Shade Tree Diplomacy

Janice and I rolled into the Beausejour Hospital parking lot at 11:25 a.m., with five minutes to spare before my appointment. Our shopping was complete, and I just had to pop in for blood test results from my doctor, a pleasant woman with distractingly clear blue eyes. Then it was off to get gas, an iced coffee, and a ramble home on Highway 44.

It was a Manitoba-hot afternoon. Loud insects droned in the still heat, announcing their territorial dominance. Sand fleas crowded around the glaring brightness of the car mirrors as soon as we stopped moving, eagerly awaiting our emergence, covered in soft skin, penetrable and delicious.

There was only one tree-shaded parking spot left, but it was directly behind a red pickup with the driver its lone occupant.

He couldn’t be sitting there in the sun unless he was about to leave, I reasoned. I decided to sit and wait a minute. Maybe he’d get the message. I slipped the car into Park and peered into the depths of my phone screen.

“What’s up?” Jan said, after a moment, flipping the radio to a C&W station.

“I think that red truck’s gonna move soon. I’ll give him a minute, so I can take that shady spot behind him.”

“He can still get out, can’t he? We won’t block him, will we?”

She fanned herself with a Co-Op shopping flyer. Our old car’s A/C was nothing more than an anemic memory. “Besides, you’ll just be in and out, right?”

“Well, yeah. Unless they’re busy.”

I scanned the nearly full parking lot. The sun assaulted my neck, and I felt sweat trickle down my back. “Oh, what the heck!” I pulled ahead until our bumper almost touched the welcoming elm’s trunk.

Hopping out, I sized up the pick-up truck’s available turning radius and felt a little twinge. It was pretty tight. Fortunately, there was no one parked in front of the red truck, so I shut my door and walked toward the hospital’s cool interior, my guilt assuaged.

I passed by the vehicle’s open window, where a tanned elbow rested, but I resisted the temptation to say anything, like, “I’ll be right back…”  I was a bit testy today. I hated driving with the windows open on the highway and I was reluctant to fix the air conditioning—the car’s age made it a “throwing good money after bad” proposition. I loved that old car and was discouraged by its apparent coming fate.

“HOW the Christ am I supposed to get out?”

The man’s voice was small and filled with annoyance. A stubbed-toe voice. A dusty parking lot voice; the voice of petty grievance. Plus, the choice of curse words felt off-limits to me somehow, and I felt my ire ignite.

There were many alternatives for me at that moment, like calmly pointing out the obvious—he could still drive straight ahead to leave…Except, predictably on this busy day, a big SUV pulled into the open spot just then. Attended by an entourage of sand fleas, the intruder’s A/C motor howled like a mechanical emerald ash borer, and its tires crushed gravel and my excuse with equal effect.

Instead of giving in, or pretending to have miscalculated or overlooked, I hit the confrontational gas pedal. I did an about-face and quick-marched back towards his open window. My angry words ran together, mingled with retaliatory, sputtering f-bombs.

But… I was on a ridiculous mission, and I knew it. My passion faded as quickly as it had arisen, but this was the path I had chosen, so I blustered on.

As I finished my pathetic tirade, I wondered if he would pick up the gauntlet and give me what I deserved. And what would I do then? And what would Jan think, watching all this foolishness play out from inside our hot car?

Instead, thankfully, he withdrew his elbow—with grace—and twisted around to assess the egress left to him.

I saw then he was a man about my age and size. We could have been brothers and while the local demographics skewed Ukrainian—not Mennonite, like me—there was not that much difference in our respective gene pools or the European disputes that caused us to be here today, on the edge of the prairie. “Same fertilizer, different piles,” as Mr. Dembowski, the store manager at Gambles Department Store on Nairn Avenue used to say, back in my early working days.

This fellow, this new Dembowski, untwisted himself and looked in his rear-view mirror, then over at me, shading his eyes from the sun with one hand.

“Yeah, I guess I can still back out. Sorry, eh,”  he said, face impassive, no longer adversarial. By his tone, I sensed that a more neutral sensibility was his preferred approach, and he wanted to return to it. Like me, maybe the uncomfortable heat had upset his day. Or something else—something unseen?

“Sorry to yell and swear like that…” he added.

He did not finish the sentence, but I immediately suspected how it may have concluded: “It’s just—my wife is in there with her doctor talking about cancer treatments,” or maybe, “I just found out my diabetes is getting worse, not better.” But he said no such thing, simply letting the pause linger while my conscience filled in the damning silence.

Feeling continued disgust for myself and my choices, I held up an index finger, as if to say, “Hold on,” and started back to my car. Jan, observant and quick to act, was already on her way around to the driver’s side.

“I’ll move it,” she said. We traded grim smiles, and I retraced my earlier steps toward the hospital entrance, now burdened with self-loathing.

Watching me approach in his side mirror, my new friend spoke before I could, “No worries, pardner, forget about it. I eyeballed that shady spot myself, but this rig is a little too big.”

“No-no, I was way out of line,” I replied, wanting anything but the easy way out, at this point.

“Like I said, no worries,” he repeated, his thin blue eyes now locked on mine as I stood beside his vehicle. My daughter gives me hell when I get grouchy. I’m here to pick her up for lunch. She’s a doctor.”

I blinked twice, and a slow smile crept onto my face. “What’s her name?” I asked, knowing the answer before he replied and also knowing I was getting exactly what I deserved—and was glad to accept it.