tangerinebreem
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Motorway GraffitiWe set off as the sun dawned, its light hurt our eyes as we threw bags into the back of the car and stooping below the roof, climbed aboard. It was too early for people to be around, it was quieter than normal, though the streets were empty it felt like any moment a storm of people and vehicles would be whipped up, it was like looking at a picture on the wall of your house but just the background being there. It felt like it was we were trying to escape. Sneaking out before anyone saw us, by the time they came looking we’d be long gone.
In minutes we were out amongst the hedgerows and farmland, lanes inviting us to turn and explore. We headed on, like a bullet undeterred by rain falling, following the path to our destination. Places slowly grew less familiar, We knew the names, yes but not the places themselves, perhaps we’d been dragged to visit less well known relatives or coerced into pairs of cheap shoes in discount stores, these days we might have driven out to buy a second hand stereo we’d seen in the pages of a yellow newspaper. These were place we may have visited on rare occasions but these places were out of out our daily, even weekly routine.
Gradually the names on the signposts branching off the main artery took on less significance, so much so that a place we had been took on significance, or even a place we’d wanted to go, a place whose existence we had acknowledged, catalogued and filed. As the morning grew more certain of itself, that feeling of daybreak slowly shook itself from our bodies, we lost the early morning anxiety and drifted into a comfortable feeling, sun amplified, magnified by the windows and a sense of sudden elation, looking out at the other metal wheeled boxes, the tired eyed and tense, the harried heading to another day of hassle. Checking the clock, checking make up, wishing away creases in clothes and hung over faces, driving the same tired routes, like a needle in the groove of an overplayed record whose music has ceased to mean anything at all.
Not us, with each moment, each mile, the sense of freedom grew, as each groove in the tyre turned its full revolution, thousands and thousand of revolutions of the wheels, propelling us away from worries we could only grow distant from. As the sun rose behind us it was easy to imagine its light was driving us onward, as if we surfed each beam, cast many million miles to hit the surface of the world and race along this grey concrete strip, carrying us in it’s flow, on to where we were bound.
Little by little the world began to fall away, seem a little less real. The dedications on the radio were for office workers tied up at desk in some other parrallel universe, not ours, the stories in the newspapers belonged to some other people from whom we were now set adrift from.
We spoke little, each head focussed on the road or the view, railings, fences, bridges with graffiti insults and dedications, some times just names, fading, badly scrawled declarations of existence, evidence of bravery. We wondered, seen as the evidence of some of the dates on the bridges showed little desire to remove graffiti on the part of which ever body was responsible, if someone did fall do their untimely death on the concrete below, would their name be removed?
Would it be left as a memorial, a warning, or painted away as soon as the carriage-way was cleared of the mortal remains of the artist. Who would be consulted? Would the family be asked if the last actions of the deceased be left, or would some unconnected highway official decide whilst surveying the carriageway that by the time dawn rose the next day the bridge would be resplendent in grey primer.
Perhaps as seemed likely, the body would be taken, in an ambulance, summoned in desperate hope by a driver who, tired and late home yet again, after another gruelling and pointless conference left them heading back up the motorway, already thinking off their bed, swerving just in time, thinking he’d missed a pile of rubbish then, haunted by the thought of a strange human form, found they had to slow right down and look, and unable to make anything out clearly, had to break all rules by reversing, slowly, and then stopping, hazard lights blazing out under the bridge, lighting up in a slow orange strobe, the figure of a dead youth. The driver would stand, not quite taking in what he was seeing, not really knowing, in fact, having no idea what to do for quite some time, then, as another car slowed down, being snapped into action, retrieve a phone from the car and start to dial as the other driver pulled to halt. He’d answer the ambulance services questions, then those of the other driver, making him realise he wasn’t really part of any incident, just the first to see the body, at least the first to stop and look closely, recognise the shape in the road for what it was
It wouldn’t be till the paramedics strapped the useless, lifeless form with its blood soaked hooded top into the shockingly white inner glow of an ambulance and till the police had closed off the motorway that the can of spray paint would be discovered, tucked into the front pocket of the sweatshirt and thoughts of suicide or murder could be banished from the concerned parties minds, who as you may of inferred by the presence of the police and the ambulance service had multiplied from the initial driver and the second driver.
Yet as of this point, no one knew who the youth was and wouldn’t until at least twelve hours later, when a woman would telephone the number put out by the police on the local radio and television news, suggesting although she was probably just being stupid and her child did stop out a lot without really letting her know and she just wanted to be sure it wasn’t, well, …, the reassuring voice who answered the call, said that they understood completely and perhaps if they could ask what they recall their child wearing last and describe as best they could what they looked like then they’d be able to be sure of everything.
As it would turn out, it wouldn’t really be necessary for the lady to get to the physical description, such would be the accuracy of her account of the clothes and such was the uncanny resemblance to that of the deceased, but sadly for both parties it is always necessary for the sake of certainty for the telephone operator to, without allowing her voice to betray what she herself already knew, invite the mother (who still was hoping to be thanked for calling and reassured that her child had got into no greater mischief than normal, and then to make sure there was some food in the house for when they returned,) to give an approximation of height and weight and distinctive features.
Once the now tearful and panic stricken mother had been to the police station and then to the hospital morgue and declared without uncertainty that the now cold and pallid corpse on the slab was in fact her eldest child, a child for whom (although she of course did not say this, or even consciously think this) she’d given up any hope of making anything for herself out of her own life and worked and cleaned and shopped and cooked and chided and chastised and tried to instil some sense of morality into for the last 14 years, and through her tears she confirmed that the child did have nickname and it did match the fresh looking graffiti that a keen eyed sergeant had noticed in the gloom of the morning light as the police returned to the bridge from where the youth had fallen to better survey the scene.
And in the gloomy morning light the keen eyed police seargant wondered how long the graffiti would be their and resolved to telephone the highway maintenance agency but got quickly caught up in an altogether more complex case involving, shall we just say, the kind of thing you don’t want to go home and think about, which understandably affected him quite deeply, and with one thing and another he clean forgot.
Until a few months later he drove under the bridge and remembered the graffiti and jerking his head up and away from the road, somewhat riskily and a little painfully managed to see the scrawl had not been removed and he thought he should make that phone call but realising he’d sound a little strange so late after the event, thought perhaps he’d better forget about it, and indeed selective remembering is a virtue for anyone engaged in the police or the ambulance service.
This train of thought took us out of country where the land lay above us, hidden for the most part by yellowed grass banks, where occaisionaly we’d see a kestral hover above the tinderbox below waiting to pounce on exhaust stained rodents below. The thoughts tooks us on, on first to rolling green hills then to heather and mountains, where for the first time in 4 or maybe 4 and half hours we turned off the main route and, having noticed the fuel gage was getting ominously low decided to fill up somewhere.
We drove down into a village, a square of grass, houses each side of this, and a school which, as it seemed far too large for the number of houses we presumed served the surrounding area, Only one of us left the car, the rest heard the noise of the keys being placed on the roof, the sound of the petrol nozzle against the metal of the car amplified by the metal, much louder on the inside than out.
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carmella chihuahua
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Oh- I really like this  Thought it was only me who's mind goes on morbid what if? tangents for forever-lovely visual descriptions and nice quick swoop back to reality 
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tangerinebreem
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I like your avatar picture, we should meet up sometime...
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wraeth
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Graffitti and bridge gateways. Yep, reckon you've described the OB requirement to selectively remember just perfect there too.
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