Chris Scott
Someone Adopted a Mile of Route 59
I almost missed the sign on my way to work, a commute I’d done so many times I kind of functioned on autopilot. But I’d also driven these 25 miles back and forth to town often enough that I was prone to notice even the smallest change of scenery -- minor construction, freshly painted dividers, the infrequent trooper patrolling for speeders. And this sign was definitely not something that’d been there before, though by the time I processed what it was -- blame it on not enough coffee in my system yet -- I’d already sped past it.
So I was on the lookout for it on my commute home later that evening, and sure enough, there was an identical sign erected on the opposite side of the highway, just past the 72nd mile marker, southbound on Route 59. I eased off the gas a bit to read it. The sign was clearly brand new, as I’d suspected, its light blue background and white reflective lettering still crystal clear, not yet stained by the elements. It read: Adopt-A-Highway. Next Mile. Sponsored By: The Good Earth. I had no idea what The Good Earth was -- some environmental organization or religious group, if I had to guess -- but I couldn’t help but feel some pride in my community, a little gratitude for these unnamed good Samaritans. Lord knows Route 59, with its frequent neglect and littering and outright illegal dumping, could use a little TLC.
A few miles later I pulled off into Blue Cove, a new-ish housing development and my home of 5 years -- and where, it should be noted, there is no cove, blue or otherwise. The largest body of water that could conceivably have anything resembling a cove is hundreds of miles away. I took the winding main road through the cookie cutter array of houses and manicured lawns until I arrived at mine, which I shared with my wife Melanie. I pulled my sedan up next to Melanie’s smaller teal green hatchback and opened my door to the sound of a lawnmower which was abruptly cut off. I didn’t even need to look across the road to know it was Reggie, who seemed to spend maybe 70% of his time mowing his yard, which always looked immaculate.
“How goes it?” Reggie called out, per usual.
“It goes!” I replied, giving Reggie a quick wave, along with his wife Sherri who was seated on their porch, securely under the shaded canopy, and sipping a glass of what I guessed was a cocktail. Retirement suited them well.
Inside the house, Melanie was already home from work and seated at the dining room table, carefully studying one of a dozen magazines spread out across the polished wood, opened to various room decors and colorful nursery concepts.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” Melanie said back. “This shit’s overwhelming.”
I walked up behind her and put my hands on her shoulders. From this angle I could see she was beginning to show. “So give it a break for a while,” I said.
“I mean, it’s still fun.” Melanie showed me an outer space themed nursery, with planets and rockets and astronauts painted on the walls. “Do you think I could do this?”
“For sure,” I said. “Absolutely.” Melanie was a teacher and t-minus five months from delivering our first child, which was the whole reason we moved into a house that was unquestionably too big for only the two of us. It just took us a little longer than we expected.
“Oh, cool thing,” I changed the subject. “Someone adopted a stretch of Route 59, just down a little ways. Few miles from here.”
“That’s great,” Melanie replied, still focused on the magazines. “It could use some TLC.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I said, leaving Melanie at the dining room table so I could start dinner.
~
The next week I was driving to work when, just past the adopt-a-highway sign, I saw a group of people holding garbage bags and spread out along the grass between the shoulder and the woodline. Making an uncharacteristically impulsive decision, I slowed down and pulled over onto the shoulder, turned on the hazards, got out of my car, and started walking back to them. There appeared to be around ten of them, two adults -- a man and a woman -- and a large group of kids of varying ages. They were all dressed casually with orange reflective vests hung over their shirts, and using pickers to move trash from the roadside into their bags.
I waved to the adults and called out “Howdy!” even though I never say howdy. The man and woman and some of the kids waved back, all smiles, and I suddenly felt a little awkward. But I extended my hand to the man first and he shook it and I said “Welcome to the neighborhood,” which I immediately realized was a little weird because I don’t really consider the highway my neighborhood per se, and also it’s not like these people actually lived right here.
“I’m Ted,” I said, and then turned to shake the woman’s hand next. Both of them appeared slightly older than me, maybe in their late 40’s, and what I would describe as classically good-looking and tall, with light blue eyes and perfect postures.
“Hi Ted, how are you?” the woman asked.
“I’m great,” I said, “How are you?”
Before she could answer, a little boy sidled up next to me and echoed, “How are you?”
So again I said, “I’m great.” And again I asked, this time of the boy, “How are you?”
That’s when the boy, instead of answering, said, “Do you know Neil Armstrong?”
I reflexively chuckled at the out-of-leftfield question before saying “Sure, yeah, first man on the moon!” And then the boy’s face completely changed, his smile transforming into an awestruck and mesmerized gaping mouth.
“And how is he?” the boy asked, in what I could only describe as pure wonderment. I was so taken aback by the question that it took me a few seconds to understand what he meant.
“Oh I’m sorry, I’m not actually friends with Neil Armstrong. I just mean I know about him. Because he’s famous,” I said, and looking into the boy’s face, now morphing into clear disappointment, I figured this would be the wrong time to mention that Neil Armstrong had been dead for a number of years.
It was at this moment that a young girl, around 9 years old or so, walked up next to the boy and announced in one breathless and uninterrupted sing-song stream-of-consciousness: “Neil Armstrong Buzz Aldrin Pete Conrad Alan Bean Alan Shepard Edgar Mitchell David Scott James Irwin John Young Charles Duke Gene Cernan Harrison Schmitt.”
I really had no idea what to say to this peculiar outburst, so for a moment we all just stood there for a bit, under the bright heat of the sun, a steady stream of traffic buzzing by us.
Finally I asked, “Is that a list of everyone who’s ever walked on the moon?”
And the girl nodded with a grin and said, “Sure is!”
“That’s remarkable,” I said, still unsure how to respond to this inexplicable turn in the conversation. “That’s really, really impressive,” I added.
And then I turned to the man again, trying to salvage my attempt at a neighborly introduction. “Well I just wanted to say thank you for doing this. For cleaning up,” I said, and the man nodded, smiling, clearly appreciative.
“Of course,” he said, “We’re making pretty good headway so far. Lots of trash picked up. This is the first phase.”
“Oh,” I replied, “And what’s phase two?”
“Clearing out all these non-native invasive plants,” the man said, gesturing back toward the brush. “Kudzu, English Ivy, knotweed, and so forth.” I didn’t really know what any of these things were, but I took his word for it.
“Destructive species that don’t belong here,” the woman added, apparently sensing my confusion. And I have to confess that there was something about the tone of her voice combined with the smile stretched across her face -- across all of their faces -- that sent a slight chill down my spine. I noticed they had formed a large crescent shape around me.
“Well, thank you again,” I said, starting to step backwards toward my car. “Maybe my wife and I could come help out sometime.”
“We’d love that,” the man said, his smile never wavering. The kids started spreading out again, getting back to work with their pickers. “Enjoy the rest of your day,” the man said, and then pointed at the sky. “Going to be a waxing gibbous tonight.”
“That sounds great,” I said for some reason, “See you later.” And then just before I got to my car, I remembered something and turned back to holler, “Oh I meant to ask, what’s The Good Earth?”
“A nonprofit!” the man yelled back.
“Awesome!” I said, because that’s just usually what people say whenever someone says they’re associated with a nonprofit, no matter what the nonprofit is. As I started to pull away, I realized I’d never gotten any of their names.
~
When I arrived home that night I found Melanie upstairs working in the guest bedroom that we were gradually converting into a nursery.
“So guess what,” I said. “On my way to work this morning I ran into that group that adopted Route 59. The one I was telling you about?”
“How exactly did you run into them?” Melanie asked.
“I mean they were cleaning up the highway when I drove by so I pulled over and chatted with them. Anyway, it’s actually this, like, huge family. Or maybe it was two adults chaperoning a group of kids? I couldn’t really figure that out, but they all seem really nice. But also a little weird? Like they’re all kind of obsessed with the moon for some reason?”
“Oh weird,” Melanie said, a little distracted.
“And the guy -- the dad I guess -- said The Good Earth is a nonprofit. Though now that I think about it, I don’t know if that means they work for the nonprofit, or they own it or something. Or they’re just volunteering? I’m not wording this right, but they all just seemed a little off. I searched for The Good Earth online but that combination of words is pretty much Google proof. So I…” I noticed Melanie was texting on her phone, not really listening to anything I was saying. “What’s up?” I asked.
Melanie sighed and said, “Have you seen Reggie the last couple days?”
I searched my memory. “No, now that you mention it, the last time would’ve been a couple nights ago. He was mowing his yard, naturally.”
“Sherri’s been texting me. Apparently she can’t find him. Says he went to town to run some errands yesterday and then she got some weird texts from him, and then he just never came home.”
“Oh wow,” I said. “Weird how?”
“She didn’t say. God, my fear would be like a stroke or dementia or something. Really scary.”
“He’s always seemed fine to me,” I replied. “I mean I haven’t noticed any slippage. Have you?”
“No, but I guess it’s hard to tell when you start getting along in years. And it’s not like we’re super close.”
I noticed Melanie gently rubbing her stomach, which prompted me to ask, “How are you feeling?”
“Honestly pretty good. Appetite’s firing up though. Hint hint,” she said.
I went downstairs to start dinner.
~
Over the next two weeks I saw the Good Earth family -- as I’d taken to referring to them, whether they were a literal family or not -- on their mile of Route 59 just about every morning on my way to the office. It made me wonder why the kids -- there were 10 of them, I’d counted, ranging in age from about 5 to 16 -- weren’t in school, or if they were homeschooled, or what. And I was a little puzzled by these people’s obsession with this one mile stretch of road. But there was no arguing with their results.
In just a few days’ time they’d completed the first phase, clearing a full mile of all trash, fast food bags, water bottles, tires, and other junk. It looked so much cleaner than I’d ever seen it. Then they began phase two, swapping in their pickers for shovels and pruners and loppers, ripping up all manner of plants and vegetation that must have been the invasive species they’d mentioned.
It was amazingly clear, very quickly, what a difference simply removing some garbage and problematic vegetation had on this mile-long stretch of highway. The colors appeared more vibrant, the remaining plants and wildflowers more alive and lush, the sky clearer, the air actually fresher -- as hard as that might be to believe. I basked in it every morning and every evening, driving by with my windows down, waving to the family hard at work. And they always took the time to wave back, the usual big smiles on their faces.
Back in Blue Cove the police visited Reggie’s and Sherri’s house a few times in the immediate days following Reggie’s disappearance. I caught Sherri outside once or twice, and she looked distraught, despondent. I felt awful for her. Shortly after that the police appeared at a couple other houses further down the street. The McCluskys (a family of four who moved in shortly after we did) appeared to have upped and left town without telling anyone. Another teenage boy, Charles Camp was his name, went to his job at the gas station one night and never returned to his parents. This was far and away the most police activity I’d ever seen in Blue Cove. Everyone was a little on edge.
Maybe I was on edge too, because pretty soon the mile 72 stretch of Route 59 started to feel a little creepy and unsettling to me. The Good Earth family appeared to have finished their work, and I turned in six or seven consecutive commutes to and from work without seeing them. But the section of highway they worked on took on a distinct feeling of unreality to me, as though the pendulum had swung too far in the other direction from the neglect and degradation that once marked that place, to the borderline artificial and sterile cleanness that I drove through every day. It was too perfect, in other words, a jarring contrast to the immediate miles preceding and proceeding it. Every blade of grass in this one mile seemed deliberately organized, the trees marking the woodline symmetrically spaced and exactly straight in a way that made me feel anxious and uneasy. When I asked Melanie if she’d noticed this too, she was no help. Even though Route 59 was the only access point for Blue Cove, the high school she taught at was in the opposite direction, meaning she rarely drove through mile 72.
Then one night, driving through Blue Cove after another long day at work, I noticed police cars at yet another house on our street. That was when I started to get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I pulled into our driveway and noticed Melanie’s car wasn’t there. When I got inside, the house was empty and I realized I had several missed calls from her, and a series of texts:
Running to the hardware store for some paint and stuff. Back later!
And let me know if you need anything from town
Just tried calling, can you call back?
I seem to be turned around on 59 somehow. GPS isn’t working. I’m totally lost
Nobody else around. Really creepy. Getting freaked out. Call back asap
I immediately turned back out the door and ran to my car, jumped in, and spun out of the driveway, tires screeching as I floored it down our street, out of Blue Cove, and back onto the highway. I white knuckled it for three miles, speeding toward that awful and disquieting stretch of road, where I felt in my gut I would find Melanie. 55 mph, 60 mph, 65, 75, 85. Dusk was descending, and when my headlights caught the reflective glimmer of the adopt-a-highway sign, I immediately slowed the car to a crawl, and started scanning, eyes peeled in every direction, squinting through the setting sun for any clue, any sign of Melanie anywhere.
I almost missed it. There, tucked in the trees, how it got there was anyone’s guess. The teal green bumper of Melanie’s car, peeking out through the immaculate brush. I braked hard and threw the door open, started running toward it as fast as I could, calling out Melanie’s name, fearing the worst. If I had been paying closer attention at that moment, if I hadn’t been so distracted, so focused on Melanie, I would’ve thought it odd that there were no other cars on the highway. I would’ve found it peculiar that there were no tire tracks leading from the pavement to Melanie’s car. But when I finally got through the brush, the tall grass and leaves, I flung open the driver’s side door and just as I did there was a loud crack, a blinding flash in the sky, a shaking of the earth, and I was subsumed by a cold and ghostly white space, that looked uncannily as bright and brilliant as the surface of --
~
I’m on autopilot again. No memory of leaving work, but I must have, because it’s nighttime and I’m driving south on Route 59. When I pull into Blue Cove, it’s totally empty. All the lights are out in every house I pass. Nobody’s home. There’s no sign of life anywhere, until I pull into my driveway and open the car door to the sound of a lawnmower. I step out of my car, and the first thing I notice is that even though the sky is black, it’s still incredibly bright out. I look up to the source of the light and see a full moon, but it’s not just a full moon. It’s far closer to the earth than it should be, casting everything under it in an eerie white luminescence. It’s so near to the Earth I can make out its pocked surface in unreal detail. Every crater and peak, every death-black shadow against its white and gray and ancient surface. It’s so horribly vibrant it almost looks alive, like it has a pulse, and I’m gripped with a dread so all-consuming I have to avert my gaze.
I once again notice the sound of the lawnmower and look across the street to see Reggie, back home and diligently mowing his lawn again. Under the moonlight I can make him out clearly, and when he pivots his push mower back in my direction, I can see that his cheeks are wet with the tears streaming down his face. I call out his name but he doesn’t see me, can’t hear me over the roar of the mower. He turns back to mow the next strip of grass.
I follow the walkway up to my front door, open it, go inside. It’s not until I see Melanie sitting at our dining room table that I remember she’d gone missing. I’d left the house in a rush to go find her. It’s coming back to me now.
“Where were you?” I ask her.
“I’ve been right here,” she says, and then she turns and looks at me, and it’s immediately clear she’s trying to communicate something to me with her eyes, something she’s afraid to say out loud. She breaks eye contact and looks aimlessly around the house, so I do the same, and that’s when I realize: There’s something wrong with our house. Nothing obviously amiss at first, just the kind of deep wrongness you’d notice in a place you’d inhabited for years, a place that’d been profoundly changed somehow. It’s too clean, yes, but there’s more to it than that. Like someone took our house completely apart, and then reassembled it piece by piece in a way that’s slightly off, vaguely unreal. Everything is at a wrong angle. It could be the too-bright moon hurtling its vast wattage through our windows, but I know it’s more than that. I know this is not the same house I left this morning. This is not Blue Cove. Not exactly.
Suddenly there’s a knock at the door. I give Melanie a look like “I’m not sure I want to answer that.” But her expression is impossible to read. Or maybe I just don’t want to acknowledge how terrified she looks right now.
In spite of myself, I walk to the door, open it. The man is standing there. The founder of The Good Earth, or the good samaritan, or the husband and father of ten children, or whoever he is. He’s smiling, of course.
The man says, “Welcome to the neighborhood.”
“But this is my neighborhood,” I say, and he gently nods and says “Mmhmm” and gives me a look like he’s patiently humoring me.
“Mind if we talk outside?” he asks. I don’t want to, but I follow him out onto our walkway, and then he stops and breathes in deeply, exhales with a beatific smile across his face, and looks up at the massive moon hanging above us, nearly close enough I could reach out and touch it.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asks. I don’t reply.
“Humans used to imagine there might be beings living on the moon,” the man says. “Of course now you know there’s exceedingly little atmosphere there. No liquid water, temperatures far too low to sustain life, et cetera, et cetera. But there’s more to the moon than what you can see and touch. A great deal more, in fact.”
“What did you want to talk about?” I ask, eager to get this over with. Eager for him to leave so I can get back to my wife, back to figuring out how to deal with all this.
“Ah, yes, well…” he kind of trails off, seems to collect his thoughts. “I guess I wanted to talk about pollution. Both the obvious kind of pollution you leave by, say, carving up hundreds of millions of acres of pristine natural beauty with paved roads and automobiles. Or, just as another example, the kind of pollution you create when you choose to stain the perfect void of space with chemicals and exhaust and debris, and… other things.”
That’s when I notice that planted right in the middle of our front yard is a flag that wasn’t there before, flapping gently in the night breeze, intermittently unfurling itself to reveal red and white stripes, white stars against a blue background, all faded just slightly with a light layer of gray dust. My mind is racing. I don’t want to know what it is. I don’t want to know how it got here.
“Then there’s another kind of pollution,” the man continues. “An unseen, odorless pollution you create, every second of every day, simply by being what you are.” The man looks at me, and for the first time I can recall, he’s no longer smiling.
“What… am I?” I ask. And then the man laughs, like I’ve just said the funniest thing he’s ever heard.
“Excellent question, Ted,” the man says. “Excellent question.”
Then we’re both just silent for a minute, before he says, “So I wanted to talk about this, yes, but I also wanted to share the good news. Would you like to hear the good news, Ted?” he asks, and the truth is I really don’t. I don’t want to hear whatever he has to say next. But I nod anyway.
“The good news,” he continues, “Is that whatever is done can be undone. And whatever is made,” and then he gestures grandly at my home with open arms, “Can be remade even better, safer. Cleaner. And far, far from where it can do any more harm whatsoever.”
Then, the man puts his hand on my shoulder, and for the first time I can sense his immense, unnatural strength and total command of me and everything around us, his obvious otherworldliness. He leans in close and whispers, “That’s phase three.”
The man pats my shoulder, then turns and begins strolling away leisurely through the bright night, turning back just once more to holler, in a voice barely audible above the din of Reggie’s lawnmower, “It’s pretty quiet here now, but you’ll have more neighbors joining you soon. Many more.”
He turns the corner and disappears. I stand alone before my house, ablaze in the moonlight. If I squint, if I think about this in just the right way, I can believe this is my home. My big, immaculate, perfect home. Just as it’s always been. I can believe that Melanie and I and our growing family will be happy here, whatever this place is. What other choice do I have? I clear my throat, walk back up the steps, and go inside to start dinner.
Chris Scott's work has appeared in The New Yorker, HAD, Flash Frog, ergot., Gooseberry Pie, New Flash Fiction Review, scaffold, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. He is a regular contributor for ClickHole, and an elementary school teacher in Washington, DC. You can read his writing at https://www.chrisscottwrites.com.
