Highway Bound by Joan Newkirk

First Place, Adult Fiction

The three men in Ginny’s life had left her. In 1982, her husband, who served in Vietnam, concluded that he had some unfinished business there and promised to be back as soon as he could. He never returned. She raised their two sons on her own, piecing together a series of jobs, which included walking wealthy people’s dogs, cooking at the Masonic Nursing Home, and driving cranky Mrs. Allen to appointments. By the time Ginny reached her 48th birthday, she was tired of dressing poodles in red wool coats, redoing meals for finicky old men, and listening to Mrs. Allen complain about a botched haircut.

Ginny heard about a toll collector job on US Highway 32. Sitting in a chair all day sounded heavenly. As it turned out, she worked regular hours and had a steady paycheck with benefits. She spent her time imagining the lives of the people who drove by. There were bearded young men in giant pickup trucks with large, mud-splattered tires and American flags snapping in the wind. They handed her fistfuls of dirty change from the dashboard and grunted hello. Sometimes Ginny imagined they were driving to a neighborhood dive, where they would play pool while chugging beer after a long day of work. She saw convertibles with handsome, pretentious couples who blithely handed over the cash, usually in large denominations, which slowed down the process of collecting tolls. Ginny envisioned them in a boutique bar sipping martinis and discussing a dreary story from National Public Radio.

Meanwhile, Ginny’s sons had pretty well raised themselves. As soon as they were old enough, they left her too, without much fanfare. One son hitchhiked to California to find his fortune in creating video games, which was an apt occupation considering he spent most of his youth in his bedroom, playing Atari. The other son boarded a Greyhound bus with his pet gecko named Ralph hiding under his coat. He had a friend in Seattle who promised him a job on his fishing boat. Ginny loaded them up with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, homemade gherkins, and fudge brownies and sent them on their way.

After twenty years working at Toll Booth #45, Ginny had saved enough money to buy a house. It was perched on a ridge between the railroad tracks and the road, within earshot of the highway. She spent five years scraping, painting, and shoring up the place. Despite her hard work on its renovations, the tiny strip of lawn on which her house sat was her proudest accomplishment. Never having a yard before, she was determined to create a masterpiece.

Ginny filled the yard with an astonishing array of objects she had rescued from the side of the road or at the landfill swap. The first item she found was one of those gazing globes. The ball was an iridescent blue, and if the light was just right, Ginny swore she saw baby Jesus in its swirly pattern. 

She also procured a flock of pink flamingos, which she placed in her flower garden among the petunias and marigolds. They stood, frozen and far away from the Florida sun.

The most prominent yard ornament was an antique statue of Saint Francis, which stood in the middle of the patchy lawn; the ceramic birds that formally adorned his shoulders had long broken off. Ginny thought Saint Francis would watch over her yard and maybe allow her and the squirrels some good fortune.  

There was a two-seater swing that a neighbor had agreed to fix, and Ginny returned the favor with a gift of her fudge brownies, specially made with rainbow sprinkles. On summer evenings, she would sway back and forth to a comfortably creaking sound that lulled her into a sleeplike trance. She would watch the fireflies dancing over the long-dormant train tracks, and on still nights, she could hear the traffic on the interstate and wondered what compelled all those people to leave their homes.

The day arrived when everything changed. It began as an ordinary morning. Ginny woke up at 6:00 and had a cup of tea with a lavender scone. She hung the laundry on the line and topped off her bird feeders. Then, she cut some flowers to take inside.

Later that morning, Ginny pulled an official-looking letter out of the mailbox. She had to reread the words several times to make sense of them. The federal government was planning to take her land by eminent domain and build a ramp for the highway directly through her property. The letter indicated that Ginny would receive fair compensation. She finally got hold of her sons, and they thought the news was a stroke of luck. They told her she would be better off someplace else.

Ginny was on her own in her quest to save her house with no idea what to do. When the day came that the construction crew arrived, Ginny walked outside and lay in the dirt driveway by the flamingos, their plastic eyes fixed in an empathetic gaze. Saint Francis watched over her, and she realized she was tired and how pleasant it was to lie down and feel the sun on her face. She lay still as she heard the trucks approaching her driveway.