Roadside Memorial
It’s not hard to get lost after losing someone.
I’d started getting nervous around nine-thirty. Ellie should’ve been home two hours earlier; she hadn’t responded to my texts or calls. It wasn’t like her.
Ever the pessimist, it was my nature to expect the worst. But after one too many of her knowing glances early in our relationship, I told her I’d do better. And Ellie (ever the optimist) reminded me that despite my fears, the worst rarely if ever happened. It was good advice, her voice in my head, reminding me. And for almost five years I did better. It never failed.
Until that night. That miserable, rainy night.
I received the call about one in the morning. When I got to the hospital I was greeted by a grim-looking attending surgeon. Ellie was gone. The worst had happened. My darkest fears realized.
A few weeks after the funeral, I drove out to the curve on Murton’s Road, to the site of the accident. It wasn’t hard to find the exact spot.
The massive tree stood there in wait, an immovable giant at the arcing road’s midpoint, mere inches beyond the asphalt. It looked to me like black death, thick branches spread apart as if welcoming travelers to the beyond.
I pulled to the side and sat for a few minutes, composing myself. Ellie had promised she’d never leave me. Why did she make a promise she couldn’t keep?
A loud clunk sounded on the windshield, an acorn dropping from a great height, returning my mind to the moment and my eyes to the surroundings.
There was little to see here; tall oak and pine practically blacked out both sun and sky, a biosphere of isolation. Even in this daylight there was a pervasive cheerlessness, the very air heavy with a thick funk of murky gloom.
Why did Ellie take this God-forsaken drive? It was a question I couldn’t answer.
Only the most pollyannaish had little anxiety about going this way; general consensus was “steer-clear.” The road’s winding, unpredictable nature made it a non-starter for most, especially after the bypass went up in ’07. There was a saying about its reputation for fatalities: “Take that road and it’ll take you.”
Grabbing my stuff, I approached the tree and immediately saw the massive scraping Ellie had made upon it. Thick chunks of bark were sheared away like claw marks across ragged skin, frost blue paint rouged roughly around the edges. A scatter of metal debris lay in the red leaves, the silence of violent memory blanketing the ground.
I ran my fingers over the bits of bare wood not scarred into splintered gashes. It was colder than I’d expected. Staring upward, into the lattice of branches, I suddenly became overwhelmed. I laid my forehead against the monster and wept.
Then, turning my back to the tree I viewed the sharp twisting road from its perspective. This is what the tree saw that night. It appeared as if the Devil himself had designed this dead man’s curve, asphalt concrete snaking in cruel intention, drivers delivered unto the Reaper.
Damn. There’s that pessimism. Sorry Ellie. I’ll do better.
I moved the roadside memorial into position, at a neutral angle, so it could be seen when passed in either direction. This wasn’t just a memorial. This was my warning to others.
Built only days earlier, painted white and ornamented with laminated photos, jewelry, and paper scraps of sentiment , the plywood cross shook in my hands as I readied the mallet. I hammered firmly, angrily, deeply into the ground between thick, serpentine roots.
Then I fished my keys from my jacket and got back in the car. I placed the hammer on the passenger seat, let out a long sigh, and as I stuck the key in the ignition my phone hummed and shook.
A text message was waiting for me. Several more appeared, one after the other, populating en masse, an obvious data bottleneck unblocked.
They were from Ellie, all of them, all dated weeks earlier, all from that dreadful night. It was as if the phone company had decided to hold them for delivery until the most morbid moment possible, here in the shadow of this roadside memorial, a cage of ghosts unlocked. They all read the same thing. “Will be home late.”
After battling the worst thoughts I began the drive back.
But Murton’s Road went on for a long time, too long. There was no turn-off, just a lonely road through lonely woods, neverending.
I turned the car around and drove in the other direction eventually passing the Roadside Memorial. Seeing the sign of the cross was a relief. I wasn’t losing my mind. I wasn’t completely lost.
But this way also went on without a turn-off, no other cars, no connection to the highway, no seeming exit from this forest. In a way, I didn’t care. If I wanted to, I could steer into any one of these trees and just end it all.
Instead, I drove on. Forever and ever until the darkness seemed to overtake me.
And then Ellie appeared in the passenger seat in a white glowing light, stark against the silhouette of trees sweeping past our windows, their crooked trunks and branches a looping abstract pattern.
I realized these weren’t trees at all, but bodies, shadows of the long-dead, a chain of blackened figures standing side by side, bent and broken.
Sensing my despair, Ellie put a calming hand on my shoulder.
“I’ll never leave you,” she said. “I promise.”
“You made that promise before,” I replied.
She cast me that knowing look.
“I’ll do better, Ellie,” I said and kept going.
