Destinations Unknown Read online

  The driver of the taxicab was arrested and charged with manslaughter but was acquitted on the grounds that it was unintentional.

  So now I know. The Road acquired its taste for blood early. And Daddy Bliss and Road Mama have been parents to their family for a very long time.

  My first really big assignment is coming up in a few days—the weekend of the OSU-Michigan football game. I’ve set up three different tracks for this. Thirty-eight fatalities and twenty injuries—not all in the same place, of course; the Road can’t be too obvious about its methods.

  I figured out a way to run several tracks simultaneously without blowing any fuses. I rig them to run off of car batteries. Seems to me there ought to be something ironic in there, but I’m too tired to figure it out.

  I’ve been practicing with the controls. I’ve gotten really good. My hand/eye coordination has never been so sharp.

  Ciera called me. Daddy Bliss is going to let her come visit me the weekend of the OSU-Michigan game. I’m really looking forward to seeing her. I remember the way she kissed me and hope she’ll want to do it again. And maybe other stuff, too.

  It’s been a while.

  And that’s it. I don’t know why I decided to write all of this down. Maybe to have some record, for my own sanity. Maybe I did it in case I decide to do a Miss Driscoll with some pudding and pills. But that would mean no Ciera weekend, so I doubt that’s the reason. Hell, I don’t know.

  I tried to think of some clever way to end this, some witty remark that would leave you with a grin or something, and I’d almost decided on “Drive safely” but the truth is, even if you do—drive safely, that is—it won’t make a damned bit of difference.

  It never did. And never will.

  Keep on truckin’….

  (Special thanks to Geoff Cooper for sharing his near-encyclopedic knowledge of cars during the writing of this story.)

  The Box Man

  “Out on the highway

  Thirty people lost their lives…”

  —Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Graveyard Train”

  The box man always stands by the same part of the road, rain or shine (today it is rain); every day he is there, waiting for Patrick to pass by. It seems to Patrick the box man waits for him alone, that of all the drivers who pass this way each evening the box man has chosen him. It’s an odd game the two of them play. Patrick goes along with it because the box man is harmless enough, just another colorful street-crazy, he’s never knocked on the passenger window, begging for change, never cleaned anyone’s windshields, never stood there holding a cardboard sign with a sob story written in street-crazy haiku, no; he only wants to play the game. It goes like this:

  Patrick arrives at the intersection between five-forty and five-fifty p.m.; the box man stands on the right side of the road, in the grass, near the sidewalk (because Patrick always takes the right lane); beside him there is a stack of boxes, varying in size; he waits until he sees Patrick’s car before choosing that day’s particular box; as the cars begin moving, he writes something on the box with a black marker, then tosses it into the road so that Patrick can run over it. After it has been crushed and there is a sufficient break in the traffic, he walks into the road and retrieves the flattened box. What he does after this Patrick doesn’t know; by then he’s usually around the corner and driving toward home.

  Today, however, after Patrick has destroyed the box and driven on, the traffic slows as he rounds the corner; there’s been a fender-bender up ahead. Police in rain-slickened parkas wave lighted flares back and forth, their bright orange glows melting across Patrick’s windshield with every cycle of the wipers. Traffic in the other lane slows, but no one leaves enough of a gap between cars for Patrick to move over and drive past the accident. So he sits there, watching the silent scene made surreal by rain. After a moment he turns in his seat and looks out the rear window. He watches as the box man—back on the curb, crushed box in hand—uses the black marker to cross out whatever he’d written on it (Patrick can just make out the letters “R” “D” “Y” and the number “4”). Once finished, he gathers up the other boxes, placing them one inside the other until there is only one for him to carry.

  Patrick thinks the box man must suffer some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder; perhaps he’s also schizophrenic, feeling as if his brain is plugged into every electrical outlet in the city and the power’s running full-blast. For the first time in weeks Patrick gives the box man a more than passing thought; what questions would he ask the box man were he a client, one of the people who come to the guidance center to see their assigned counselor? Of course, the box man would be one of the Tuesday People, for Tuesdays are when the Moundbuilders Guidance Center sees those clients who have no money and no insurance.

  What would he ask the box man? Patrick has almost decided upon his first question when a driver in the other lane sounds his horn and signals for him to come on over where things are moving. Waving thanks, Patrick moves into the lane and is soon passing the accident—which is something more than the fender-bender he’d first thought; an ambulance is there, and two EMTs are lowering a gurney beside a small, sheeted figure in the road. A long, thick thread of blood snakes out from the spot where a face lies hidden beneath the sheet. A car is slanted half in the road, half onto the grass and pavement. The road glitters with the remains of headlights and the driver’s-side mirror. A heavy smear of gore is being washed away by the rain into the gutters, where it glides along, picking up empty cigarette packs, bottle caps, and silver chewing gum wrappers before sloshing into the nearby sewer grid.

  Patrick holds his breath as the EMTs load the dead body onto the gurney. An older man—the driver of the slanted car?—stands beside one of the police officers, weeping uncontrollably. Someone else—possibly a woman—sits in the back seat of the cruiser. Perhaps the old man’s wife was driving.

  Patrick silently wishes the old man and the woman in the cruiser peace, and hopes that the figure beneath the sheet did not suffer. He glances into his rear-view mirror and sees the box man standing at the corner, nodding his head. Patrick cannot see the expression on his face.

  “I saw a really bad accident on the way home tonight,” he says to his wife as he’s hanging up his coat. “Some old guy hit a pedestrian. Pretty hard, judging from all the glass in the road.”

  “Was the person hurt bad?” asks Anne, pausing with two empty coffee mugs in her hands. Anne works in the claims division of a local insurance company; stories like this are commonplace around her office. Or so Patrick imagines.

  “They were killed,” he says. “It was…huh…that’s strange….”

  “What is?” She sets down the mugs and pours coffee for Patrick, herbal tea for herself; Anne is four months pregnant and is being very careful about what goes into her body; she has even stopped taking the sleeping pills her G.P. prescribed for her last year. Nothing but natural elements for her body and their baby.

  “At first I thought it was just a fender-bender. I didn’t see any flashing lights or even hear sirens. It was all just…there as soon as I turned the corner. I kept thinking, someone was killed; there should’ve been…more to all of it. It was just a car and a bunch of broken glass and a covered body in the road.” He sits down at the kitchen counter and shakes his head. “I guess what I’m saying is, it didn’t seem quite real.”

  Anne pushes the mug of coffee toward him, then takes his hand and squeezes it. “It’s just terrible, Patrick. I mean, to see something like that and not be able to help. We just issued a settlement check today for an accident where some poor woman backed over a child hiding in a pile of leaves. I hate reading about things like that. You feel so…powerless.” She shakes her head. “Was the driver hurt?”

  “No, but he was awfully upset. He was an older guy, sixty or sixty-five. He was just standing there crying in the rain. He looked like the loneliest man alive.”

  “I hope the person he hit didn’t suffer much.” There are tears in her eyes.
r />   This is one of the things Patrick loves most about Anne—her compassion. She has a gift for empathy that astounds him; any time she hears of an accident, or a tragedy, anything like that, even if she doesn’t know the people involved, a part of her pauses and marks the moment with a silent prayer. He’d once asked her why she felt so strongly about such things, and she’d responded by quoting John Donne: “‘Any man’s death diminishes me.’“ He’d fallen in love with her all over again.

  “It looked to me,” he says, squeezing her hand in return, “like it happened fast. It might explain why I didn’t hear sirens.”

  “I assume this was down around the 21st Street intersection?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  Anne shrugs. “The city’s needed to put an extra light and another stop sign there for years. The last three accidents you’ve seen have been around there.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Don’t be that way. What happens to you, happens to me.” She takes back her hand, brushes some hair from her eyes, then smiles, the tears gone. “So tell me—was your friend at least safe and sound?”

  Patrick smiles back at her. “Dependable as clockwork.”

  “Have you ever talked to him?”

  “No. I don’t think we’ve even waved at each other.”

  “What do you suppose his story is?”

  “It’s funny—I was thinking that earlier.”

  “Great minds…” says Anne. “Which reminds me—we see Dr. Bev on Thursday. Time for baby to get his or her picture taken.”

  “Two-forty-five, right?”

  “Right. You want to pick me up at work or meet there?”

  “Meet there. My Thursday one-thirty is having a rotten time lately; I don’t want to reschedule his appointment.”

  “My hubby, the healer.”

  “You making fun of me, my wife, the sometimes-somnambulist?”

  Her smile widens. “Always. Someone has to keep you humble, after all. And I haven’t walked in my sleep in over a year, thank you very much.”

  “What? It was entertaining, finding you half-naked in front of the house.”

  “Keep ribbing me about it, and you might not ever find me naked in or out of the house ever again.”

  “I said nothing.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  They are lying in bed that night, having just made slow, careful, very satisfying love. Anne’s head rests on Patrick’s chest. Her fingers trace indiscernible patterns across his skin. After a moment, Anne stops her doodling and drums her fingers near Patrick’s heart. “Huh…”

  Patrick raises his head and looks down; all he can see is her sweat-matted hair cascading over his middle. “What ‘huh’?” he asks.

  “I was just remembering something my dad used to tell me when I was little.”

  “So sex with me makes you think of your father. What’s wrong with this picture, Ms. Electra Complex?”

  Anne pinches one of his nipples, then props herself up on her elbows. “You know, you’re not nearly as clever as you think.”

  “I thought it was a pretty good comeback. Considering most of my blood still hasn’t found its way back to my brain yet.”

  “Do you want to hear about this or not?”

  “I am all attention.”

  “First time for everything,” replies Anne, laughing. She scoots over, pulling her leg from across Patrick’s; he feels the coldness left in the wake of her flesh. This was how he’d first awakened to her sleepwalking—the sudden disappearance of her leg from across his body as she shambled from the bed. He wishes she’d put her leg back, but knows that she has trouble getting and staying comfortable, so he doesn’t object.

  “Box children,” she says.

  After a few moments of silence which are followed by a few more moments of silence, Patrick clears his throat. “Well, that explains everything. Thanks for clearing it up.”

  “I wasn’t finished.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt the longest ellipses know to man.”

  “Ellipsis,” says Anne. “Ellipses is plural.”

  “Bless you, my love, for pointing out my every mistake and flaw, no matter how small or insignificant.”

  “It’s that keeping-you-humble thing again.”

  Patrick sighs, running his hand along her cheek. “You were saying—or weren’t saying, actually.”

  “Box children. I was lying here thinking about your roadside buddy, wondering, y’know, what his story might be, and it reminded me…anytime he saw a box in the road, Dad would always go out of his way to drive around it. I asked him why once, and he said the neatest thing. He said, ‘Because of the box children. Don’t you know that’s how little kids and babies escape from their bed-time? They hide underneath boxes and crawl away. People see a moving box and they just figure it’s the wind blowing it along. But the truth is, there are babies underneath, being mischievous. They’re sneaking out to play because they don’t want to go to sleep. Sometimes adults sneak away like that, as well, though they need much bigger boxes. Never run over a box in the road, Annie, because, well, you never know, do you…?’ Isn’t that the neatest idea, like something out of a Ray Bradbury story? Can’t you just see all these babies, crawling out of their cribs in the middle of the night, then covering themselves with boxes and making a break for it? Maybe they all meet up in a field somewhere and play baby box-tag.”

  “I seem to recall this is the same man who told you that if you go to sleep with your slippers on the floor pointing north, you wouldn’t walk in your sleep and you’d always find money somewhere the next day.”

  “And I always did find money. A dime, or a quarter.”

  “It never occurred to you that maybe he planted it?”

  Anne shrugs. “Maybe…but I never thought about it for long. It was more fun to believe.” Her eyes look downward, and become sad. “I still miss him. He’s been dead two years now and it still hurts like hell. He used to make up stuff like that all the time.”

  “I know.”

  She looks at Patrick, the tears spilling down her cheeks. “He would’ve loved this, finally getting a grandchild. He’d’ve spoiled the kid rotten.”

  Patrick uses his thumb to brush away her tears. “I think your mother will manage to spoil her grandchild enough for the both of them.”

  Anne snuggles back down into his chest. “Have I told you lately that you’re a not-at-all terrible guy?”

  “And humble,” says Patrick. “Don’t forget humble.”

  They fall asleep covered in each other’s warmth.

  They are having breakfast the next morning—Tuesday—when Anne, who has been reading the first section of the Ally, suddenly sits up straight and gasps. “Oh, my Lord.”

  “What is it?”

  She offers the newspaper. “That accident you saw yesterday. A little boy was killed.”

  “Oh, Christ,” says Patrick, taking the paper and reading the article.

  The boy, Randy Ortelli, was waiting at the cross-walk with his mother. He kept complaining (the article said) that he really needed to go to the bathroom. His mother, Dianne, age twenty-six, told him he could hold it until they got across the street to the restaurant. Randy suddenly pulled away from her and ran out into the road, evidently thinking he could make it across, when a car driven by Kenneth Strawn, age 68, struck Randy, killing him instantly.

  “She was the woman in the cruiser,” whispers Patrick.

  “You saw her?”

  He nods his head. “She was in the back seat. I couldn’t see her face. I thought she was the old guy’s wife.”

  “That poor woman,” says Anne, the tears once again in her eyes and voice. “She saw her little boy get killed. My God, Patrick, he was only four years old.”

  Patrick shakes his head; Anne’s right—faced with tragedy like this, you feel helpless.

  It is not until later, when he’s driving to the guidance center, that Patrick remem
bers the writing he saw on the box man’s box yesterday: R. D. Y. 4.

  He almost misses his exit, he is so stunned by

  (Box children)

  the oddness of the coincidence.

  “Jesus,” he mumbles as he manages to catch his exit at the last minute. “Keep it up and you’ll start spinning yarns like Anne’s dad.”

  An idea that is not without its appeal; Anne would appreciate something like that, a way for the both of them to keep that playful part of her father alive for the grandchild he never lived to see.

  Five-fifty p.m. The box man is there again. He spots Patrick’s car and writes on today’s selected box. This time, as Patrick approaches, he sounds his horn and the box man pauses, mid-toss. Traffic is moving slowly enough that Patrick and the box man can have this first moment of direct interaction.

  Patrick points toward the box, then gestures with his hand: Let me see.

  The box man begins to shake his head, and Patrick clicks on his turn signal to begin changing lanes.

  The box man turns the box around so that Patrick can see what is written across its side: Theresa Watkins, 67.

  Patrick’s breath catches in his throat. Though he is not a superstitious man he is, for the moment, chilled.

  No.

  Absolutely not.

  It was, after all, only three letters and a number—it could have meant anything. The box man is just a street crazy, nothing more, and if this little game is part of the delusion he indulges, it’s harmless.

  Patrick stops his train of thought right there, before he thinks about all the boxes he’s driven over since he and the box man started this game however many weeks ago.

  Someone behind him sounds their horn; pulled from his reverie, Patrick accelerates and is almost to the corner before he realizes that he’s run over Theresa Watkins, 67. He sees the box man in his rear-view mirror; box retrieved, marker in hand, crossing out the name and number.