Chapter 13

Highway Markers

The simple white crosses were everywhere. Rising up alongside the deserted Montana blacktop and dispersed equally on both sides of the highway, they were simple and stark reminders of fatalities. Two crosses here. Three there. Sometimes a lone solitary cross was perched precariously in this ditch or on that overgrown, weed infested, embankment.

They were numerous; these haunting reminders of lives that merely meant to pass quickly on by without a trace but who tragically, permanently, 'stayed on' instead. Marked by the monuments placed by others, sentenced to stand sentinel for the travelers who would follow behind them, the crosses would take watch over the descending Alberta winter storms, long delayed spring thaws and the changing of the guard brought on by the columns of autumn colored aspens winding along the rapids of white water creeks.

I stared out of the pickup truck window with a child’s wonder at these foreign markers as we flew by them at 70 mph. Driven metal stakes, suspended somewhere between the Big Sky and the bigger earth, they far outnumbered travelers that I could see on the highway. The two lane highway was a barren line that defined vanishing points and perspective as it bisected the broad valley. Each cross or set of crosses stood stark against the blue walls of the mountains behind them. The almost endless straw fields surrounding those markers caught the light of beheaded stalks and naked, headless, winter wheat in brilliant golden hues.

Silently I began to count them. White cross after white cross. Some bent. Some slightly yellowed. Some, for reasons unknown to me, now leaning at angles.

We were hauling horses, my father and I. I was caught suspended somewhere between unaware abandon and tentative understanding of the world and grateful for one of those solitary times that I can count on one hand: Moments spent alone with my father.

He was known in the small Oregon town we called home as Pastor Arnie, a man whose white clergy collar saw more action in the field than it did from the pulpit. Literally. In the isolated farming community where I grew up, the local pastor was called to a higher calling. This could mean performing marriage counseling between warpath driven spouses from the high perch of JohnDeere combines during hyper stress harvest time. Problems could be solved via cb radio. Angered and 'unappreciated' wives driving ominous combines would be talked out of taking out loafing sheds, new pick-up trucks, and other implements. Husbands would be encouraged to forget about the pile of wheat mistakenly unloaded onto the hood of the wheat truck instead of into the hopper behind the truck cab. Pastor Arnie talked theology with the vet, both of them with elbows buried deep inside a shell shocked mare who was unable to deliver her foal unassisted.

Calving, harvest, and winter shutdowns at the lumber mills were as prominent in the church calendar as Pentecost and Advent. Sermons could be interrupted by the news of a coliced mare. Everything in those childhood passages revolved around the cycles of life and as we traveled silently through the valley framed by the Mission Mountains, I was caught pondering the irony that these deserted highways had more mementos to the missteps of the dead than they did to the living. I was seriously puzzled.

My father interrupted my thoughts and said, "They probably fell asleep or hit black ice." Answering my unspoken questions, it was obvious that there were few discernible hazards. But allot of accidents just the same. The crosses were acceptable markings to caution future travelers and remember those who came before.

Right now, 'Pastor Arnie' was speaking not as the man from the pulpit but as the man who was my father. But in his words I also knew that he was speaking as the same man who could baptize the child, confirm the young adult, marry the committed and finally bury the dead. He must know the source of all those crosses and the reason for their placement on the highway shoulder. The subject was changed when one of the horses shifted their weight and the truck lurched, paused and then regained momentum. In the front window of the horse trailer I could see the two mares bickering over disputed alfalfa flakes between the metal separation and my fathered muttered, "You two settle down back there".

My father might be of the church but he was also a man who I knew understood the traditions of Montana and more importantly the cycles of life. Sometimes I am sure that he probably preferred nature’s cycles and the natural calendar of all things Montana over those of the church. As I considered the identity and imagined the life story details of the many people associated with those crosses, I accepted his response as truth. That moment became one that lodged deep into the recesses of my mind.

That was twenty years ago. Much has changed since those trips. But one thing remains constant. And this has followed me and often brings me right back to that trip and the simplicity of my father’s explanation. For thousands of reasons, people continue to die on the shoulders of the highways I travel. And in many places, those sights are marked by crosses.

Dallas often looks at me perplexed when, as we travel, I point out to him a particularly gruesome set of skid marks on the highway. Sometimes they are accompanied by fresh spray painted markings along side the skids. Hash marks and the language of accident investigations. Dark stains on the highway and fresh dirt scattered on the shoulder. Large swirls and arching curves left by smoking rubber and desperate brakes. Broken glass that catches the sunlight and sparkles. The powder left in parallel lines by burnt flares and extinguished warning lights. He says it is morbid to spend so much time considering these tragic events. He labels it my "fascination with blood and guts." This is the same man who I have talked through some difficult experiences of his own. We all deal with it in our own way. But we do deal with it.

Still, those haunting reminders are not a trip into morbidity for me. They are the last sentences of a story. The final concluding chapter and many times the unintended finish of an author who planned to tell a few more tales and live a few more adventures. But didn't.

Over the years I have been the first on the scene of many accidents. Some have happened right in front of me and I have slammed the truck into motionless pause, jumping out and running with flares and prayers towards overturned Volvo's, crumpled Peterbuilts and other now unrecognizable vehicles. Sometimes amidst the wreckage the angels have arrived first and people emerge from upside down vehicles dazed but without a scratch. The shock already rendering them unable to say any words but the same phrases over and over again. "I wasn't going that fast," "I just swerved a little," or "I don't know what happened." They will not appreciate until later that they have been spared. Sometimes more concern is expressed over the crumpled wreckage of their car than the reality that death just missed their stop.

But, those events are too few. It is not often enough that silent "thank yous" are sent scurrying back towards the heavens when a bewildered stranger’s face emerges intact from the wreckage and there is the relief that I can return to the truck without wondering who they've left behind. Those highways will never be marked by their grieving families or the silent white crosses. Flowers and plastic windmills and small shrines will never be built to accompany the whoosh of passing cars and the whine of tires on concrete. The skid marks will fade.

But those places will be marked just the same and every time I pass by I will say those "thank yous" that a soul crawled out onto the gravel rather than rising silently and invisibly toward another place. It is my memorial on behalf of the one that wasn't.

More often than not it is the other side that I see. Lifeless eyes staring but not seeing. Unbelievable horror. It is hard to approach those vehicles. Heartbeat racing and eyes blurring, the images aren't meant to be seen. Limbs bent in ways that they were never meant to be bent. Blood everywhere. Ejected bodies run over by their own vehicle or hanging from the trees. The moans of the wounded as loud as the silent screams of those that aren't so lucky. All actions become automatic until more help arrives. The paramedics and the police officers take over, and walking back to the idling rig the whole situation descends into senselessness. Was this worth the risk of getting there five seconds sooner or not wearing a seat belt or that unsafe pass or that cell phone call that had to be made or racing the light or not slowing down when it got slick or that drunken, drugged, excess or a thousand other scenarios. Someone gets to clean it up. Someone has to pick up the pieces. Someone has to get the situation under control. Someone has to go into autopilot. Someone will. And if it is me, they will fall apart later.

Eventually the rhythms of time arrive to ease the flight of emotions, but the memories never go away. The sections of highway where this accident happened and that person disappeared into an ambulance never to be seen again or the frightened grasp of a child eventually faded into nothingness: It is all marked. Never to be passed by again unaware. Lives changed here. Strangers collided. Invisible highway markers were created in the minds of everyone concerned.

Times have changed remarkably since that trip hauling horses. Many of the white crosses have disappeared and on many newer highways they aren't placed there at all. Yet some of the old highways in Montana still bear crosses. Even now they catch me off guard just as they did when I was a child. But more noteworthy are the stirrings brought about by sight of a homemade monument left to mark someone’s passing at an accident that I have witnessed.

Each time I pass, the accident site is checked to see if anyone else cared to remember. Sometimes all that bears witness to the tragedy are the ever fading skid marks, the disjointed guard rail, or the bent sign. Inside the loneliness of the cab there is a sinking feeling as the truck rolls past the emptiness of the site; the wonder that a person might not be remembered. Or the fear that no one cared. Maybe their loved ones never knew that this was that stretch of highway or maybe they are too far away to come and see. Maybe it is still just too hard for them to face. I will keep checking.

In this day and age of regulations and bureaucracy and the cold impartial way our society sometimes accepts the tragic misfortunes of others, I am relieved when that same world can accept the offerings of the grieving to their loved ones. Increasingly dotting the landscape of our nation’s highways are miniature monuments to accident victims. Small unmarked, handmade crosses are propped up alongside repaired guardrails. Plastic flowers sometimes circle the larger, more elaborately painted ones. On occasion the flowers are real and small gardens are tended by unseen yet loving hands. Names are spelled out with care. The date of death. Their age. That they are missed. Holidays are remembered and wreaths are placed alongside the markers. Plastic pouches displaying photos flap in the wind. Freightliner grills and Peterbilt emblems are hung against the photos. Smiling faces of grandpas holding children. Fathers embracing sons. Images left for strangers to see. In spite of the anonymity, there are others all across the country who must want the world to remember that on this highway, while just passing through, someone’s life passed them by.

Ironically, the bureaucracies at the state highway departments have unofficially left these sacred places alone. They are mowed around and propped back up when they lean. Some unspoken treaty or spiritual law keeps them off limits to vandals and the gang bangers do not alter them with graffiti and spray painting.

It isn't morbid. Chasing those skid marks and piecing together what might have happened. Wondering who survived. Who didn't. It isn't a fascination with blood and guts. I would rather not see any of it. I would rather never be the first on the scene of an accident. Picking up the pieces, making people comfortable, praying that help would arrive soon: All of these, I wish would not happen in the rhythmic reflections of flashing eighteen wheeler hazard lights and the pink light of flares. But these highways are our home. And most truck drivers care very deeply what goes down within that context. Home is where the heart is and the heart extends to those who experience misfortune along the pathways of the highways we call 'home'.

Unfortunately several mile markers I have known remain unmarked. Places where souls have moved on and their departure is undocumented to the transient travelers. I check these locations and hope. Most of these places will go on unremembered by the passers by but occasionally appearing in a spring’s bloom, someone does remember. I will pass them as they stand alongside that place. Cellophane balloons bobbing against the greens of Wyoming grasslands, children running around unaware and uncomprehending of the significance of this adult ritual. There they will stand together, gathered around that spot. Dirt will be disturbed. Meticulous crosses painted with love and remembrance and longing will take root. Picnic blankets spread across the hill will be sat upon and as the horizon is surveyed and the wind caresses their tears, they will remember. I will as well. As a long blast of the air horn cuts the silence, unintroduced strangers are comforted by the fact that someone else recalls that highway marker and hasn't forgotten the pain of that place.

Dallas also has his silent, unmarked highway markers: A highway sign on U.S.54 in Dalhart, Texas that remained bent for almost fifteen years. The site where a drunk driver was responsible for two layed over semi's; one piled into the back of the other; the drunk’s car also among the wreckage. Dallas' jackknifed cab came to rest upon one post of that sign, leaving it bent and marking the spot. All concerned walked away from that one. But barely.

Every time we pass that place in Dalhart, he becomes quiet and the fear returns to his eyes as he remembers the closeness of that call. The silence is heavy until 'his' highway marker recedes back into the distance framed by the fading horizon locked in the aluminum edges of the truck mirrors.

Another mile marker near Wallace, Idaho is also unmarked. The season was shattered one snowy night on westbound I-90. Except for Dallas and an east coast refer driver, the highway was deserted. Both drivers watched in horror as a minivan bound for Christmas in Montana lost control, plowed through the median, and ricocheted upside down between Dallas in the lead truck and the driver of second truck. Both trucks were narrowly missed but that was little consolation as they surveyed the brightly wrapped Christmas gifts that were scattered throughout the dirty snow. In the darkness, before help arrived, one parent and one child were gone out of a family of four. The remaining two were in bad shape.

Christmas changed for both of those drivers although the highway near Wallace remains unmarked. There are no crosses marking the spot. No plastic flowers. Just the shadows of the nearby mountains rising and descending with the hour of the day. And two drivers who will cautiously check that spot as they roll on by, to see if anything has changed. If, anyone remembered.

Recently we noticed that the sign in Dalhart had been replaced. There was a new post. A straight one boldly supporting a new sign. Yet for Dallas, his highway marker remains. Just as they all do. All across North America.