All stories › Fantasy › Feet on the White › Episode 3
Last Shift
Episode 3 of 3 of Feet on the White by Calvin Truax · free to read
The last week I held the stop sign on that corner, Bonnie started baking at the coffee cart and pretending she wasn’t.
I was the crossing guard there. When a car came at the kids and I shoved my sign up, everything stopped for thirty seconds except me and whatever was in the crosswalk. Each time, I lost the whole next day.
Four stops so far, counting the Thursday before. Four days I didn’t have.
Monday a truck dropped the temporary signal trailer on the shoulder, dark until the next Monday. Bonnie handed me my cup with a sleeve already on it.
“For Friday,” she said.
Inside it said DEWEY LOST A TOOTH. COLD. YOU WORE THE ORANGE HAT.
“I don’t own an orange hat.”
“You do now. Dewey’s mother knitted it.” She set a foil pan on the counter under a towel. “Don’t look at that.”
“What is it?”
“It isn’t anything. It’s for this Friday. Your real Friday.” She pointed the marker at me. “No stops this week, Lyman. I want you to keep that one.”
“I’ll try,” I said.
“Try harder than that.”
“I’ll watch the hill extra close,” I said. “Nobody gets a running start.”
“You do that. And wear a hat.”
Dewey was no better at secrets.
“There’s no card,” he said on Tuesday.
“Okay.”
“It’s not a very big card,” he said on Wednesday.
“Good to know.”
Thursday morning he stood next to me at the curb. “I didn’t sign it in blue marker.”
“Blue’s your favorite.”
“Everybody signed it. Even the kindergarten.”
“Can the kindergarten write?”
“They did handprints. It’s mostly handprints.”
Thursday afternoon was gray and windy. The trailer sat dark on the shoulder. Coral was out in the crosswalk with a measuring wheel, marking stop bar spots in orange paint for her drawings.
“Mind if I walk with them?” she said. “I need the full width.”
“Stay on the white,” I said. Then, to all of them, “Feet on the white, eyes on me.”
I heard the truck before I saw it. A dump truck at the top of the hill, horn going, the driver standing on brakes that weren’t catching. Smoke came off the back wheels.
Coral was in the middle of the crosswalk. So was most of the afternoon line, and Dewey.
I had the sign at my side.
I thought about Friday. The card that was mostly handprints. Bonnie’s pan under the towel. My last morning on this corner, and every kid saying goodbye, and me waking up Saturday with none of it.
I could yell. Some of them would run the right way.
Some of them wouldn’t.
I shoved the sign up at the truck, and the world quit.
The truck sat halfway down the hill, its smoke hanging still. Coral turned and stared at it, then at me.
“What is this?” she said.
“Thirty seconds,” I said. “Grab the two little ones on the center line. Dewey, take the rest.”
She picked up a first grader under each arm and ran. Dewey took the others by the straps. I came last with my eyes on my watch.
Everybody was on the far curb at twenty-seven seconds.
At thirty, the truck came down. The driver cut hard into the empty lane and rode the curb until he stopped. He climbed out shaking but walking.
Coral set the first graders down. She was breathing hard.
“You okay, Dewey?” I said.
“I’m okay. But that’s another day, Mr. Dorman.”
“This is the camera,” Coral said. “This is all of it.”
“That’s all of it.”
“Another day of what?” Coral said. “What does it cost you?”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll live it. I just won’t remember it.”
“Tomorrow is your last day.”
“I know what tomorrow is.”
She looked at the dark trailer for a while.
“I’m still recommending the signal,” she said.
“You should. This corner needs it more than it needs me.”
“I’ll be here tomorrow,” she said. “Somebody ought to see it for you.”
Friday never came back to me. I never pretended it did.
Saturday morning I woke up and there was nothing between Thursday and my alarm. Then somebody knocked.
Bonnie was at my door with the foil pan, half empty. Dewey held a poster board of handprints and a stack of cup sleeves.
“One for every hour,” Bonnie said. “Start at the top.”
“I did the spelling,” Dewey said.
“He did most of the spelling. I did the hours.”
The first one said YOU CAME EARLY. The next said ORANGE HAT. One said CORAL HELD THE SIGN FOR THE PICTURE. Near the bottom, in Dewey’s writing, one said YOU DIDN’T CRY BUT ALMOST.
“I almost cried?”
“At the handprints,” Dewey said. “Everybody does.”
“Was it a good day?” I said.
“It was the best one,” Bonnie said. “You’d have liked it. You told every mother she had a good kid. Monday you’re coming for coffee anyway, signal or no signal.”
“What did I say to them?” I said. “At the end.”
Dewey grinned with the new gap in his teeth.
“Same as always. You said it to every kid.”
Feet on the white, eyes on me.