A flash of red laundry in a ditch is what he remembers. On his way to a meeting he took a detour around bumper-to-bumper highway traffic, at the city’s edge.
He couldn’t be late. That would undermine him at the company in a ways he couldn’t afford. He thought about expressions he had seen on people’s faces, when they silently made up their minds about deals they didn’t want to make and started thinking only of how to get out of the room. Deals he was responsible for pushing through.
He sipped his latte and bailed, taking the last exit available that would lead to his secret shortcut. It wasn’t one any map would show, since it involved taking a dirt road beside a river dike that had once been gated and locked. Someone on the run must have blown through it, and the city never made repairs. The dirt road ended with a right turn that intersected a two-lane paved road.
Every time he took the shortcut the road left him feeling he had suddenly entered a different city and a different time. River bottom trees stood thick beyond shallow ditches on both sides. Weeds growing up to the road’s edges. Sometimes turn-off lanes crossed tin culverts, leading to clearings that held small frame houses. Wrecked cars kept in side yards.
The front fork of a bicycle was the first thing he saw at the right edge of the road. Then a fender and a wire basket. A few yards on he saw a frame with the seat still attached, one pedal sticking up. The handlebars and wheels suggested a child’s bicycle. And then the red splash. Something pale there, in a small tangle of clothing.
He lifted his right foot. Then thought of the meeting. Other cars would surely come this way soon. In memory, his speed declined, but it was difficult to remember when his foot pressed down on the accelerator again. Everything ahead pulling him on.
It hadn’t been a useful day after all. The meeting was delayed by technical problems, and by the time the conference callers were brought in they were peeved and testy. Not the best atmosphere for presentations. And he had been distracted. Checking the news on his phone. Nothing.
And it probably was nothing. For all he knew a bike had fallen off a rack on the back of a car, and another car had run over it, maybe dragging it for a while before shedding the remains.
When he got home his apartment felt like a place where no one lived. The light in the refrigerator seemed fierce in a way that made him shut the door quickly. He checked the news again, scrolling down through a few stories on his phone before looking away. His stomach grumbled but he had no appetite.
The next morning he made coffee himself and put it in a car mug instead of going through the drive-through for it as usual. Traffic was heavy again, but he crept past his shortcut exit. Stayed with everybody else, waiting and going a few feet to wait again.
Weeks passed and on a Monday morning his boss called him into her office. She gazed at him for a while before he looked up at her. She said she was worried about him. About his faltering attention to matters of appearance, his lackluster performance. She said the company was prepared to offer help of various kinds if there was a problem, but he would have to be the one to seek it out. Until then, she thought it would be best if he went back and worked in support for a while. There he could sort things out and show his readiness to return to his old position.
He sat in his car with his lunch in a brown paper sack. After a month of working in support again he wondered how he had ever worked his way up the first time. He reviewed his life, noting as he often did the oddity of seeing himself in his own memory. Smiling. Well dressed. Everybody laughing at any joke he made. He thought maybe the morning of his demotion was when everything went wrong. When his prospects changed for good.
—From the author’s collection of flash literature, The Light I Want to Keep, forthcoming from MacQ
Bio: Daryl Scroggins
