Roads and Railways
Highways at three in the morning, rest areas, mountain passes, parking lots and lonely railway lines. Road horror trades on the strange isolation of being alone in a moving car, and on the old rule that you should never stop for anything on the shoulder.
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Siskiyou Summit
Every trucker who runs I-5 at night knows the rule for the man walking in the left lane near the Oregon line. Flash twice, move over, don't stop. My husband stopped.
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Last Pass
I drive a county snowplow on the night route up to Tamarack Pass. The road ends at a gate at the summit, and on the worst nights of the year, it doesn't.
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The Signal-Man Classic
A traveller climbs down to a lonely railway cutting to talk with the signalman, who has been receiving warnings from a figure by the tunnel mouth.
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The Train Horn at 4:44
A thread from a small town's community forum. A few residents have started hearing a freight train's horn at 4:44 every morning. The town's rail line was torn up in 1979.
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Roadside
Part of my job on the highway crew is pulling unpermitted roadside memorials. On one stretch of Highway 395, white crosses keep appearing for people nobody remembers dying. Then I found out they hadn't.
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The Seven-Ten
When I was a girl in Cale, Nebraska, a pale blue sedan drove down Orchard Road every summer evening at ten past seven, full of waving people. We all waved back. Within the month, whoever had been in it moved away.
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Mujina Classic
A merchant walking on a lonely Tokyo slope at night finds a young woman weeping beside the moat.
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The Four-Fifteen Express Classic
A traveller on a country train shares a compartment with an old acquaintance, a man who, he later learns, had been missing for months.
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Unsigned Turnout
Every spring, crews dig the North Cascades Highway out from under thirty feet of snow. The highway is closed to the public the whole time. The rule on the crew is simple. If you see a viewpoint sign that isn't brown, don't read it, and don't pull in.
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The Bus-Conductor Classic
A level-headed man explains why, after a night in a country house, he will never board a particular kind of horse-drawn hearse.
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Overflow Lot
The outlet mall off the interstate puts holiday shoppers in an overflow lot across the frontage road. I parked in Row K. When I came back out in the fog, the rows went past Z.
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You Are Here
I took the overnight custodial job at a rest area in the Columbia River Gorge. The man before me left a page of notes in the supply closet. Most are about the toilets. One is about the map.