The Drawings Behind the Stop Sign

Old Mr. Pasternak had held that corner nineteen years. He had gotten both knees replaced and gone to live with his daughter in Harrisburg.

I looked at the corner, the four-way with the stop sign on the Quarry Street side and the wide white crosswalk and the oak that drops acorns every October, and I did a sum in my head.

Corwin and Tamsen lived on Quarry Street, three blocks up the hill. Braylin would start kindergarten at Harth Mills Elementary that fall.

Every child from Quarry Street who did not ride a bus would cross Church Street at that corner.

I told myself I wanted the work, and a widow needs a reason to get dressed. Both of those were true. The pay was sixteen dollars and twenty cents an hour, for two hours a day.

But underneath, I wanted to be where my grandson was, in a way nobody could call a favor or a trespass. A crossing guard is a public servant. The whole town sees her.

The next move would belong to them. When Corwin was ready to say he was sorry, he would know exactly where to find me.

I was not guarding a corner. I was guarding a grudge, and I had dressed it up in reflective tape.

Sergeant Vetter of the Harth Mills police gave me the training himself. He is a tall, careful man with a mustache like a push broom, and he had one speech for every new guard.

He said, “Wilma, the children are going to look at you like you are the only adult in the world. Your whole job is to be worth that look.”

He said, “You hold the stop with your whole arm. You never step ahead of the last child. And you don’t get to have a bad day in that road.”

I wrote that last line on the inside of my hand. It was the only honest thing I did that first year.

My first morning on the corner was the last Wednesday in August. The sky was white and the humidity sat on you like a wet coat.

I stood in the road in a brand new vest that still smelled of the plastic bag, holding the paddle against my chest and watching the length of Quarry Street.

Near the end of the line came a boy with his father’s shoulders and his grandfather’s chin, walking next to Tamsen. She had a travel mug in one hand and the other hand hovering near the back of his collar.

His backpack was bigger than his whole upper body, bright red with a dinosaur on it, and his hair had been wet down and combed to the side.

He looked at the tall woman in the orange vest standing in the road with her arm up, and I watched him know me.

I do not mean he said anything. He walked right up to the curb with his hand held in his mother’s, and he stopped where the line says to stop.

He looked up at me with Arlen’s whole face. I held my glove flat in the air and kept my eyes on a spot above his head.