
the corner of broadway and badass
renée thompson
The woman in the big brown truck pulls in front of the man’s house, hits the brakes and lurches forward, both hands on the wheel. Damned if she didn’t do the same thing yesterday, and the day before that, when she dropped off the instruction manuals he’d ordered online: How to Survive in the Wilderness and How to Go Up When Your State Goes Down, in the event things came to that. Well, they had come to that.
Greene doesn’t like anything about the woman, not her legs—inverted triangles stuffed into shorts—nor the shirt she wears, with its brown and yellow logo stitched on one shoulder, like she’s queen of the delivery route. Doesn’t approve of her hair, cropped close to her head, or her belly, flopping over her belt. Mostly though, he dislikes her attitude, as she takes zero pride in her work.
“Package!” she hollers, as she pitches his box onto the porch one-handed.
Greene clenches his jaw and grits his teeth. He has a doorbell with a camera and a chime that alerts his phone—a system he bought at the big-box store, which set him back two bills. Why doesn’t she use it? “Hit the goddamn doorbell,” he hollers at the window, but she doesn’t hear him. She’s gone. Jogging to her truck, where she flings herself through its open door and rummages through more packages—no clue what she has yet to deliver, or how she’ll get them there. Pathetic, he thinks. Loser. A dog chasing its tail. The woman represents everything and everyone he doesn’t trust in this world, and he fully intends to report her.
Greene is a man who keeps tabs on his small community in northern California, who spies on his neighbors from his porch after midnight, binoculars in hand. Events have conspired to make him cautious, and now he stands in the dark, peering into windows. Every one of the nitwits is still up, watching TV, their brains gone to mush, to fermented cabbage, to bananas rotting in a bowl. No one thinks for themselves these days; they depend on cult leaders and ne’er-do-wells to guide their consciences and minds. Well, he is no damned follower. He has a brain of his own and intends to use it. He takes two days to think about it, and then he orders a chain saw.
The woman—maybe forty, forty-five—walks into Tony’s Tavern, sits on a stool and taps the bar with one finger. “I need a drink,” she says. “Make it a double.” Sweat glistens beneath her eyes.
“Tequila? Vodka? Whiskey?” the bartender asks. “What’s your preference?”
“Anything that’ll kill me.”
“Might take more than one,” he says. The man smiles, and she understands he’s made a little joke.
“Figure of speech,” she says. “Not killing myself over nut-jobs and hair brains. Just wish they’d slide off the Earth and into the ocean.”
The bartender pulls a bottle of Maker’s Mark from the middle shelf, tips three ounces of the golden liquid into a shot glass and then hands it to her. She takes a quick breath, exhales, picks up the glass and downs the whiskey. She coughs, grimaces, brings one hand to her face and fans her mouth. “Spicey,” she says, her eyes red and watering.
“Pour you a Coke instead?”
“No, I don’t want no Coke. What I want is to wipe the sour off that old man’s face—the guy that lives at the end of Broadway, before you hit Butler. Know who I’m talking about?”
The bartender shakes his head, starts to speak, but the woman interrupts him.
“Think I haven’t seen that bald-headed buzzard standing there at his picture window, waving me off as he’s cussing me out? Tell you what. I toss his packages hard as I can, just to tick him off. And I never ring his doorbell. Not once has he had the stomach to confront me directly. Knows I’ll knock him flat.”
The bartender briefly—casually—assesses her upper body, so as not to offend her. “You’ve got the chops,” he tells her.
“Darn tootin’,” she says.
Greene searches the package-delivery-company’s website, but there’s no way to speak to a human. He files a complaint via email, detailing the woman’s offenses, including her unwillingness to represent the organization that employs her in a professional manner. Says she refuses to place his packages on the porch with so much as a modicum of care and neglects to use the doorbell. And now she’s stealing from him. Ten days ago, he says, he ordered a chain saw online from the store in Oakley—he doesn’t say what he needs it for, it’s none of their business—and Miss Throw Your Packages Any Damn Where She Pleases hasn’t delivered it yet. The big-box store claims the item was delivered three days ago.
“It was not,” he says. “At best, it’s sitting in the back of that surly woman’s truck. At worst, she’s hidden it in her tool shed. What’s she need with a chain saw, anyway?” They had no answers for him.
Then, as it happens, the woman pulls in front of his house the very next day. About time, you old bat, he says to himself, but when she hops from the truck and jogs up the sidewalk, she isn’t carrying a box with a chain saw, but a tin of the Allsorts he ordered from the sweet shop in Dale. As soon as she reaches the front porch, her eyes meet his through the window. She glares at him. He glares at her. She holds up the package, makes sure he sees it, and then hurls it against the door.
“Hold it right there,” he yells. “Don’t move a muscle!” He strides outside and she doesn’t budge, just plants her feet where she’s standing. “Where the hell’s my saw?” he demands. “Store says you delivered it what? Four days ago, now.”
“Don’t know nothing about no saw,” she says.
Greene’s eyes morph into tiny slits, and his mouth grows tight as a pull seal. “Who do you think you are?” he says, his voice low, threatening.
She pokes his shoulder with one finger. “Pretty sure I’m your worst nightmare,” she says. “Best lock your doors at night.”
He’s taken aback—stunned by her bravado—but refuses to let her see even a smidge of vulnerability. He pulls himself up straight. “Listen, you,” he says. “I’ve contacted the company about your behavior—told them you’ve always been contemptible, and now you’re a package thief.” He leans in to make his point. “They’re gonna hand you your ass on a platter.”
“Nobody puts baby’s ass on a platter,” she says. There’s a beat, and then the woman smacks his arm good-naturedly. She jogs back to her truck and hops in. As she drives away, she hits the horn twice, waves. “See ya in your dreams, buddy boy!”
He doesn’t know what to make of her, this ghoul from Crazy City. But that night he heeds her advice and secures his doors. Scans the street with binoculars as he stands to the side of the curtains. He doesn’t hear her slip the pry bar between the door jamb and lock, doesn’t feel the blow to the back of his head.
The next day, she’s on her route again, with a delivery for each of his neighbors—boxes that might fit a size-nine shoe, say, or a pair of mittens, or some sort of cowboy hat. She has secured each box with wrapping tape to prevent any telltale leakage.
“One for you, and one for you, and one for you,” she says, as she thwacks the packages on each of their doorsteps. “Little gifts from your delivery gal, something to remember me by.”
Emerald City recently nominated Renée Thompson’s story, “The Blue Hairs,” for a 2025 Pushcart Prize. She is the winner of Narrative’s Fall 2023 Story Contest. Her work has also placed as a finalist in The Missouri Review’s 2023 Editors’ Prize, The Missouri Review’s 2023 Perkoff Prize, and the 2022 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize. She is the author of the novels The Plume Hunter and The Bridge at Valentine (named Woodland, California’s community novel in 2014). Renée is devoted to birds, mammals, and the people she loves. See more at www.reneethompson.com.
