Nick Ostdick

Flowers from the Road

Those flowers along the roadside are there to keep us from forgetting the people who weren't very memorable in the first place; those who seemed to be gone with little or no noise, whispers of wind, just like the way they came to be. Highway Ten, the only damn road from my apartment to the Dodge factory—the one job I could get right outside of high school—is littered with bouquets, the kind that silently sit beneath miniature crucifixes so real looking that I get antsy as my truck lumbers down the dusty road.

Highway Ten is dangerous; an unpaved, scarcely lit, twisting road that is conducive to late night drag races and burn out contests, many of them ending badly with crumpled metal being melted down by fire spewing from wrecked cars. And so after every death the town erected another cross with flowers underneath, the memory of another forgettable person cemented into the roadside. Thirteen tiny reminders adorn the gravel road, but there are actually fourteen people who have died here. Billy Boulder has been forgotten.

"Are you really an atheist, Billy?" I asked. The two of us were playing in the giant rectangle sandbox behind the gym during recess. Our pinkish ten-year-old faces were smudged with dirt or worm guts, or some other unidentifiable particles that children scrounge up and cover themselves in.

"Yes I am. Through and through." Billy puffed out his chest and let a smile shine through as he pushed his yellow Tonka Truck through the damp sand. I had no idea what an atheist was, thinking that maybe it was a super secret club that he and some friends were in where they built a clubhouse and bombed the neighborhood girls with water balloons.

"Cool," I replied, buried in my naiveté.

"Yep, I don't need no God."

Billy dumped off a mound of dirt at our predetermined drop site. He closed the back gate of his truck and drove it right into mine, laughing and squealing like a drunken pig.

"So, you don't believe in God?" I asked, my voice crackly as a whisper, hoping the other kids wouldn’t hear for fear of a beating in Christ's name. Kids back then in Union Park believed in God; there was just no way around it. And even at a young age kids were prideful of it, taking personal offense to something unholy as if they were adults. You and your parents went to church every Sunday, all day, in the summer your thighs becoming sweaty and rubbing together with the cheap fabric of your black pants. A rash would soon develop, your parents saying that the inflammation was a temporary reminder of Jesus's sacrifice for our sins. Part of your allowance would have to go in the collection plate, almost half by the time you were asked over and over again: "is that all you're going to give?" Your parents would hold weekly Bible study in the living room downstairs, the adults praying and reciting verse, eating a multitude of semi-fresh leftovers that were brought with them.

"But where do you think you go after you die?" I asked Billy, looking from side to side making sure no one was within earshot. He looked at me, his eyes pointy and murky, his oversized front teeth poking through his mouth.

"You just sit in the ground and rot."

"No way, man."

"Way," Billy said, excavating another section of the sandbox with his hands, his truck not far behind.

"Your sister goes to church, doesn't she?"

"Yeah. That's her choice. My parents let us choose if we want to go or not."

I shook my head, starting my own dig, trying to dismiss what he was saying. His parents were the of kind people the townsfolk thought were crazy; the types who let their children play video games and see all the new action films, leaving a lot of the big decisions up to his sister and him.

"But that doesn't mean anything," Billy continued. "My sister still believes that when you die you rot in the ground." Billy stuck his tongue out at me, bashing his truck into mine again, his blonde hair dirty with sand mussed in it. It felt like he was gloating, taking some pleasure in the fact that his sister went to church and still didn't believe.

"Well, then she's going to hell," I replied. "And so are you." Billy, then not looking so confident, tossed a handful of a sand/dirt mix in my face and ran off toward the gym, crying.

Billy's face was red and sore, his limbs weak and a growing pain in the back of his head from his brain sloshing around in his skull. His eyes were purple and puffy to the touch, the knees of his jeans torn open and his red t-shirt ripped at the bottom. The three big kids were standing over him, giving their punching-hands a rest while Billy tried to pull himself together. Word had gotten out about him and his beliefs, or lack thereof.

"Who believes in God?" one of the hairy eighth-graders asked, a patch of pubescent hair covering the skin under his nose. That was another thing Billy felt bad about: he was one of the only sixth graders who didn't have the beginnings of facial hair. That, coupled with what he didn't believe in, made middle school a veritable hell.

"Who BELIEVES IN GOD?!" another one of the upperclassmen shouted, his squeaky voice bouncing off the bus barn like a Super Ball. Billy was wondering why his parents moved to such a God-shaped place when Simon Jones—the biggest of all the eighth-graders—landed his fist flush on the side of Billy's face, sending him careening toward the ground.

"That's right," one of the boys said. "You believe in God."

Their footsteps pounded in Billy's sore head as they took off running, blood trickling out of his nose and into a small puddle next to him, a statue of the Virgin Mary standing over him in the parking lot.

"Pass me another one," I said, Billy tearing another beer from the stolen six-pack ring and tossing it my way. "Where’d you get these?"

"From my old man. He bought them for me."

"Really?"

He nodded, opening another one for himself as some fizz funneled out of the can onto the hood of his car.

"I wish my parents bought me beer," I said, taking a giant swing from the aluminum can, some of it rolling down my chin.

"Couple more years and they won't have to. We can get our own."

The moon looked like a quarter in a pond, the stars like little ripples fading away as they moved farther out into the middle of the deep, black water. The headlights from Billy's sedan shone on the few graves in front of us, our tools lying in the grass just before the car. We were bigger then, older too, right around sixteen. The dizzying smell of beer in the hot summer air made us chatty, our lips flapping like flags in the wind.

"You still believe in God?" Billy asked.

"You just asked me that like two days ago."

"So?"

"What do you mean?" I replied, another big gulp of beer was finding its way down my throat.

"Has anything changed?"

"Nothing changes that fast. Especially in this town." I tossed the empty beer can through the driver side window, wiping my mouth with my sleeve. I pulled a stolen cigarette from my pocket and lit it, the smoke dancing and disappearing into the night, worrying about myself. I had started sneaking out of church on Sundays to get drunk behind the fire exit at the back of chapel. When my parents had their friends over after church to talk about the service, I would run out to the store to get milk to help firm up the leftovers and smoke half a pack of cigarettes, waiting for the boring lot of them to leave. Good Christian boys didn't do stuff like that, and I was scared that I wasn't who I thought I was.

"You ready to do this?" Billy asked, his eyes glassy and his voice hushed.

"I'll grab the shovels."

The two of us dug, the soggy dirt sticking to our hands, the dewy grass lightly misting us as it was overturned. Our grunts were synced with each other, the dull sliding sound of our shovels prying up dirt floating over the sound of cicadas chirping in the trees around the graveyard.

"I think we've got it," Billy said, his shovel hitting something solid. The two of us frantically unearthed a large wooden box about six feet long with four gold handles on each side. I came around to Billy's side of the coffin and helped lift the giant timber lid, a vacuum-sealed sound breaking as the top lifted up to reveal Mrs. Martin, the wife of some captain who died in World War II. She was something of a town icon, the widow of the only solider from our town that died in a war, and thus because of her singularity in never remarrying and staying loyal to God, she was, in the town's eyes, eligible for sainthood. Her hair was thinned and frazzled, her skin chalky and loosely clinging to her bones while a long multi-legged bug scampered across her belly. She looked like she had shrunk, her head smaller than the pillow that had been fitted for her skull after she had died.

"See," Billy said. "She's just rotting in here. She's not off in heaven or somewhere else."

"Her body might still be here but that doesn't mean her soul is."

"You can't see her soul," he said, picking up his shovel and starting to throw some dirt back in the hole.

"Exactly," I replied, starting to get somewhat annoyed with him.

"What?"

"You can't see it. You just have to believe it is there. That's the whole point."

"How do you do that?" Billy asked, leaning up against his shovel.

"Can you see air?"

"No."

"Well, that's one example."

"No it's not," he said, his face all wrinkled as he disagreed. "They can bottle it. You know, like for the astronauts and all."

"Yeah, but what about love? You can't see that, and we all know that's there."

"They can do tests now that show a person's heart rate goes up and stuff when they're around the person they love. Read a science book."

"That's not the same," I replied, shaking my hands at him, waving him off.

"Whatever, man." He looked at me, shaking his head and throwing his hands up in the air like he was giving up. I was giving up too, out of ways to convince him that souls exist, and frankly, out of ways to convince myself as well.

We both looked at each other, Mrs. Martin beginning to emit a sour odor as the night had started to turn to early morning. With our noses plugged we lowered her back into the ground, throwing dirt back on top of her casket. Good Christian boys would never dig up a body, that's for sure.

Billy gave some serious thought to saving his soul, especially when Sharon Besser was in the backseat of his car, her pink panties peaking through the thick night. Her short blonde hair was tangled up in itself, her blue jeans and black sweater slung over the passenger side seat. The whole car smelled like her perfume: sticks of vanilla melting into a vat of fruity wine coolers, the same exact perfume she wore every time she climbed into the back seats of cars.

"Billy?" she moaned, her arms draped around the back of his head as he started to kiss down her neck and into her chest. The two of them were wrapped around each other, both of them panting hard, their sweaty backs rubbing up against the scratchy fabric of Billy’s seats. "You believe in God, right?"

"Where did that come from?"

"I can't do this with anyone who isn't a believer." Her face was furrowed, like she was thinking how the hell Billy was expecting her to have sex with someone who didn't believe. "Do you?"

"No. No, I don't."

Sharon Besser's flushed face went cold, her eyes once on fire with the prospect of a late night fuck dampened by Billy's answer.

"I can only have pre-martial sex with a Christian. Otherwise, it's just wrong."

He hopped off her and sat down in the backseat, their legs still rubbing up against each other. His bare chest looked slippery with sweat, the smell of her last smoked cigarette still present in the confined space of Billy's car.

"This doesn't make any sense," he said, kicking the back of the driver seat. Sharon Besser looked at him, the dimples on her cheeks so sexily placed, the fullness of her lips so damn hard to resist.

"All the other guys did it for me. It won't take long," she said, adjusting her bra, the tops of her boobs being pushed up toward the roof of the car. Billy shook his head from side to side, rubbed his hands over his face and whispered, "Alright . . . .”

Sharon Besser, the girl who was known to have done it all and was proud to say so, reached into the back pocket of her wrinkled jeans and pulled out a mini Bible. She took Billy by the hand, their most palms sliding all over each other.

"Repeat after me. I, Billy, now accept Christ, thy Lord and Savoir, into my heart like no other."

Billy looked at her, the outline of her pink bra and panties covering up the shadows of what would be her naked body. He pulled his hand from hers and started to button his shirt.

"Billy?" Sharon Besser asked. "What are you doing?" Her voice was so sweet and innocent, a tattoo of some biblical verse on the back of her thigh peaking through the dark. He looked defeated, his face long and narrow and his eyes sad.

"I can't do it," he replied, crawling back into the front seat and starting the car. "I just can't. Where do you live? I’ll take you home."

"Just off Highway Ten," she said, still sitting in the backseat holding the mini Bible, her bra starting to sag down again, confused about what was going on and how a guy actually resisted her.

It was on the way back from dropping Sharon Besser off that Billy flipped his brown sedan, rolling it down an embankment, the car coming to rest upside down on the edge of the Kishwaukee River. Billy wasn't drunk, we don't think. He wasn't drag racing like the others who died there were. Billy was just angry, trying to drive off the frustration and rancor and loneliness that he had felt for so long. There wasn't a funeral or anything, his parents leaving town shortly after it happened, the school observing a moment of silence during the morning announcements in remembrance. That's all Billy was in that damn town: consecutive seconds of silence.

I tried real hard not to cry as they read what had happened to him over the PA, biting my lip until it bled, then using a bathroom pass to go and sit in a stall and cry, my spilt lip dripping on to my pants. The crazy backcountry town decided not to erect any kind of floral reminder of him near the road, citing the fact that he was an atheist, and thus not a saved man. I don't think I'll ever get over that. It still makes me sad every time I drive Highway Ten, thinking about how he was cast off like he never existed because he didn’t believe; what’s worse is thinking about what that now means for me. I stopped going to church after he died. I didn't participate in after-service study sessions, nor did I run out for my parents and get milk to help with their leftovers. I moved out, got an apartment and a job, and tried to leave all of that behind. Now I drink, heavily, and smoke, constantly, and swear all the time.

And it always seems like it's flowers that bring back those people who we wouldn't have remembered; those colorful flowers laid along the side of the road making us think about the people who we've lost. But sometimes, in some towns like Union Park, it's the absence of flowers that makes you remember.

Nick Ostdick is a fiction writer from the Chicago area. He is the author of the novel Sunbeams and Cigarettes, and his short works have appeared in many online and print publications. He is currently working on a new novel.