Rules Horror
"Do not open the door. Do not answer if it calls your name." Stories built around a list of rules, usually handed down by someone who learned them the hard way. Half the dread is in the rules themselves, and the other half is waiting for one to be broken.
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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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The Maze
My family has cut a corn maze into the same eight acres every fall for thirty years. Every year, from the air, there's a path in it that none of us cut. My grandfather had one rule about it.
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Burn Morels
The spring after a wildfire, the burned forest fills up with morels, and pickers come from all over the West to pick them. The buyer at the Okanogan camp gave me eight rules on an index card. The one about the green tree is the only one I broke.
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Stay Until I Fall Asleep
On the night shift at a small county hospital, the call light in Room 4 comes on most nights around two. There is an old woman in the bed who only wants someone to sit with her. There is one rule about it.
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Next Row Over
My great-aunt picked huckleberries in the Washington Cascades every August for seventy years. She taught me two rules. If you hear someone picking in the next row over and nobody's there, don't answer when they call your name. And never eat from a bucket you didn't fill.
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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 Hymn Board
A letter left in the sacristy of a small country church for the incoming pastor, by the man who has kept the building for forty-one years. He would like to explain about the numbers.
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Notes for the Subletter
I sublet a fourth-floor walk-up for the summer. The tenant left me a typed page of notes about the apartment, taped inside the kitchen cabinet. Most of them are about the radiator.
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Buddy Check
The summer I was nineteen I lifeguarded at a lake camp in the pines. Every twenty minutes I blew the whistle and the kids raised their hands in pairs. That was the summer the count stopped coming out even.
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The Mother
The bakery I work nights at in Pittsburgh has used the same sourdough starter since 1911. There is one rule: it gets fed at two in the morning, every morning, no matter what. I was late once.
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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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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.