Something to Write Home About?

by Charles C. Cole

The pacing space in the Maine tollbooth was roughly 4x8, room for one but only just. There was no TV or radio; it was indecently quiet, except when the 5-axled long-haul semi-trailers pulled up to pay their respects.

Perk: windows on all sides, which were near-impossible to keep clean. But there was nothing to look at — nothing to distract or inspire — during overnights on the quiet east-west Falmouth spur, until the victorious dawn. Nothing to write home about.

On a typical weekend graveyard shift, one might collect fifty dollars in fees: fifty cars in eight hours. Gavin Muenster had logged many nights without a single vehicle for three hours. Tonight there was a fast-approaching summer nor’easter, heavy wind and rain expected. Local news and weather personalities suggested travelers avoid unnecessary risks and stay off the roads.

The winds picked up first, the storm before the storm, when he tucked himself in for his pre-work nap. The rain was still light on his commute, but his small, eleven-year old mid-compact was buffeted like a kite in Portland’s Payson Park.

Wide enough for racing golf carts, the concrete-lined tunnel beneath the highway was — as always — silent as the grave, insulated from the above-ground turbulence. More than once, Gavin had fantasized that this brightly lit and dry staff-only access way would be his fallout shelter, should civilized society ever collapse to a violent, catastrophic conclusion.

Just after midnight, opening his sliding door to greet a rare customer was like receiving a generously wet sneeze directly to the face. During the following two hours, a police cruiser flew through, lights flashing but no sirens, followed closely by an ambulance, also lights flashing. Gavin waved each time, hoping to appear professionally congenial but not awkwardly perky.

There was a high metal canopy over the booth, for hanging lights and cameras. We’re here; please stop. Or we’ll take a picture of your license plate and track you down! Open on all sides as it was, pergola-style, this was not a shelter from fierce, driving rain, though pigeons often slept on the narrow leeward lip of the horizontal steel girders supporting the primitive structure.

Gavin was searching the nooks and crannies for nature’s company when he noticed a black shape tucked behind the air conditioner on the roof of the unmanned booth next door. The cowering thing was the size of a dog, black like a trash bag, its fur rippling in the wind, head and body squeezed into itself. Raccoon? Porcupine? Small bear?

Gavin opened the door for a slightly closer, slightly clearer assessment. The rumbling sliding metal got his visitor’s attention. The beast loosened its upper limbs, like dropping a shrug, while lifting and turning its head toward him, staring down with wild black eyes, its mouth ajar, showing large pointy teeth.

“Hello, up there. Not to intrude. Wasn’t expecting guests.”

The thing sat up, turned to face Gavin, tilting its head with the expression of a confused hound. Its head was triangular, ears straight up and small, jaw and snout pronounced like that of a wolf. It resembled a flying fox the size of a young school-aged child, one that had seen better days.

“Tell you what, I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone.”

Gavin closed the door. He dropped the locking bar in place. He turned off the tollbooth overhead light, using only a desktop gooseneck lamp, bent way over for optimal dimness. He clicked off the outdoor canopy light; if he couldn’t see it, then it wasn’t there. He’d put the lights back on with the next approaching car. By then, hopefully, the thing would have gotten restless and continued on its merry way. But the raging storm was still hours from winding down.

Gavin called the radio room.

“Turnpike.”

“This is exit 52.” Say something, but not that. “Any accidents reported?”

“Not lately. Why? You got something?”

“Just an overall sense of doom. Pretty sure this is what the end of the world looks like. Any word on the weather?”

“Should be stopping in the next hour.”

“Really?”

“Noon at the earliest. Hang in there.”

After the call, a loud pickup approached. Gavin turned on the canopy and booth lights. The animal was gone.

“One dollar.”

The driver, a heavyset bald man with a ginger beard hanging down to the second button on his shirt, squinted into the dark around his headlights. “See that? Something on the shoulder of the road over there. Maybe a tarp blew off a truck. Or roadkill.”

“I’ll call it in,” said Gavin, suspecting the presence of a restless traveler. The driver left, slowly.

Gavin called out into the storm. “Hey, you, no need to get all wet. I’ll keep it dark. Why don’t you shake it off and take a nap. Rest a bit till things lighten up. Not that you understand a word I’m saying.”

The shape stood, eyes reflecting in his lights. It looked like a drowned rat with droopy wings. For a bat, it was huge but only half the size of a grown man. It spread its wings, twitched, water spraying everywhere. Gavin hit the canopy switch, then it jumped into the air above his head and disappeared back under the flat roof.

“Crappy night for us both, pal, but worse for you.”

Five. Sleepy. Standing with his eyes closed, back to the wall, listening for the hiss of an approaching vehicle. The wind had died, but not the rain. A moan like a distant train. A six-axle trailer with Montana plates.

“$4.50.” A cat sat on the fella’s dash. Its back puffed up as it hissed at something above Gavin.

“He usually likes strangers,” said the trucker, oblivious. “He’s crepuscular but not matutinal; not a morning person.”

As the truck moved away in the dim light of early dawn, Gavin watched the shape clamber onto the tailgate, crawling headfirst underneath.

“That cat’s not gonna be happy,” Gavin opined.

Finally, something to write home about. Or maybe not.