But the way Walter heard it, it made a lot of sense to him.
If there was more than one person, that was a logistics nightmare. Especially in the snow, when it was cold out, and you have two people yelling at you, one saying the other was on their phone, the other one saying they didn’t put their turn lights on, and on and on it would go. Meanwhile, while you’re trying to get a story straight out of them, and you’re freezing your ass off. Then more cops would come, and then they would have to call a tow truck, sometimes two, and on and on . . ..
When it was one person, say a woman or man, they would drive off the road and either into the metal bars that were supposed to keep them on the road or break through them. Then, all you had to do was arrive on the scene, make sure that they were dead and then call the pickup crew. Of course, you had to investigate and see what happened. But at least no one was yelling at you as you did so. Dead people can’t scream.
Walter got out of his truck and walked over toward the office.
There was about half a foot or so of snow covering the walkway. He made his way through it, passing the sign declaring this a national watershed or some shit. Every time Walter looked at the sign, he had to suppress a laugh.
On that sign was all a bunch of statistics about the area, along with local history. Clear and dead center on the poster, however, was the picture of a Native American man. The only problem being that the man in the photo wasn’t Native American.
Walter had met the man a few years back. He had stumbled into one of Walter’s AA meetings, the ones on Sunday (which meant that there were usually brownies there ready for people to take and thankfully not the Dunkin’ Donuts doughnuts that seemed to always find their way into the Wednesday meetings), and asked for help. After a few weeks with AA (people come and go, and they do that majority of their coming and going in the first couple of weeks), he stuck around. He seemed to get his life in order. One day, before the meeting started, Walter asked him if indeed he was the man in the photo.
Frank said yes, that was him. When he was younger, he had wanted to be a movie star and had played lots of parts over the years. The man looked close to Native American, his father Moroccan, his mother Greek. Somehow, the people who took his photos said that he was a Native, and when the sign was being made up, his picture became the poster boy for the Iroquois tribe of upstate New York.
Walter and Frank had a good laugh about that.
When Walter saw Frank at the meeting next week, he would be sure to bust his balls about the sign again, saying that his splendid portrait was going to get covered in snow. The thought kept him warm as he approached the door to the office and opened it.
Stop 15 was nothing special. The smallest of all the stops, it only comprised of the bathroom, the great sign about the watershed with Frank in the middle of it, and a few picnic tables. When the weather was like this, however, no one would be using those tables. Walter took a sip of his coffee and got to work.
Walter used the mobile plow to clear off the paths. It was a great little invention. When he was younger, Walter probably could have removed the entire lot with a shovel meant for building sandcastles. Now, though, age had taken his strength, along with plenty of other things.
The mobile plow was a standard snow shovel mixed with a shopping cart with no basket. He could walk up and down the paths without having to bend down or anything. He would clear the way and then put down the salt and the sand. The snow was falling hard and wet, and he made sure to put down a few more buckets full of sand and salt on the paths, just to be safe. After an hour or so, he was done and retreated to the office, enjoying the heat. He took out his James Patterson book and started to read, something he liked to do after he exerted himself.
He drank a few more sips of his coffee, which had gone from hot to lukewarm in the last couple of hours. He read a few chapters, then inspected the bathrooms. All of the pipes worked, there weren’t any tampon blockages in the girl’s bathroom, the urinals were clean, and both rooms looked manageable. Walter then looked out on the paths.
The salt and sand were doing their job, but he had a feeling he would have to be back again in a few hours.
He walked to his truck and headed for Stop 17.
****
Stop 17 looked fine from the outside.
Like the other two, there were no cars in the parking lots, no RVs trying to hold out the storm. Everything was quiet.
Stop 17 was the largest of all the stops. Rather than be a typical run-of-the-mill stop, this one had the distinct honor of harboring a few businesses there as well. There was a McDonalds (there used to be a Burger King, but then it turned out that the owner there was using the business as a front for his child’s illegal porn ring), a Dunkin’ Donuts, a gift shop, and a place called My Thai, which surprisingly didn’t serve Thai food.
He brought his truck up to the nearest parking space (which was a handicap spot, but it wasn’t like anyone was going to stop him anyway) and walked up to the stop.
Walter wouldn’t have to worry about the snow around here, though, as his boots sunk into
