.

“Hello—hi. My name is Georgia State Trooper Derek Mattox. Mind if I step onto your porch a minute?”

“Suit yourself.”

Trooper Mattox looks about a decade younger than his forty years; healthy skin runs in his family. His appearance is otherwise a tribute to his profession: black hair parted to the side, thick mustache angled to his mouth’s corners, pectorals and biceps conditioned by strength training four times a week.

He turned nineteen the day 9/11 happened. He’d floundered after high school, petty thefts here and there, until the attacks woke him up. He enlisted. Afghanistan, then Iraq. Four years active-duty Army, another four in the reserves, five as a deputy in west Georgia, now in his twelfth with GSP.

The screen door slaps behind him. He stands there with his hands on his loaded-up cop belt.

Both men study the other.

“Sir, there was a traffic fatality at approximately four this afternoon. I’m wondering if you or anybody in your home might have witnessed—”

“I live alone.”

“Yes, sir. If you, then, might’ve witnessed something.”

Freddy doesn’t say anything.

“Where were you at four this afternoon?”

“Right where you see me now.”

“Here on the porch?”

“Every Sunday when there’s no football to watch.”

“Yessir. Did you witness the accident?”

“I did.”

“Do you mind telling me what you saw?”

“There were five young men—Shanee Smith’s and Sissy Scott’s boys walking along altogether. They’re together often. They headed that way.” He points north. “A gray pickup headed that way.” He points south. “The pickup rode up on the sidewalk there and knocked one of them boys into the street. I think it was the smallest. What was the boy’s name that got hit?”

“Where were the boys?”

“What you mean?”

“Were they in the street?”

“No.”

“Where were they, then?”

“On the sidewalk there.”

“All of them?”

“That’s right.”

Trooper Mattox considers Freddy. A man his age has seen a lot.

“You allowed to tell the boy’s name that got killed?” Freddy asks.

Trooper Mattox checks his notes. “Hoyle Brannon Jenkins Smith.”

“Um,” Freddy says, shakes his head. “That’s Shanee’s youngest.”

“What’s your name?”

“Freddy Tyson.”

“Full legal name?”

“Frederick Elmer Tyson.”

“How’s your vision?”

“Perfect.”

“You have perfect vision?”

“With my spectacles on, I do.” He taps his eyeglasses with pride. “I still drive.”

“It’s about, what, thirty-five feet from here to the sidewalk?”

“Forty-one feet, exactly. I’ve lived here in my house fifty-three years, and I know every inch.”

“You were wearing your glasses at four o’clock this afternoon?”

“Wear them all the time, except to shower and to bed.”

Trooper Mattox wonders why the old man claims to have seen everything but didn’t know which boy got hit.

“You’re saying, on your mortal soul, you saw somebody drive their truck up onto the sidewalk yonder to hit and kill a child, at a distance of a little more than forty-one feet, from inside this porch?”

“Don’t know if he aimed to kill, but that’s what he did.”

Trooper Mattox knows now Freddy will stick to this story, then the kids who lost their friend will repeat it, and then it’ll spread through the whole community.

“Did you see the driver?”

“Saw a white man get out of the truck.”

“A white man, huh?”

“It’s what I saw.”

“Anybody else climb out of that truck?”

“Only saw the white man.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“Can’t say I did. Who was he? Are you allowed to say?”

“Let me finish the preliminary investigation.”

“Suit yourself.”

Trooper Mattox scribbles.

“You see the boys in the road at all?” he asks. “Coming or going?”

“Not when the man ran them over.”

“But you’ve seen them in the road?”

“Not then.”

“But you have seen them in the road, playing or whatnot?”

“They might’ve horsed around before, went into the road. I don’t recall.”

“Can you read and write?”

Freddy cocks his head. If this feller didn’t have a badge, he’d slap him upside the head.

“Been reading and writing longer than you been breathing air,” he says.

“Routine question,” Trooper Mattox says, “before I ask if you’d write out a statement as to what you claim to have witnessed.”

“I’ll write what I witnessed.”

“Only need a few sentences.”

Trooper Mattox hands him his pad and pen. Freddy never had fine penmanship like Queen Althea. His is more chicken scratch, like a child still learning. Still, he writes what he saw.

Trooper Mattox’s lieutenant likes a thick file, thinks overabundance is how to dot i’s and cross t’s, so he always asks witnesses to complete written statements, if they’re willing. At this point, it’d raise lieutenant’s eyebrows if he didn’t bring back any. Lieutenant never reads them, but he reads his report.

His report will say Frederick Tyson claims he saw the kids in the road but wasn’t sure they were at the point of collision. Freddy never named the boy.

The screen door slaps behind Trooper Mattox.

Freddy watches him walk the forty-one feet to the sidewalk, then to his cruiser.

The scene is mostly cleared. The coroner took the body. The bystanders are gone.

Trooper Mattox pauses at his car and looks back at Freddy.

Freddy gives him the bird.

Trooper Mattox gets in and drives off.

Freddy doesn’t know about the cop’s eyes, but there’s ain’t a damn thing wrong with his own.