Highway 24 (3 page)

Paul began to craft a theory to fit the facts of the last few hours of his life and the last twenty years of his father’s. Maybe his father had struck that girl, all those years ago, and picked up her shoe. Perhaps the old man couldn’t rid himself of the shoe either and tossed it into a box to forget it, but always kept it close. Keep your enemies closer, wasn’t that the saying?

The old man quit because he feared passing that road again. He must have known the police were looking for him. Maybe there was a witness, some telltale damage to the car. Didn’t his father get the windshield of his car replaced? Yes, Paul remembered, his mother had fumed about the expense. Maybe the old man tried but couldn’t get a different route. The salesmen didn’t give up their routes, all those relationships built over the years. So the old man quit and imploded from guilt eating away at his core.

Not long after his father changed jobs, Paul had stood in the kitchen and told his mother that he would never give up, never give in to weakness, never quit the way his father had. She had laughed, ridiculed him, and that was the last time he told her anything important. Paul bit his lip. So far he had followed his father’s trail, taking the shoe and fleeing the scene. Maybe his mother knew her son better than he knew himself?

Paul didn’t believe in ghosts, except maybe the Holy Ghost and that only tenuously. After the events of the previous night, though, he questioned his sanity. Wasn’t that a sign of sanity, the sense to question your sanity? And the shoe was real, with weight and texture, and solid in his grip. He needed confirmation, some tangible evidence to identify the girl.

His ignorance of her name narrowed his options. He could guess where and probably how she died, but as for her name or when, he was lost. He concocted a story to tell the sheriff and promptly dismissed it, doubting such a story would fool any law enforcement officer. Their success depended on spotting lies.

But I’m innocent. I didn’t kill her. She was already dead.
Or do I share the guilt? The sins of the father haunt the son. I took the shoe and ran.

He left the shoe where it had fallen, lying upside down under the dashboard. For a moment he saw it as an article of clothing, nothing more, something discarded and forgotten, a piece of junk in the garage that no one had bothered to throw out. Not a relic from the grave, here to haunt him for his father’s crime.

Paul closed his eyes. Fatigue, frustration, and confusion threatened to consume him. He wanted to go home. The only way he could do that was to find out what really happened, talk to the sheriff. Tell him there was a girl on the road, he decided, the aftermath of an accident, and his cell phone battery had run down.

Swiftly and resolutely, he left the car and walked along the cracked sidewalk toward the center of town with its mishmash of brick and limestone facades crammed together like refugees in a bread line. He passed the open door of a doughnut shop and heard the clink of coffee cups and old men drawling. The scent of freshly fried dough drifted past him on the breeze, as enchanting as a siren’s song. He hesitated, wondering if he should fortify himself before confronting the sheriff. At least he would empty his bladder. He found the unisex toilet at the back of the shop. The loose door handle wiggled in his hand. Once his thoughts turned to relief, he couldn’t move fast enough.

Back in the main part of the shop, he passed the woman behind the counter, who wore a floor-length white apron stained with cinnamon and maple frosting. Her thick curls strained against a hairnet.

“Could I help you?” she asked. Paul shook his head no. She frowned and made no effort to hide it as he stepped toward the exit. He kept moving. Sustenance would be his reward for talking to the sheriff.

As Paul approached the intersection beyond the doughnut shop, a man on the corner caught his attention. He held an open, soft-cover book that draped over the fingers of his left hand while gesticulating wildly with his other hand. Two onlookers smiled with bemusement and curiosity.

“The Lord spoke to Moses and His people.” The man’s voice boomed, without apparent effort, a natural orator. “But did they listen? No. They fashioned a calf, a golden calf, to honor with their greed and their wickedness. ‘You shall have no other gods,’ He commanded. You shall not make idols.” He punctuated each of the last three words with a shake of his right fist.

Paul turned to walk behind the preacher, but the man stepped backward, blocking Paul’s path without losing eye contact with the others in his audience.

“‘You shall honor your father and mother. You shall not commit adultery.’ And,” he exclaimed, turning to Paul, “you shall not steal a life.” The man stared for an uncomfortable duration. Paul finally looked away. “Can I help you, brother?”

“No, I have an appointment.” Paul moved to the man’s left, but the preacher stepped forward, again blocking Paul’s path.

“Are you
lost,
brother? I can always tell a soul that’s lost.”

The word lost struck a chord in Paul’s exhausted mind. Maybe the preacher man could help, at least speed him on his journey. “Do you know where to find the sheriff?”

The preacher raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Follow me.” Paul hastened to keep pace as the man glided along the sidewalk with surprising speed. “Are you in some sort of trouble? I could intercede for you.”

“No. I saw an accident last night.”

“An accident. And you stopped to help no doubt.”

“There didn’t seem to be much I could do.” Recalling the facts without thinking about the apparition entrenched his sense of absurdity. But recalling how the shoe hung from its gibbet in his car sent him back into the realm of ghosts. He followed the preacher across a street paved with red bricks. Rugged weeds clung to life in the fissures that crisscrossed the uneven sidewalk. They passed a greasy spoon and a tavern.

The courthouse burst into view as they rounded a corner. It jutted from the land, rising above the mundane like a Mayan pyramid emerging from the jungle, a monument to a former era. The limestone bricks shone golden in the morning sun, and the central spire towered seven stories into the unblemished sky. A white clock-face with black roman numerals marked the four points on the compass. The massive structure held dominion over a city block and formed the hub for eight sidewalk spokes which branched toward the street and cut across the manicured lawn. All roads led to the courthouse.

“Is the sheriff’s office in there?”

“Oh no. It is a lovely building. A grand expression of an ideal. Justice.”

While the preacher prattled about justice, Paul imagined the men in the quarry. Their shirtless backs wet with sweat, and plow horses straining against their harnesses to move carts laden with stone slabs for the rising courthouse tower. Those men labored to create something that would outlive themselves and their children. His father had left him a shoe, someone else’s shoe. Paul felt cheated.

“Have they achieved it?” the preacher asked.

“Achieved what?”

“Justice.”

Paul shrugged. “Only the guy who did it really knows, I guess.”

“That’s a matter of guilt or innocence. Justice is far more complicated.”

Paul sensed an invitation to debate. The preacher waited. “So where do we find the sheriff?”

“Yes, the sheriff. He’s with the county jail in that tin hut on the corner.”

A one-story, flat-roofed hovel hid beneath a row of trees in a back corner of the courthouse lot. Clearly a squatter, the dull-brown, corrugated metal shed cowered beneath the larger building’s stony shadow. Bars secured the small apertures at the back of the building. Air conditioners projected from the lower halves of the front windows.

They crossed another street paved with bricks. Tar filled holes, where the original bricks had crumbled, gave the impression that a black, splotchy fungus had taken root. The sidewalk that girded the courthouse suffered no uneven cracks. Despite the late autumn date, the lawn sprouted thick and green as moss in a clear, flowing stream. Japanese maples grew on either side of the walk, and their branches formed a series of living arches overhead.

The preacher stopped in front of the county jail, at the foot of steps leading up to a glass door. A surge of doubt washed over Paul and breached his hastily constructed wall of courage. What seemed practicable less than an hour ago, while he sat beside the shoe, now seemed ludicrous. The sheriff would brand him a nutter, another petty annoyance on his list of broken windows, missing lawn chairs, and lost dogs. Paul hesitated, his outstretched hand halfway to the railing. The three rickety, white-washed wooden steps would be equally at home in a trailer park.

“You’ll miss him if you don’t hurry. He goes out on patrol before lunch.”

Paul ignored the comment. If he hadn’t picked up the preacher, he could have turned and left this whole ridiculous business behind. The preacher stared with a gaze that bore through him. Paul didn’t believe in telepathy, but if anyone could know his thoughts, he suspected it would be the preacher.

“Courage, my son. Resolution and faith. Those are your friends, sometimes your only friends. You must trust them.”

Paul rolled his eyes. “Thanks for your help.” The railing moved under the pressure of his grip and the steps creaked like a horde of crickets.

“I’ll be waiting.”

“It’s not really necessary. I’m just reporting an accident.”

The preacher nodded but made no move to leave.

Paul entered the office, thinking only of putting a physical barrier between himself and the preacher. A gush of warm air enveloped him. A young woman in a long-sleeved, red blouse looked at him from behind a gray, metal desk. Her short-cropped hair barely covered her ears. Her mouth formed a severe, red line, and the green eyes that studied him exuded a callousness bordering contempt.

“Can I help you?” asked the woman.

Paul fumbled, searching for a way to say “no” without sounding ridiculous.

The woman cocked her head to the right. She motioned toward a stack of empty forms on the edge of her desk. “If you want to report a theft or vandalism, you need to provide a detailed list of the items and their monetary value.”

“That’s not what I need,” Paul blurted. “I was going to talk to the sheriff. I wanted to report something I’d seen, but it’s...uh...it’s probably not worth bothering him. Good day.”

“Come on in.” The baritone came from the office to the left, its doorway filled by the sheriff. His bulging biceps threatened to burst his shirt sleeves. Just below his neck, a white T-shirt filled the gap left by his unbuttoned collar. “You’re already here. So we might as well talk.”

The receptionist raised her eyebrows and shrugged.

“Come in and have a seat.” The sheriff’s tone implied a command from someone unaccustomed to disobedience.

Paul followed him into the office and sat in one of two metal chairs. The sheriff sat in a padded, black leather chair behind a solid wood desk stained a reddish brown that emboldened the grain’s jagged black lines. Gouges and rounded edges belied the desk’s ancient heritage. The clutter free desktop allowed Paul to admire the beauty of the piece. Behind the sheriff loomed a gray steel door. A gun belt and wide-brimmed hat hung from pegs on the wall.

“This desk belonged to my grandfather,” said the sheriff.

Paul nodded. “You can’t find new ones like this anymore. My father used to make furniture but he never created anything this impressive.”

The sheriff studied him, evaluating him. Paul shifted in his seat, wondering what the sheriff already knew. “Last night…” Paul began.

“What were you doing out on twenty-four?”

The opening move carried the ring of an accusation. “That’s…” Paul stopped to clear his throat. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“I’m listening.”

“I think I saw an accident. Were you out there investigating it?” Paul’s heart thumped. He licked his lips to alleviate his sudden cottonmouth.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss official business. And if it wasn’t official, it would still be my business.”

Paul kept his voice steady. “Then how do I know if you know about the accident?”

“I’ll ask the questions.” The sheriff took a notepad and a click pen out of his top desk drawer. He clicked the pen multiple times in rapid succession. “What did you see?”

“A girl on the road. She had been hit.”

“What was she wearing?”

“A pink dress, some sort of formal thing.”

The sheriff wrote none of this on the notepad. He stared blankly beyond Paul’s shoulder at some distant point in the temporal landscape. His eyes clouded with gloom, losing their fiery aggression. The sheriff’s sudden bout of melancholia left Paul disconcerted and unprepared. He fidgeted in the metal chair.

“Why didn’t you stop?” asked the sheriff.

“I don’t know. I guess I was going too fast and...” Paul stopped himself from sinking further into a confessional quagmire. Sweat dampened his forehead. Heat flushed his cheeks.

The sheriff emerged from his reverie. “You were going too fast to see a body sprawled on the pavement in front of you? She was hurt, ya know.”

“I came back.”

The sheriff snorted, leaned back in his chair, and for the first time since Paul met him, smiled. “It doesn’t matter. That girl is already dead.”

“So, you were investigating it.”

“Not really. Everyone knows about her. It happened seventeen years ago. Some bastard knocked the life out of her. A hit-and-run. People see her now and then, running or sprawled across the road, always at that same spot. Sometimes I head out there late at night.” He paused, and then continued with obvious remorse. “But I’ve never seen her.”

“So, you’re saying lots of people have seen her.”

The sheriff nodded. “That’s what I said.”

Paul’s body sagged with relief. He wasn’t insane after all. “Is she a ghost?”

“What else would she be?”

Paul shrugged. “What was her name?”

“Amanda Mills. Big news. At least it was then.” The volume of his voice trailed off as he rambled on. “No one talks much about it anymore, unless someone’s seen her. And then it’s only some morbid curiosity. No one’s looking for the bastard anymore. They’ve all given up the search. Say it doesn’t matter anymore. Except me.” His gaze drifted over Paul’s head.