THE CROSSWALK
A FICTIONAL SHORT STORY BY JOHN J. KLOBNAK
©2024
THE CROSSWALK
BY JOHN J. KLOBNAK
©2022
When his doctor told him he needed to get back in shape following a near miss after the discovery of a blocked coronary artery, Ken, (not Kenneth) Clarkson took up walking. It wasn’t exactly power walking, just a nice easy stroll that started out covering a half-mile and over the years had worked its way up to three miles at a good clip for a man in his fifties. He got to where he liked the exercise, really looked forward to it, it also gave him a chance to clear his mind. To leave the pressures of home and work behind. To chill out. The route he took allowed him to stay on the sidewalk the entire way through the residential area near his house except for where it briefly followed a busy, heavily trafficked road — an urban state highway — for about ten blocks before turning again back into the residential zone that headed back to his house. At that point, Ken had to pause to cross the busy road which wasn’t too bad if he hit the traffic signal just right, or if traffic was light and he could ignore the red light. But things always happened right at that intersection where he had to cross the road. It never failed. Ken loved his walk but hated that intersection.
Ken had not planned to become a competitive walker or anything like that, but a while back, he’d bought one of those watches, the kind that could keep track of things like the time, heart rate, whether your gait was off kilter and a lot of other things nobody cared about and glancing at it constantly caused him to challenge himself each day to finish the three miles in forty-five minutes or less which worked about to about four miles per hour which he thought was pretty impressive … for a man his age. (About fifty is the age when most people start adding that disclaimer to just about everything and Ken was fifty-four).
Ken hated the stretch of his route that ran along the busy street. There was always a lot of foot traffic and bus stop right before the cross walk where he had to cross. The exhaust from the busses always made him gasp for air. Then there was the mail man who actually drove up on the sidewalk to deliver mail to the boxes that were on right side of the walk as the road was too busy for his truck to stop every fifty feet to put mail in a box right on the curb. Ken hated the interruptions that impeded his ability to hit his time goals almost as much as he hated that old lady who walked four dogs at a time making him to swing out into the street costing him a few precious seconds, more if one of the dogs went after him then he had to listen to the old bat comfort her little babies. It wasn’t just the old beldam with the dogs. Kids on bicycles made him dodge their speeding bikes and there were always more than one barreling toward him — kids always travel in packs. The joggers, he knew looked down on the walkers — the serious joggers didn’t bother him as they, for some strange reason, insisted on jogging in the street not on the sidewalk which he never understood. But the thing he detested more than anything was …
“Hey Kenny?”
Kenny. His name was Ken which some used as a contraction for Kenneth and Kenny sounded more informal. But he could never understand why someone would come up with a nickname that was actually longer by a syllable than his real name. It took longer to say Kenny than Ken, but some people couldn’t help themselves and right on cue he looked up and saw his nosy neighbor, Elliot Barnes crossing the intersection waving like he was on a life raft in the middle of the ocean and Ken was a rescue boat. Ugh.
“Hey, how are you doing buddy? Still out walking?”
“Yes, Elliot, still at it. Good to see you.”
Ken slowed but didn’t stop and looked both ways and just as he was about to step into the intersection, Elliot continued.
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“So, Kenny, I noticed you got all the leaves up in your yard. Did you do it yourself?
“No, Elliot I had a man do it this year.”
“Oh, say, you think I can get his number?”
“Sure, I will text it to you when I get back, I’ve got to run, I’m trying to beat my time.”
Ken pointed to his watch and Elliot nodded just as the bus pulled up and the door opened, Elliot stepped inside just as a blind man, tapping his white cane noisily down the stairs stepped off and collided with Ken.
“Oh, pardon me.”
“No problem.”
Ken was looking for a chance to dart against traffic and the man grabbed his arm and asked, “Could you point me in the direction of the Post Office, sir?”
Ken glanced at his watch again then back at the man and gave him the instructions, turned him in the right direction and just as he tried to escape the light turned red and a huge dump truck full of dirt from a new house being built nearby screeched to a halt followed by another truck. He figured they were together even though there was no company named painted on the side, but you didn’t see many dump trucks in the neighborhood. The first one pulled into the cross walk blocking it and the second truck pulled about six inches behind the first. More seconds lost. Ken’s watch beeped signifying thirty-minutes had elapsed and he realized he still had more than a mile to go. He left the blind man still tapping his cane along the curb and tried again to cross against the light and when he turned his head and saw a police cruiser idling at the light waiting to make a right turn so jay-walking wasn’t an option. Precious time ticked off his watch and finally the cop got a green arrow and pulled out slowly as if he was purposely wasting even more of Ken’s time. The light turned green but the driver of the first dump truck just sat there looking at his phone obviously texting someone. The way he was smiling Ken just guessed it wasn’t his wife. It was a short light and the driver of an expensive convertible behind the second dump truck was blaring his horn.
“Move that piece of crap, asshat.” Yelled the man in the convertible as he kept leaning on the horn. The driver of the first dump truck looked in the large side mirror on his truck and saw the driver yelling and oblivious to the time remaining on the light rolled down the window extended his hand and slowly gave the driver the finger. He was joined by his mate in the second dump truck who did the same which made the driver of the luxury sedan even more furious.
As the man in the convertible kept honking, Ken saw the driver of the first truck press a button on his phone and heard the phone ring through the open window in the second truck. The driver of the second truck was laughing and nodding then Ken saw the bed of the second truck start to move upward dumping many cubic yards of dirt into the convertible. The convertible was now sandwiched in by more cars stopped at the light and then the two dump trucks drove off maliciously honking their horns, leaving the driver of the convertible buried in dirt. Ken heard the siren from the police car heading back and just as he started to cross the cop pulled into the cross walk, lights flashing and blocking it.
Forty-five minutes was looking like it wasn’t going to happen, but Ken was going to do his best and just as he stepped into the walk, the cop looked up and said, “Mister, you’re a witness, I’m going to need a statement. Please stand over by my car.”
Great. Just great. Ken glanced at his watch as if it had a hidden feature that might extricate him from his predicament, but the watch just kept ticking toward forty-give minutes mocking him as every second elapsed.
As the driver of the convertible opened the door and dirt spilled out, the officer helped the man to his feet. The man took off his glasses and cleaned them on the tail of his shirt, the only part of him that was still clean and began babbling about how the truck had just dumped the load on him without any warning. He looked a Ken and pointed and said, “ask him, he was standing right there.”
Ken was only two feet from the other side of the street still leaning like he’d been handcuffed to the police car trying to figure out if he could make a break for it while the cop’s back was turned. There was a grocery store on the other side of the street and people had lined up on the parking lot to see what was going on. Most, he thought, probably suspected he was involved. Just then, there was shouting behind the crowd as two tough looking thugs came out of the store pushing a shopping cart full of groceries at full speed with the store manager chasing them in hot pursuit screaming, they had stolen the merchandise. The cop who was trying to move traffic around the dirt pile while interviewing the driver of the convertible left the scene but not before telling Ken to stay put and ran into the parking lot yelling into a police radio microphone on his lapel for help.
Ken Clarkson really hated that crosswalk.
