What There Is to See

It was late that night, probably past two A.M. I was driving home from my boyfriend--Keith's--house, and I was driving the back way. I'd decided no, I didn't want to take the winding expressway home. Instead, I wanted to duck through the hills and valleys of what is, in winter, the capital of western New York ski country.

I had a soft spot for the back roads. After all, Keith was always driving me home that way. The road cuts through hills and pitches up and over their crests. There is one hill that is particularly troublesome--if you don't get a good run going up it, you swear you'll start sliding backward, swear your car will do an extravagant backflip like a clown car at a circus, like some Warner Brothers cartoon.

But that night on the way home I had a fine start up the hill. I made it up and over without a problem, and when I glanced behind me I could see the lights of the fading towns spinning and spinning into the darkness. I had to turn my eyes forward then because once I made it over the hill, I had to stop at a small looping crossroad.

And I did. I looked to my left to see if there was any traffic coming, but what I saw was not traffic. What I saw there, standing next to the stop sign was a pale young boy--eleven, maybe twelve--and he was looking at me. He was feet from me. He didn't move. He didn't seem startled. He didn't seem to want to hide from view, like he was trying to avoid being caught doing something troublesome out there at the stop sign in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to scream. But instead I slammed my foot on the gas and dove over the next hill to get away from that hill, that stop sign, that boy.

Mainly because I'm not entirely sure he was alive.

There was absolutely no reason for a boy that young to be standing next to a stop sign as casually as if he were waiting for a bus or a friend or a ride to school. Not at two A.M., not ever. The only reason to be out at that stop sign at two in the morning was to make mischief. But what was there to vandalize? Stretching out in front of him was nothing but night and fields. The only thing there was that stop sign, and what can you do to a stop sign when you're a twelve year old kid who can't even reach the words STOP? If you can't reach, then you can't attack the sign with a hammer, nor can you spray paint things like being a bitch, Mom! beneath the STOP.

I didn't look back. I couldn't look back. I didn't want my suspicions confirmed either way. I didn't want to see the kid still standing there, leaning up against that stop sign, and I didn't want to see the pale white moon of his face suddenly vanished into thin air. I just drove as fast as I could away from there.

For weeks, for months, I avoided those backroads at night just so I wouldn't have to confirm the reality of that moment. What did it mean if I drove that way again, and again there stood a boy in the moon-white light of two A.M.? Did it mean there was a serious sleepwalker in this tiny town? Did it mean there had been some accident years ago, right there on that corner, and every night the boy stood at the sign thinking about what could have been different, what should have been different?

I didn't want to know. I still don't want to know. But today I drove those hills again, looking for restaurants that might want to hire me as a waitress. Today I passed that stop sign twice--on the way to and on the way from that town, one of my favorites--and each time I stopped at that corner I looked to the left and studied the area very carefully. I was looking for tiny mementos: a wreath of dried flowers, a tangle of weathered ribbons, a teddy bear lanced to the telephone pole that stood nearby. I was looking for things a mother or a father or a sister would leave in memory of someone who was lost, a little boy, a son, a brother. I was looking for things that said, I miss you, I love you, come home.

I didn't find anything, though. But I couldn't stop thinking about that night and what it might be like if I got a job at a restaurant over that hill. What kinds of things would I see late at night as I drove home through the countryside with my apron pooled on the seat next to me, with the car windows rolled all the way down? Would I see that little boy again? Would he still be there, looking out across the hills and the winking lights wondering how he would ever get to where he needed to go, or would I be the only one stopped at that sign and wondering the same exact thing?