The father soon adopted a very convincing imitation of the loathsome man. Except his drink was the poor imitation of Southern moonshine procured from other, displaced Southerners working the factories, while the boss-man’s drink was hard-to-come-by, and therefore very expensive, Scotch. The two would have it out, incoherently, at all hours of the Friday night and into Saturday morning. They seemed to grow closer for it. Meanwhile, the young boy’s contempt grew with no bounds, until it was purified and reduced to a burning hatred reserved for the single entity the two men had become.

The driver can now recognize the object of scorn as authority, or at least, instances of its most brazen and self-righteous display. How could he know that deep down, he hates these men of authority not for what they stand for –after all, they come as bearers of so many different institutions- but for what they refuse him?

With his father, it was withheld love; while he hated the boss for seemingly keeping his father from him, or for turning him into someone impossible to be around. Growing up, it was respect that he craved. Now, the driver has lost Paula. Can he really expect that hunting down the man who took everything from him will be enough to bring it all back?

The driver’s gaze falls from the man on the podium to the flushed faces of families gathered below. They return the speaker’s animated gestures with the sodden stillness of an audience enrapt. Cherub cheeks of children appear equally aglow, but they must be reacting viscerally. There is no way they can take the speaker’s words to heart, as their parents so obviously have; but children have a way of getting beyond words, and can understand adults on a more profound, unspoken level. They know a parent is sad, angry, hurt -before they have a chance to recognize any of the telltale words, or even groans, of emotion. The driver has seen it before in his niece and nephew and it never fails to terrify him. The idea of parenthood itself terrifies him.

Part of the reason he and Paula had moved to California was to start a family of their own; after officially tying the knot, of course. They agreed to their modest clapboard bungalow at first sight. It’s not that they instantly fell in love with the place. It obviously needed much repair if it were to house them, and eventually a firstborn, for any amount of time; but they had just arrived with a pickup piled with their belongings and the rent would be manageable, though it was more than the driver imagined paying for a dilapidated one-room box.