Then I unrolled forty-two feet of Route 71.
Close up, the illusion was not perfect – as stage make-up and set-decoration is never perfect from the first three rows. But from even a few yards away, it was virtually undetectable. It was a dark-gray strip which matched the actual surface of Route 71 exactly. On the far left of the canvas strip (as you faced west) was a broken yellow passing line.
I settled the long strip of canvas over the wooden under-structure, then went slowly along the length of it, stapling the canvas to the struts. MY hands didn’t want to do the work but I coaxed them.
With the canvas secured, I returned to the van, slid behind the wheel (sitting down caused another brief but agonizing muscle spasm), and drove back to the top of the rise. I sat there for a full minute, looking down at my lumpy, wounded hands as they lay in my lap. Then I got out and looked back down Route 71, almost casually. I didn’t want to focus on any one thing, you see; I wanted the whole picture – a gestalt, if you will. I wanted, as much as possible, to see the scene as Dolan and his men were going to see it when they came over the rise. I wanted to get an idea of how right – or how wrong – it was going to feel to them.
What I saw looked better than I could have hoped.
The road machinery at the far end of the straight stretch justified the piles of dirt that had come from my excavation. The asphalt chunks in the ditch were mostly buried. Some still showed – the wind was picking up, and it had blown the dirt around – but that looked like the remnants of an old paving job. The compressor I’d brought in the back of the van looked like Highway Department equipment.
And from here the illusion of the canvas strip was perfect – Route 71 appeared to be utterly untouched down there.
Traffic had been heavy Friday and fairly heavy on Saturday – the drone of motors heading into the detour loop had been almost constant. This morning, however, there was hardly any traffic at all; most people had gotten to wherever they intended to spend the Fourth, or were taking the Interstate forty miles south to get there. That was fine with me.
I parked the van just out of sight over the brow of the rise and lay on my belly until ten-forty-five. Then, after a big milk-truck had gone lumbering slowly up the detour, I backed the van down, opened the rear doors, and threw all the road cones inside.
The flashing arrow was a tougher proposition – at first I couldn’t see how I was going to unhook it from the locked battery box without electrocuting myself. Then I saw the plug. It had been mostly hidden by a hard rubber O-ring on the side of the sign-case… a little insurance policy against vandals and practical jokers who might find pulling the plug on such a highway sign an amusing prank, I supposed.
I found a hammer and chisel in my toolbox, and four hard blows were sufficient to split the O-ring. I yanked it off with a pair of pliers and pulled the cable free. The arrow stopped flashing and went dark. I pushed the battery box into the ditch and buried it. It was strange to stand there and hear it humming down there in the sand. But it made me think of Dolan, and that made me laugh.
I didn’t think Dolan would hum. He might scream, but I didn’t think he would hum.
Four bolts held the arrow in a low steel cradle. I loosened them as fast as I could, ears cocked for another motor. It was time for one – but not time for Dolan yet, surely.
That got the interior pessimist going again.
What if he flew?
He doesn’t like to fly.
What if he’s driving but going another way? Going by the Interstate, for instance? Today everyone else is…
He always goes by 71.
Yes, but what if…