A View To Die For

Joseph stood behind his living room window and attempted to look as silently intimidating as possible, but there is only so much an old man can do without a rocking chair and a shotgun. Across the road, A Sheriff’s Deputy was hunched over, winding some contraption at the base of a traffic monitor. Joseph saw the Deputy look back at him, but the Deputy quickly returned to locking the traffic monitor into place. He was hurried, working with a nervous awareness, like a scavenging jackal tearing at a carcass before a lion returns to his kill. Joseph continued to stare as he took a sip from his mug.

Joseph had retired to San Diego, where he had purchased a magnificent view of the ocean along with a modest house. He was born in a New Jersey apartment, crowded with five siblings and a view of grey buildings beneath a grey sky. Living in his San Diego dream house, Joseph had come as far across the country as he had in social stratification. Joseph now owned one of the best views in the county, if not the whole country. However, a traffic monitor, which looked like an oversized digital watch, had been unloaded from a Deputy’s truck, imposing on Joseph’s ocean view.

“I’ll have to talk with him.”

Joseph put his coffee down on a table by the window and exited his door. Across from Joseph’s house was limited, but not limited enough, parking. Along the cliff’s side was a dirt shoulder for the occasional parked car. Joseph walked out of the house with purpose in his stride. He briefly checked for traffic and then crossed the road. The Deputy turned toward the sound of footsteps. Joseph was in his 60s, but he carried himself with pinned back shoulders and a straight back, wanting to leverage a great deal of intimidation from his height. He was six and a half feet tall, and the Deputy was two phonebooks short of being able to look him eye-to-eye.

“Good morning,” Joseph said. He attempted to size up the Deputy. He was out of shape, or his Olympian body was encased with 60 pounds of excess fat. The marine layer had not begun to burn away, but beads of sweat had already formed beneath the Deputy’s on-sale gas station sunglasses. Joseph lamented that this man would be prone to doing things once, even if there was an open spot about sixty feet down the road.

“Good morning. Can I help you?” asked the Deputy. Joseph understood that the Deputy had wanted to convey unwarranted annoyance rather than a genuine offer to help. He remained unaffected and decided to give the soft approach another attempt.

“Well, I was curious about what you were up to,” said Joseph.

“We’re going to be monitoring speeds. We’ve had complaints from some of your neighbors. Is there a problem here?”

Joseph hated to state the obvious. He looked back at his house and then turned to look at the Deputy. Joseph’s light blue eyes alternated from kind to cold in a blink. He stared.

“I know it’s in your way, but there’s hardly any place we can set this up.” A red convertible raced by the two men. The speeding car had made the Deputy’s next argument without any words. Both men turned their heads back toward one another after the car grew too small in the distance to follow.

“OK. How long are you going to be monitoring speeds here?” Joseph smirked on the left side of his face, and his eyes followed the smirk in a line to his slumping shoulder.

“A few weeks. If there is a problem, we’re going to have to set up a car nearby to issue tickets.”

“A few weeks?” Joseph scanned the cliff’s edge. There was still an open space sixty feet down the road.

“We’ll be moving it periodically. Some days it will be up, some it will be down. The mayor has authorized this, and we need to respond to the complaints,” said the Deputy.

Joseph briefly wondered how the mayor of a city could direct county employees, but he dismissed the Deputy’s nonsense. This man had been given power, the ability to take away what Joseph had spent his life time earning, but he had not been given brains. He did not understand what Joseph was trying to tell him.

“Can you move this thing? It’s an eyesore. There’s an open spot about sixty feet down the road.”

“Well then, can’t you walk sixty feet down the road? It’s the same view of the same ocean,” said the Deputy. Joseph’s face turned from pale to rose. Was the Deputy implying that he was too old and unable to walk down the road? He was. The silver badge on the Deputy’s shirt was all that stood between Joseph’s knuckles and the Deputy’s face. It was not the same view. The Deputy had stolen and soiled Joseph’s view.

“I can. There are a lot of things I can do, but I’m asking you to move this thing. It’s in my way,” said Joseph.

The Deputy shook his head and smiled while looking at an imaginary figure to his right. He cleared his throat and looked up at Joseph.

“Look, this has to be done. I’m not moving this thing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” The Deputy turned his back to Joseph and continued his set-up of the speed monitor. He pretended not to see Joseph, who remained standing and staring.

“Good day, Deputy. I’ll be seeing you around,” Joseph said to the back of the Deputy’s head, who continued to ignore him. He turned and crossed the street. Joseph listened to the slowing sounds of one paranoid motorist followed by another as he returned to his home.

Joseph pretended to enjoy a quiet morning with his book. The fight had been over for an hour, but a scar remained. The speed monitor stained his eyesight. He was displeased whenever someone parked in front of his view, but he felt this was a matter of spite and laziness over necessity, and the distinction was unforgivable in the case of the Deputy’s transgression. Joseph could empathize with the drivers who stopped at the open spot to enjoy a sunset, which occurred more often than he liked, but the Deputy’s self-centered thinking had stolen a thing of beauty from Joseph, as well as anyone who passed by.

Plots of revenge percolated through Joseph’s head. He would call the Sheriff’s station to complain. Maybe, he would wait until the dead of night and have the device moved. Joseph thought more and more about it. Kids are always playing pranks. If the traffic monitor were to go missing, the Deputy would have real police work to do. Joseph continued to rationalize, and he realized that he would be doing a favor to the Deputy. He definitely owed him one.

Sunset was eagerly anticipated for its opportunity, rather than for its fading beauty. 43, 45, 42, 39, 38, 35, 32, 30, 27, 24, 26, 25, 26. Joseph stared at the speed monitor as a car passed. Plumes of pink and purple developed above, and the horizon grew orange, but Joseph only saw electronic numbers.

Joseph was then surprised. The Deputy pulled up in the same white truck that he rode in the morning. The Deputy sat in the driver’s seat, looking out at the ocean. Unlike this morning, he moved at a leisurely pace. He was enjoying the sunset. Joseph clenched his teeth as the Deputy enjoyed what was rightfully his. His reason for buying this house had been replaced with the backside of the Deputy and an oversized monstrosity of a digital watch. He had the best seat in the theater for the year’s best picture, but he could only see the basketball team that took seats in front of him. Joseph waited for darkness to fall upon the Deputy.

The Deputy began unwinding the traffic monitor’s lock and hitched it to the back of his truck. He started his engine and looked for oncoming traffic, catching Joseph’s stare through his living room window. The Deputy exercised every muscle in his cheeks and posed with a smile. There was nothing polite about this sinister gloating. In a flash, the Deputy and the device had disappeared, but the smile remained.

Joseph reached into his pocket for his car keys. He only found a pen, but he had already prepared a mental checklist for the supplies he would need. Joseph no longer saw the sinister smile across the road, but it could now be seen on Joseph’s face to any passer by.

*

Joseph awoke early, wide-eyed. His late night project had only invigorated. This type of eager anticipation was occasionally found in children on Christmas morning. Unlike Christmas, however, he was not the one who would receive a gift. He threw on his robe and hurried downstairs. Upon arriving at his living room window, Joseph looked out at his solution. Nervousness in his stomach accompanied a pinch of guilt in the back of his neck, but it was too bright outside to change what he had done. He moved his gaze from the roadside to the unobscured ocean waves.

After some light grooming and coffee brewing, Joseph returned to his reading chair and its view of the ocean. He held a book on World War II fighter pilots in his hands, but it was merely a prop for appearances. He intently peered over the pages of his open book as two joggers slowed, jogging in place across the street. They had found his surprise, and Joseph hoped they would accept it without question.

At the base of the joggers’ feet was a small cross that displayed “GREG” upon the horizontal bar. Cheap daisies laid beside the cross, freshly wrapped in a white bouquet. A small memorial was now taking the place of one of the few parking spaces along the cliff side of the road. Had his feud been with anyone other than law enforcement, he would have simply made a “No Parking” sign or even purchased yellow caution tape, the type that signified a roadside hazard or crime scene. After much deliberation, Joseph decided that the small memorial would be more effective. The additional cost of flowers was worth it to beat the Deputy at his silly game, and it also preserved his view.

The joggers left after a minute. Over the next hour, a procession of joggers, bicyclists, and slow drivers admired Joseph’s work. Joseph hoped that no one missed Greg too dearly, and he rationalized that he had given these people a new appreciation for life.

After finishing his third cup of coffee, Joseph saw the Deputy’s truck. The Deputy veered halfway onto the dirt patch across from Joseph’s house before slowly pulling back onto the road and accelerating. Joseph intently watched the sequence. As he pretended to read his book, the hardcover slipped down from the book’s dust jacket. Joseph put down his book, not taking the time to mark the page he last read.

Joseph had waited all morning to collect his newspaper from the front of his house. As he walked outside to pick up the newspaper, he saw the Deputy sixty feet down the road, unhitching the speed monitor from his truck. Joseph gave a polite wave at the Deputy, which was really an unctuous display of gloating, but the Deputy did not give the final satisfaction of waving back.

Feeling triumphant in his victory, Joseph picked up the newspaper. He took a deep breath and embraced the smell of salty, ocean air being blown up the cliff. He looked up at the rolling waves, endlessly renewing a relaxing soundtrack. The inland breeze cooled his face, and he thought about how much he enjoyed the sounds, the smells, and the feel of this exclusive spot. Most importantly, he valued the incomparable view. Joseph was confident he had bested the Deputy, but he would spend the day sitting at his window, watching. He loved owning this view, his view.