Dark Road

Welcome to another of my Short Stories For Shut-Ins.  This is a spooky month so…here you go.

Dark Road

By Gerald DiPego

Just now I took a deep breath, and I realize this is something I do every time I turn onto this road. I was at my job at the lab until seven tonight, late for me, but I don’t mind. I took the highway, as usual, for 32 minutes and then turned onto a well-lit street, Ball Street, for ten blocks, and left that street for this smaller, darker road, badly paved and heavily weeded along its ditches, and I sighed my automatic sigh because there are no lights here, no signs, nothing but black, cracked road and my headlights whipping through trees, weeds and brambles, and in just 14 minutes down this old familiar road I’ll be home.
 
Home is my favorite place. I admit that. Oh, sometimes I’ll meet friends for dinner and even go out on a date now and then, only three since Meg moved out, which was… about six months ago. Meg said I had turned into just another piece of furniture in the house. When I’m there, I seldom want to leave, feeling relaxed and…safe, I guess. Not that I’m a worrier, just safe from…commitments, from obligations. It’s not a great house, but I love it, not just because it’s quiet. There are plenty of trees and birds around the place, and I have my books there and the TV, all my collections, games, too. Meg and I loved games and…. Well, all the joy wore off for her. She wanted us to go to counseling. I didn’t want more talk, more…obligation. The parting was sad but it didn’t crush me. She calls now and then. She refers to our marriage as three years in a safe-house. She says she’s happier now. I hope so. I guess I thought she was more like me. We married in our early thirties, and she was quiet, too. She says it was me who changed, dug into that home like a fox hole. She’s good at imagery. ‘Fox Hole.’
 
As I drive, I can feel the house waiting for me, a good feeling. I can – HEY! GOD! I just hit the brakes and almost spun out! There was something in my lights for a second, in the ditch, on my right. It looked like…god, it looked like a person, a body. I’m backing up now but…very…slowly…. I don’t want any surprises. Maybe it’s…. It IS a person. I can see blond hair and a…a torn shirt, a torn blue shirt. A boy? No, a man, a young man, I think, but his face is in the weeds. Is he drunk? Is he dead? I’m looking all around, but there’s nobody, unless someone’s hiding, hiding in the darkness. I lower the side window. He’s just…lying there. I see what could be…could be some blood in his hair. Not sure. What do I…. “HEY!” I’m shouting, hoping he’ll move, hoping he’s lying there drunk, sleeping. “HEY!”
 
He doesn’t move. I can’t tell if he’s breathing. How can this be happening to me?! I don’t want…. I don’t want this! “HEY!” He still doesn’t move. I look all around me and I listen and there’s nothing moving and no sound but crickets, some wind in the… “HEY, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?!”
 
What am I doing? Shouting on this road. What if somebody hears me? What am I supposed to…? I don’t want any of this. It’s not my trouble. It’s not my business. I don’t want to have to touch him and…I don’t want to call the police and wait for the police and talk to the police. I don’t want to be mixed up in this at all. It’s not fair. It doesn’t involve me. No matter what this is, it’s not any part of me. I’m just passing by. Someone else will come along in a few minutes. Someone else. THEY’LL stop, THEY’LL take care of it. I’m just… I’m not involved at all. I’m just on my way home.
 
The idea of home grips and pulls me, like hands, like strong hands. I can just go home. I never saw this. I just drove along, and I never saw this. I just… I find that I’m moving. I am, slow movements, look at me, putting the car in gear, slowly, quietly, then driving away. I don’t hurry. I just didn’t see anything. That’s what I can say if anybody…. I just didn’t see it. Didn’t see him. I was just driving home and I saw nothing, and that’s just what I’m doing now. I’m driving home. My chest is so tight. I have to swallow, have to breathe. I’ll be home soon. In just a few minutes I’ll walk in the door and be home.
 
I’ve made it all the way to my driveway seeing no other cars, not ahead, not behind me. I pull in and park, and I’m out of the car and trying not to hurry, not to run to the door. I have the key ready. I’m inside now, but I don’t turn on a light. Why not? I should turn on the lights. I’m not hiding. I just drove home from work. I didn’t see anything. I’m home now. I turn on the lights and stand there. What am I expecting?  There’s no one here, of course. It’s just my home. I take some breaths, put down my jacket and briefcase. I feel like someone is watching me, but that’s just nerves. It’ll wear off – because here I am, in my house, alone in my house. I drop into my chair, my best chair, and put my feet up on the hassock, use my feet to push off my shoes, and they thud on the carpet. I close my eyes and breathe. I’m home. I think those words and even say them out loud, quietly. “I’m home.”
 
Closing my eyes is a mistake. I see the ditch, the body. So I look around the house and find comfort in the books, in the cases with my collections, in the old polished wood of the furniture, in the warm light on the walls, and I feel myself easing. I’m not relaxed, but I’m breathing normally and…. I have to push away the questions: what’s happening now in the ditch? Is he moving? Is there someone else there, on the road, staring at him? Are they getting out of their car? Are they pulling out their cell phone?
 
There’s a remote in reach and I turn on the TV. My favorite music channel comes on, light classical. Rossini, I think. I don’t know, but it enters me and I do start to ease. I do. Because it’s fading, what I saw. It’s in the past. I’m home now and my life has gone on.
 
I take some deep breaths and try to let Rossini in and keep everything else out, but it’s difficult. My mind is being pulled back to that damn ditch. I walk to the small table I use as a bar, and I pour some Scotch. I take the first sip and feel it warming me, loosening me, but I see my hand is trembling, just a little, but…trembling.
 
I have a med that relaxes me when I feel uptight, and I step into the bathroom and pull the plastic bottle from the cabinet, take the pill and wash it down with more than a sip of my drink, but not too much, not too fast. I need to slow down.
 
I move back to my chair and sit, let my eyes close again, ease my breathing, give way to…. It’s Tchaikovsky now, Capriccio Italien. I like this one. I surrender to it, move inside of it.
 
I wake up suddenly, my breath a clenched fist in my chest. I actually slept. I think I remember a Copland piece and then…. I look at the clock. Just over forty-five minutes went by, and I’m glad, so glad I could drift away like that, but what woke me? And why is my chest so tight again, and then the sound comes, and I realize I heard this while asleep. It crashed into my sleep. Someone’s knocking on the front door.
 
The whole scene rushes at me, captures me, the ditch, the body, the driving away. I stand up quickly, but don’t move to the door, not yet. What if it IS all about that man, that ditch. I didn’t see anything from the road. I have to act calm. I didn’t see anything at all.
 
I walk to the door, trying to appear normal, a man relaxing in his home. I speak through the door, making my voice pleasant. “Who is it?”
 
There’s no answer. I wait. No voice. No knocking. I say it again, louder: “Who is it?” Nothing. Then I hear the knocking again, this time at the side door in the kitchen, and I move there, straining to keep calm. Why would it be about the man and the ditch? I passed that ditch…when…more than an hour ago. But who would knock on my door? A neighbor with a problem? I don’t really know them – my neighbors. I can’t even see their homes from.… “I’m coming,” I shout, and now look through the door’s glass, but see only darkness. “Who is it?”
 
I open the door, and there’s no one, no one on the side porch. “Who’s there?” I’m shouting now. “Hello?” I wait. Nothing. I’m about to close the door when I see movement, out in my yard, near one of the oaks. There’s just enough moonlight…. A man? I think someone just moved out there. I walk out on the porch. “Who is it?!”
 
There! Someone just stepped out of the moonlight near the trunk of the oak, stepped into the deeper darkness. I SAW this…didn’t I? “I see you! What do you want?!” I come down the steps of the porch, staring at the darkness near the tree, twenty feet away. Yes! Movement again, some slight….
 
“Why are you on my property?! What do you want?!” Why doesn’t he answer? “I’ll call the police!” I take out my cell phone. “I have my phone ready!” I find that I’m more angry than scared--someone coming here, destroying my peace, hiding in the dark. I take four or five steps toward that tree, my stockinged feet wet now from the grass, hurting a bit from stones and ….
 
The dark figure moves, a man! About my size! I see the outline! My size, my shape…. He’s throwing something! I’m hit in the chest, and it hurts, something metal, hitting my chest and then falling to the ground. I can’t see him anymore. I look down to where it fell, the metal object that hit me. It’s dark, but I’m feeling around with a palm, and I find it, pick it up. It’s car keys. I look closely and see…. MY car keys! No! Weren’t they in the house? Did I still have them in my pocket? How did he…? I hurry now to the oak, hurting my feet, looking through the shadows, moving around the tree. Nothing. No one. I have my phone in one hand and I’m gripping the keys in the other, gripping so tightly they hurt my hand. I feel the pain but I don’t release my grip.
 
I look around. There’s no one. No movement anywhere, and in my looking, I see my car. I parked it haphazardly in my drive. I was in a hurry to leave it and get into my house. Yes. I kept my keys in my hand, moved to the door of my house and opened it and went in and…. I think I shoved them into my pocket then. I think I did. So…. What’s happening? What could be…? Is that somebody?! By my car now?!
 
I run there, not caring about the pain in my feet. “HEY!” I reach the car, but there’s no one there, no one even near…. “Where are you?! WHO are you?!” But it’s silent, not even any wind now, just me standing at my car, my feet wet and sore, my car keys hurting my hand – so I open my hand and I stare at my keys and then at my car. I know what I have to do. I don’t want to, but I have to. There’s no choice at all. I have to settle this.
 
I get in the car and back out of my driveway, but too fast. I ease up on the gas. Go slow, go…. I move out to the old road and turn the car, heading back, heading toward that place, that part of the ditch, that body.
 
I drive for ten, eleven minutes, and then start looking, driving more slowly and looking at the ditch, watching my headlights moving along, lighting the ditch. The moon is brighter now, but I don’t see anything but the weeds and…brambles and…. Did I pass the spot?! Is he gone?! Wait… I see something. I stop the car and then ease it into reverse, moving back slowly. There. There’s a cone, no there are two of those…plastic road cones, in the ditch, in the weeds. Are they…marking the spot?  So…someone took him away and…put the cones there? I know it’s the spot. I know it.
 
I drive a bit further up the road until there’s a wide spot that’s large enough for me to park. I start to leave the car but I stop. I reach into the door pocket and find my flashlight and turn it on. Then I turn off my engine and my lights and exit the car and stand there beside it, throwing the flashlight beam on the ditch where I saw…. I don’t see the cones from where I am. I walk back along my side of the road, watching. There! I see a cone – two of them, and I cross the road and shine my beam into the weeds where the cones are.
 
There’s nothing there, just…tramped down weeds and…. I get closer and settle on my knees to study something. It looks like…yes, it’s blood, a spatter of blood, and then, close by, more blood that has colored the weeds and soaked into the ground. I have to think. What do I do if someone comes by? I’ll say…I’ll say that somebody stopped at my house and said that…they saw a body along the road, and they were afraid…. So.… So I thought I’d take a look. And…. That’s what I’ll say.
 
So, I guess, after I left here, someone DID come, and see the man and stop and…. Did they call the police or take him in their own car? I look at the side of the road where it meets the ditch and there are the marks of many tires moving over the dirt, the weeds. So…. They got to him. They helped him. Or…was he dead?
 
I take out my cell phone. There’s a hospital on the highway, not far. They would take him there. What do I say?  How can I find out? I think it through, and then I look up the number and take a long breath--going through the words again until someone answers.
 
“Emergency Room, please. Hi, I’m calling about someone that was picked up on Shannon Road tonight. Someone that was hurt, no, listen, I don’t know the name. Somebody told me that a man was found in a ditch on Shannon Road and they were too scared to…check it out, so they asked if I…. Well, I don’t know. Within the last hour, or…  Okay, yes, alright, yes, yes, I WILL speak to the police, but they would’ve taken him to you, so can you just tell me…. Okay. Okay, I’ll hang on. Hi, Doctor, yes, I heard about a man…. No, no I don’t know the man. I just heard…. He’s a what?  A John Doe, so you don’t…. No Identification. Is he unconscious?”
 
The doctor on the phone says “He didn’t make it. He had lost a lot of blood. Head injury. He laid out there so long.” Those words grab at my throat. The doctor asks, “Who was it that came and told you?” I answer that it was someone I don’t know. Someone driving by my house who…saw me in my yard. I live on this road, on Shannon Road, and they told me and then they drove away, so…. Yes, I say to the doctor, I promise to call Sergeant Tate at the police station and give him a description of this person. And then the doctor is called away, and I end the call.
 
I’m sitting here in the weeds, where HE was lying, the man, the John Doe, where he was bleeding, while I was driving, driving by and stopping and calling out to him and then…then I was driving away, and he was dying, and I left him there. The man was dying, and I left him there. In my mind, I change everything. In my mind I see myself getting out of my car and sitting beside the man and calling for an ambulance and waiting with the man and then hearing the sirens and watching them come and talking to the police while the ambulance takes him away to the emergency room where maybe they save him. Maybe they save him.
 
I don’t call Sargent Tate at the police station. I just sit here in the weeds. I should get up and go to my car and go home, but, somehow, I don’t have the strength, so I keep sitting here, and I realize how tired I am, I feel an impossible weight on me, so that I can’t keep sitting. I have to lie down, here, in the weeds, and I do, I lie here. My flashlight beam hurts my eyes so I turn it off and I let go of my cell phone, too, and just…keep…lying here. Why can’t I rise?  Maybe if I wait a while. Maybe if I sleep, but I don’t sleep. I lay there until I hear…it’s a car, coming down Shannon Road, coming from Bell Street to Shannon Road, just as I did, coming toward this place in the road. Maybe they can help me, just help me rise up and just…. If they can get me to my car, I’ll be all right. I’ll drive home. Home.
 
I get ready, and as the car approaches, I turn on the flashlight and leave it where it lies, there on the ground, so they can see me. I rise up on one elbow. The flashlight is pointed at me and the moon is bright now, so I know they’ll see me. They come abreast of me and slow down and stop. I can see them now, a couple, about my age, a little younger, the woman driving, the man beside her, they’re staring at me, and they…they look so afraid, so afraid. No, wait! Wait! But they speed away, rushing away, down the road, down the dark road.

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