Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.—Anais Nin
Horace’s father, Ron, along with hundreds of yellow taxis, was tearing like a madman through the crowded streets of New York. Horns were blasting, the sun was glaring, and Ron wouldn’t let up. Despite a number of close calls, he kept saying, “When you drive in New York, you have to be aggressive. Gotta be aggressive.”
Horace, his nose hanging out an open window, was packed tight into the back seat with his five younger brothers and sisters. His mother, June—the consummate backseat driver—was alert in the front seat, close to hysterics. She did not appreciate aggressive driving. “Ron, watch out!” she screamed for the tenth time since they had come over the bridge into the city from Long Island five minutes before.
“Gotta be aggressive!” Ron shouted again, braking hard and twisting his wheel to the right. “Watch out!” June screamed, but it was too late. This time, with a loud screech of metal on metal, they came swiftly to a dead stop on the shoulder of the avenue, locked fender to fender, side by side, in intercourse with another vehicle.
Horace looked out his window. A passenger in the other car—an elderly gentleman wearing a Yankees cap— sat not two feet away, staring at him in stunned silence. Horace, who liked the man’s cap, nodded a hello.
Ron checked that all were safe within, then—springing into action along with the driver of the other car, a very fat man—jumped out to survey the damage.
Horace was suddenly aware of the sound of laughter, cheering, jeering, hooting, and whistling coming from somewhere above. It was quite loud, and—perhaps—directed at them.
June got out to join her husband, who was now in earnest conversation with the fat man. They had managed to unhook the bumpers and were discussing whether they would need to call in the police.
As June walked to the front of the car, the noise that Horace had noticed a moment earlier became an instant uproar. “Hey baby, come up here. I’ll take good care of you,” a voice followed by smooching sounds echoed out of a tenth floor window. Hundreds of other voices laughed, and then chimed in from the heavens with their own crude comments, creating a cacophony of sound that littered the air. Occasional smutty, filthy, even threatening remarks could be clearly heard above the din of the masses.
Horace looked around, spotted the source of these threats, and suddenly understood. They had crashed their car in front of a tall, grey, faceless prison of some sort. It was summer, it was hot, the windows of the jail were open, and Horace and his family were at the mercy of them all—that day’s entertainment for the multitude of bored, foulmouthed prisoners inside. And eerily, although the convicts could apparently see all that was taking place on the street below, they were invisible to the pedestrians’ view.
Ron and June and the fat man stood frozen in their tracks, blushing, nervous, and afraid. Ron was furious but could not move a muscle, despite pleas from a clearly shaken June to “do something.”
There was a blur of movement from the right, and before anyone could react, Horace was on the roof of the car, facing the prison and the prisoners. He thrust his left arm up—middle finger extended—and waved it at them, from left to right and then right to left.
The prison erupted and the symphony began. Horace did not let up. He grabbed at his crotch. He showed them his fists. He turned around, pulled down his pants, and mooned them. He stuck two fingers down his throat. He put out his arms in mock arrest. He stood up straight and proud, conducting their shouts and protests a-la-Toscanini. He howled at them like a wolf.
Until finally—finally—the jeers turned to shout of laughter and Horace and his family were home free. “Hey little man. You got some huge pair of cajones,” a Hispanic voice shouted. “Take care man. You all right.”
Ron and June coaxed a trembling Horace down from the roof, everyone piled back into the car, and they pulled out into the traffic, nice and slow.
