Andy McCullough had almost finished third grade when the first black family moved onto his street. From the picture window in the living room he watched a yellow truck rumble across the way, and then a pair of movers pulled oak furniture and cardboard boxes marked KITCHEN FRAGILE from the back. The moving guys looked like any of the other people living in Andy’s neighborhood: German-Irish, working class, baseball fans. But the family was new.
A wood-paneled station wagon pulled into the driveway. Andy watched as the mother stepped from the car first. She was maybe the tallest woman he’d ever seen, and she wore a bright floral dress that seemed to wrap around her. As for the father, he looked like all grown men looked to Andy: rigid posture in blue shirt and slacks, nose caught between thick glasses, and a finger of mustache. Their son, a stocky ten-year-old in a Doogie Howser T-shirt, emerged from the backseat of the wagon and stepped like an intrepid explorer onto the suburban landscape. The family circled their lawn while the movers lugged a fridge up the front steps.
“No daughters,” Andy told his sister that afternoon, after the moving truck rumbled away and the Walkers had disappeared inside their house. “But looked like a boy I could play with.”
“How old was this boy?” Kelly asked. She was twelve, just beginning an era in which she seemed to spend most of her time in the bathroom doing things Andy couldn’t understand.
“Ten, maybe.”
“So, what do I care?”
“He’s black.”
“Like Urkel?” she asked.
“Like Urkel.”
Andy wondered aloud if black kids had different toys than white kids did, and if so, whether he’d be allowed to play with them. Kelly told him to stop being such an idiot.
* * *
At the dinner table that night, Andy suggested to his parents that they invite the new neighbors’ son to come over and play.
His mother looked toward his father, who had missed the neighbors’ arrival because he stayed late at his job at the DMV — probably filing paperwork left over by his coworkers. He was trying to rend the gristle from the edge of his pork chop. “At least someone finally moved in over there,” Andy’s father said. “The vacant property was dragging all our home prices down.”
“They’re black,” Kelly said.
Andy’s father cleared his throat, twisted the paper napkin in his hand. Andy’s father had been born with one leg longer than the other, and despite wearing special shoes he walked with a cane and noticeable limp. “Oh,” he said, to Kelly’s news.
“Not that it matters,” Andy’s mother said. “That doesn’t matter. That they’re black.”
“There’s a boy my age,” Andy told them. “He was playing with a Nerf gun outside. Can I go over there tomorrow?”
His mother halted her spoonful of mashed potatoes and peas. “Why don’t you wait until I go and introduce myself? I’ll ask his mother first. Then you two can play. And maybe without any guns.”
Perfectly natural, at least to Andy. Most of the white families on TV had exactly one black family for friends, and now the McCulloughs were going to have theirs.
* * *
Early in the morning a few days later, Andy sat eating a cold Pop-tart in the living room. Blueberry. Kelly was still primping in the bathroom, getting ready for one of the final days of the school year, and their mother was on the back porch, drinking coffee in her ritual moment of peace before she would drive them to school. Andy’s father was still asleep upstairs. So, when the knock came at the front door, Andy was the only one to answer.
The new neighbor, the father, stood in the doorway. He awkwardly tried to hand Andy the copy of the morning newspaper left on the McCulloughs’ stoop. Andy held his Pop-tart.
“Good morning,” the neighbor said, letting the newspaper drop back onto the doormat. “I’m Bill Walker. I live across the way. Are your mother or father available?”
It was actually the second time that Mr. Walker had spoken to Andy, who yesterday had been throwing a football in the air and mostly dropping it, when Mr. Walker yelled at him from across the way, “You go, Bo Jackson!” and Andy thought Mr. Walker must have been talking to someone else.
“My mom is absolutely not to be disturbed,” Andy told Mr. Walker in the doorway. This was exactly what his mother insisted about her morning coffee break.
“I just have a quick question,” Mr. Walker said. “Maybe your dad could just come to the door?”
Andy might have used this as an opportunity to suggest a playdate, but Mr. Walker seemed urgent, so Andy left him in the doorway and trudged up to his parents’ bedroom. His father lay in bed with his head sandwiched between pillows, trying to ignore Andy as he shook him awake. “Mr. Who?” he asked.
“The new neighbor,” Andy said. “The black one.”
“Don’t say it like that,” his father said. “You should say African-American. The African-American one. What does he want?” Andy’s father pulled on his robe, looked at his watch, and swore under his breath. Then he followed his son down the stairs.
Mr. Walker stood in the open doorway, looking across the tree-lined street, when Andy’s father made it to the bottom of the stairs.
“Sorry if I woke you,” Mr. Walker said, hand extended in another awkward shake. “I saw your lights were on, and I figured someone would be up. My wife and I just moved in. Over at 9217.”
“I know the house,” Andy’s father said. He was normally grumpy in the mornings, but with the stranger at the door he assumed his DMV mannerisms. “What can I do you for?”
“Can you tell me, is there some kind of maintenance schedule we don’t know about?” Mr. Walker pointed across the street, where, in front of his driveway, a traffic barrier and four orange construction barrels had appeared overnight. “I just have to get my car out and get to work,” Mr. Walker explained. “But I don’t want to mess anything up.”
Andy’s father stood cross-armed in the doorway. “I don’t really know of anything they’re working on,” he said. “You can probably move that stuff for a minute, just to get your car out.”
“I’d hate to mess up anything.”
“Probably just a misunderstanding. Everyone else here parks on the street, so they probably just thought —”
“I might just take a cab this morning,” Mr. Walker said. “I’d hate to mess up anything.”
As Andy’s father closed the door on Mr. Walker, he waved a polite goodbye. “I’m sure it will be fine,” he said, as much to himself as to Andy. Then he looked at his watch and swore again.
Andy’s mother emerged from the kitchen. In those days, she teased her hair high with spray and tended toward topaz necklaces. She asked who was at the door, and from their vantage at the picture window, they watched Mr. Walker circling the construction barriers, looking them over as if they would explain themselves.
Andy’s mother crossed her arms. “I hope it’s not what it looks like,” she said.
“I think he wanted me to offer him a ride,” Andy’s father said. “I should have done that.”
She touched his arm. “I’m sure he’ll understand. You’re running late.”
* * *
This was 1992, when the Walkers moved in, not long after Rodney King. Each night before dinner, the McCulloughs watched the news with its burning cars and rifles carried through streets, Andy’s father leaning into the edge of the couch with his after-work beer in hand. Andy’s mother would be busy in the kitchen, complaining later that the news was just too depressing and suggesting they ought not watch. But those things Andy saw on the screen — billowing smoke over strip malls, shattered glass in front of a shoe store — seemed so far from their suburb.
Adding to Andy’s confusion at that time was a local car dealer named Rodney Keane, who put out a series of ads on local TV affiliates. Rodney Keane wore camel’s hair jackets and screamed about low down payments. When the riots were mentioned, Andy would picture the white car salesman in Rodney King’s place: Keane in a fetal position, curled arms shielding his greasy comb-over as cops went at him with nightsticks.
When Andy got home from school that day, he planned to wander over to the Walkers’ house and ask about their son, but the construction barriers still stood like sentries in front of the driveway. Someone had posted a sign next to the barriers that said anyone caught vandalizing or otherwise disturbing equipment owned by city services would face prosecution and fines. The sign was turned toward the Walkers’ house.
* * *
The day after the traffic barriers first appeared in front of the Walkers’ house, the McCulloughs woke to find more ramparts added overnight. A “men working” sign stood slightly askew, a trio of traffic cones lined the street’s edge, and yellow tape ribboned the whole menagerie. It was a sight to behold.
“Maybe it’s a sinkhole,” Andy’s mother said, calling her husband to the window. “I’ve heard of those. If they get big enough, they can swallow cars whole. Maybe there’s a sinkhole there.”
They all watched through the window as Mr. Walker inspected the new obstacles. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and frowned. He pushed his glasses up on his nose, chewed on his wooly caterpillar mustache.
Andy wondered aloud if they should look for a hidden television crew like on Candid Camera.
Mr. Walker stepped into his car and hesitantly angled the station wagon out from the paved driveway, cutting diagonally across the front lawn and leaving depressions in the grass. He looked both ways down the street. He knew he was being watched, offered a short wave in the McCulloughs’ direction. Andy’s mother stepped back from the window, embarrassed.
Mr. Walker eased the car over the curb and then was gone.
“Mom,” Andy said, “when can I go over there and play?”
“Let’s wait until this gets cleared up.” She waved in the direction of the cones and barrels.
* * *
But the morning after Mr. Walker performed his drive-over-the-lawn maneuver, and even after he’d accomplished the sixteen-point turn necessary to return his car to the driveway, they woke to new obstructions, this time spanning the property line. Someone had brought in one of those concrete sections from the side of the highway and used it to block the front of the lawn. The McCulloughs watched.
“Do you know anything about this?” Andy’s mother had pulled her husband from bed and brought him to the living room window.
“I don’t have anything to do with this,” he said. “Why would you —”
“Maybe someone at the office said something.”
“This isn’t us,” Andy’s father said. “Public works. Or streets and sanitation, maybe. Those guys are renegades.”
They watched Mr. Walker wander the impromptu construction site. Mr. Walker waved at his wife and son to go back inside, and Mrs. Walker pulled her son close to her on the porch, wrapping a long arm around him as if the orange construction barrels might come for them.
A big sycamore grew in their yard, and sometimes great strips of bark crunched underfoot. Mr. Walker put a tentative hand to one of the construction barrels, nudged it. Then he went back to the house to retrieve a phone. The Walkers had a cordless. Andy’s mother had been asking to buy one for several months.
“See,” she said. “Everyone’s getting one.”
Mr. Walker pointed at the construction barrels while he talked on the phone. Then he paused, put a palm to his forehead and closed his eyes.
Andy’s father went to the front porch and called out across the street. He waved his cane in the air to get Mr. Walker’s attention. “Hey, hey,” he said. “You need a ride?”
Mr. Walker shook his head, held up his hands as if to say, no, I can handle this myself.
“What are you going to do?” Andy’s father yelled across the way. “Call in sick?”
Mr. Walker looked like he was about to yell something, either at Andy’s father or into the phone, but hung up instead.
* * *
A half-hour later Mr. Walker sat in the passenger seat of the McCulloughs’ car, Kelly and Andy in the back. It was the final week of school, and the Walkers hadn’t enrolled their son yet, so Andy was disappointed he wouldn’t join them for the ride.
Mr. Walker’s aftershave smelled of licorice. He rode with his briefcase on top of his knees. Andy’s father asked Mr. Walker which radio station he liked to listen to.
“Call me Bill,” Mr. Walker said. “Whatever you like is fine by me.”
Andy’s father turned the radio to the station that played oldies and Motown. He looked hopefully toward Mr. Walker, who glared out of the window at the passing bungalows. He must have had other things on his mind.
“Would you believe what the woman said on the phone?” he asked Andy’s father. “She said that there were no current construction projects on our street. She said there wasn’t any, quote, municipally owned material officially on my property. I said, ‘Listen, I’m looking at it right now.’ And she said I must be mistaken.”
“I saw it too,” Andy offered from the backseat.
“Not sure what I was thinking,” Mr. Walker said, “thinking I’d get help from some bureaucrat. Might as well have called the DMV.”
Andy’s father had learned over the years to stop telling people where he worked. “Maybe there’s some misunderstanding,” he said to Mr. Walker. “I’ve heard some stories. I don’t know if there’s anything to it, but they say the street crews can hold a grudge. Any chance you had a run-in with one of the city workers?”
Mr. Walker cocked his head. “What do you think I did, whistle at somebody’s wife?”
Andy’s father tittered. The air-conditioner in the car was low on Freon and couldn’t keep up with the June sun. The kids sat silently. Andy’s father tapped nervously at the steering wheel. Then he leaned over to turn the radio volume way up for Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.” He told Mr. Walker it was his favorite song.
* * *
The weekend arrived and with it a Twilight Zone marathon that distracted Andy enough to stop asking whether the Walkers’ son could come over and play. The Walkers were forced to stay at home, their car blocked in, but Andy figured they at least had Rod Serling for company.
“Imagine if you will,” Rod said, standing on the sidewalk and patting a traffic cone appreciatively, “a world where black and white fade to shadow. Where objects appear overnight as if by some malicious magic, and a man must disentangle his home from a noose of mystery.”
Andy wasn’t allowed to go over to play. On Saturday night, his mother delivered a tray of lasagna.
* * *
The following Monday marked the start of summer. Instead of readying for school, Andy lay on the floor of the living room trying to enjoy the last few minutes of contact with the cool wooden slats before the heat of the day would turn everything sweaty. Kelly sat on the couch writing in her diary or something.
Andy decided his morning would be best spent organizing his baseball card collection. He’d recently nabbed Ken Griffey and Ken Griffey, Jr., in the season father and son both played for the Mariners.
There was a crash. They ran to the window.
Mr. Walker lifted a traffic cone above his head, reared back, and sent it flying like a bright orange rocket. He grabbed another and chucked it a few yards down the street. The construction barrels provided more resistance, but he wrapped one in his arms and twisted his entire torso around, a real WCW-type move, toppling the barrel and sending it rolling into Mrs. Blum’s rosebush. Kelly screamed, maybe with delight more than fear. With a full-body jerk, Mr. Walker pulled up the side of the long wooden barrier just enough to budge it. Then he reared back and kicked it, three or four times, until it too fell over. It looked like he was having the time of his life.
“Don’t even think about it,” Andy’s mother said, watching from the hallway as Andy pulled on tennis shoes. “You’re not going out there.”
“Maybe he needs my help,” Andy suggested.
“No way, mister.”
Two traffic cones came to rest in the McCulloughs’ front yard. Kelly clapped her hands and giggled oh my god, oh my god. Traffic barrels rolled all over the place.
Mr. Walker paused and looked around. At this point, everyone in the neighborhood must have been watching from their front windows, but he didn’t seem to care. He walked to the trunk of his car and removed a tire-iron. With this he began an assault on the remaining barriers, yelling into the sky with a righteous anger.
Mrs. Walker stepped onto the porch in a fuzzy bathrobe and yelled at her husband to stop. He yelled something back at her something about his getting to work that day one way or another. And then to prove his point he took a few good whacks with the tire-iron. Mrs. Walker started to descend the porch stairs, but her husband waved her back. Andy could see their son’s face peeking out from the front window.
A squad car crept up the street, lights flashing but no sirens. The cops parked in front of the remaining traffic barriers. Mr. Walker stopped using the tire-iron when a pair of cops got out of the car and walked slowly toward him, their hands near their holsters. Burly white guys. One of the cops yelled at Mr. Walker to drop his weapon.
Mr. Walker pointed at the construction barriers with his tire-iron. “It’s not a weapon,” he said. “I’m just doing some maintenance.”
Next to Andy, Kelly murmured.
“Put down the weapon,” the second cop shouted. “And put your hands up.”
“Oh, god,” Andy’s mother said, joining them at the window. “Put it down.”
It looked to Andy that Mr. Walker was setting down the tire-iron, bent in a half-crouch, the other hand raised in the air and palm open, when the cops threw him downward. Mr. Walker’s face bounced against the curb. One of the cops put his knee to the back of Mr. Walker’s neck. The violence was surreal, like they were play-acting. The cop yelled at Mr. Walker to drop his weapon, even though they’d all seen him put the tire-iron down. The other cop pulled Mr. Walker’s wrists into a pair of handcuffs.
He couldn’t see anything more because his mother had whipped the drapes shut. “Where’s your father, anyway?” she asked.
Andy’s father was coming down the stairs, slowly and without his cane. “I’m here.”
“The police are outside,” Andy’s mother told him. “They’re arresting Mr. Walker.”
“I know,” his father said. “I called them.”
Andy’s mother tried to put her hands over her son’s ears, but Andy fought her.
“He was destroying municipal property,” Andy’s father said. He brushed past them and lifted the edge of the drapes. “It looks like they’ve got him in the squad car.”
“Why would you do that?” Andy’s mother asked.
“Listen,” he said. “I sympathize. I do. I don’t know why this was happening. Maybe it was a sinkhole. And I know it’s been a rough few days. I understand he’s angry. I can understand the need to blow off some steam. But you have to draw the line somewhere, and destruction of property —”
“Traffic cones,” Andy’s mother said.
“I’d rather not do this in front of the kids.” Andy’s father pulled open the drapes. The squad car was pulling away, and the orange traffic barrels had all rolled downhill and collected in a heap against the side of Mr. Hubbard’s old Chrysler. Cones splayed in every direction. The other families on the street gawked from porches. A few pointed.
Mrs. Walker stood alone in the wreckage. Even in her bathrobe, her height made her elegant. She walked to the edge of the lawn, picked up one of the traffic cones, and set it straight again.
