THE ROAD SIGN

Old Danny is sauntering down a country lane when he sees a sign being erected...

“What the…?” muttered Danny to himself as he watched the workman as he erected a sign against the kerb bordering the minor road he was ambling along.

There wasn’t ever a road sign needed here! Of all the roads he’d wandered along in all of his life there had never been one less in need of a sign than this one.

My heart aches, he thought, seemingly irrelevantly

The lane he was sauntering along, propped up every so often by his stout walking stick because of that wretched ache, was so rarely used by anyone except himself, and he was only ever on foot, that road signs were a superfluity.

“What do that say?” he hollered out to the workman.

“ROAD CLOSED” replied that good fellow, “we’ll be working on it over night and closing it from dusk to dawn until the world grows old.”

Danny was frustrated and wasn’t quite sure why. Dusk to dawn meant over night and all he was doing over night was sleeping in his nice double bed, the one he’d shared with Marion when she’d been alive and which still smelled vaguely of her. He was never out anywhere near dusk and what’s more he never went beyond where the fellow was erecting the sign. He was already way beyond as far as he went, normally, before turning round and sauntering back to his little cottage by the woods, where the pigeons crapped on everything and the world was crazy with their calling every morning before dawn, begging him to dig his garden for worms or something more nutricious.

“A bit daft that,” he told the workman, his face creased crossly. “Nobody comes this way, nobody uses this road, nobody, not ever.”

“But one sod will,” winked the workman, standing up and stretching his back, and grinning from ear to ear, “there’s changes coming.”

“What? To this road?” demanded Danny, his mind in full flood as he contemplated what possibly changes there might be for a road that must have been there for ever, or at least since the Romans had marched in their Roman boots from there to here and back again. “This road never changes,” he added, decisively, “I should know, I’ve been here before.”

“You just wait and see,” said the workman, “there’s changes everywhere, every-single-where in all the land, just you wait and see!”

“I’ won’t wait, but I will see!” declared Danny, “I’ll go a bit further along and see what’s what!”

“You do that,” murmured the workman, and under his breath he added silly old fool as if it was perfectly all right to call a gentleman who’d been born during the war, which ended above seventy years ago, any such offensive thing.

“I’ll go a few steps,” Danny assured him, “to the brow of the hill where you can see for miles and miles and miles, and I’ll see what’s so important that they have to close my road!”

Your road is it, thought the workman, your own personal and private road, is it?

And good as that workman was he didn’t know everything.

He didn’t know the simple rule of the Universe is that if you find yourself in a place, especially a final sort of place, then in a way that place is yours. It belongs to something about you, something you can’t see or touch but that exists in much the same way as the old religious crackpots used to say the soul exists.

But Danny knew that. For the few moments he was fighting his frustration and walking further along that road, passed the sign that pronounced ROAD CLOSED in loud white letters on a blood-red background, and into the unknown.

“You’ll not get far!” warned the workman, still grinning, because he knew a silly old fool when he saw one and that old cove who thought the road belonged to him was most certainly a silly old fool.

“I’ll get far enough,” Danny replied, seeing red, and feeling redder. He didn’t get angry very often, but he was angry now. What right had that plain old workman to say that he wouldn’t get far when he knew he was strong as an ox, even at his age?

“I can walk like a young bloke,” he added, needing the man to know the sort of person he was talking to. He’d walked miles in his life, when he’d had sad old Max his dog he’d gone down more roads than the workman had had hot dinners, he’d explored weird and wonderful byways and always found his way back home. He’d even been down this actual road before the old fellow had died and been buried in his bit of back garden behind the cottage.

“Of course you can,” scoffed the workman, and he unloaded a traffic light from his lorry, which was parked out of sight in a lay-by behind a tree stump.

Danny walked on and rested, leaning on his walking stick and wondering what on Earth he was doing, being where he was when he should already be three parts of the way home, where he’d have a nice cup of coffee laced with a drop of whisky for his elevenses. His mouth watered at the thought and that ache in his chest responded with a sudden lurch.

Marion had hated that, his lacing his coffee with whisky. She had said it would turn him into a nutcase alcoholic, and if it did that it would serve him right. But he hadn’t changed his ways but instead had pooh-poohed her and waited for her to die.

Which she’d done soon enough.

He sat on the grass verge, something he wouldn’t normally think of doing on account of it being very difficult for him to raise himself to standing once he’d lowered himself to sitting, but something suggested he might not have to do that again, raise himself to standing, that is.

“It’s going to stay on red,” called the workman, “you wait and see, this light is going to stay on red for ever, and nothing will be able to pass!”

“I could do with a drop of whisky right now,” he mumbled, “to warm the cockles of my heart a while.”

“Well, my job’s done,” shouted the workman, “and it’s time for tiffin!” And then he did the silliest thing Danny had ever seen a workman do, and flew away. Like a bird or one of those pesky wood pigeons that crapped all over his windows back home in the cottage where Marion lay sleeping under the lawn and Max rested in the back garden, and against a road that never ran anywhere.

“Why’s the silly sod flying?” asked Danny of himself and the whole wide world around him, but there wasn’t going to be an answer because the traffic light was on red and that meant… ROAD CLOSED.

“Wait!” he called.

It was easier catching up with the workman than he would have believed possible. There he was, just a few feet away, and flying like an angel in the cold air above the road, which was closed.

There are no such folk as angels… I know that because I know everything...

“Why’s the road closed?” he asked when he could have pulled on the hem of the day-glow jacket the fellow was wearing and attracted his attention that way.

“Because the last traveller to journey along it passed away, and there’s nobody left,” grinned the flying workman.

“And who was that?” asked Danny, not guessing.

“Work it out,” scoffed the workman, “but don’t take too long because we’re nearly there and once we get there you’ll not be bothered enough to ask again...”

“Where?” he couldn’t help himself asking.

“The cold, cold earth, the suffocating night, the darkness of forever,” sighed the workman, and Danny noticed that he wasn’t grinning any more, and that his scythe was sharp.

© Peter Rogerson 11.05.18

Reviews

[angel]

Heaven save us from highway workers with murder in their hearts. Nice little story, Peter. As an aside, I must tell you it made me smile to see the word 'elevenses". Hadn't heard that since my Gran passed away back in 1982!

[Peter Rogerson]

Elevenses ... it is a but of an anachronism these days, but then, so am I!!!

[Great Aunt Astri]

So, the Grim Reaper lured him there, did he? I suspected something ominous was going to happen, when, near the beginning, Danny thought "My heart aches." But you kept on tenterhooks, wondering what and then oooooer! But if there is a man with a scythe, we can surely believe that it is just our body, without consciousness, that will lie in the cold, cold earth? I enjoyed this well written read, and will mull over it for the rest of today!