The decision to adopt the highway was not taken lightly. Deirdra McCoy had done her research, going so far as to make sure the specific section of highway that she wanted was available: a two-mile stretch of Old Route 7, just near the high school. Everything had been considered, right down to what the sign needed to say. She’d had 859 days to plan it out.

The first step was to complete an online form, but there was some push back when she came in to sort out the rest of the necessary paperwork. Someone in the office had recognized her name, and they connected the dots once they saw what she wanted written on the sign. A supervisor was called over—a severe-looking middle- aged woman who couldn’t hide her disgust when she fully comprehended the situation in front of her—and she feverishly looked over all sorts of documentation to see if there was anything that could be done to stop Deirdra. Just one qualified complaint could’ve put the brakes on everything, but the only person who was qualified to complain could no longer be reached by the phone number listed. For once in her life, bureaucracy was on Deirdra’s side. A few weeks after visiting the local highway department, her sign was posted at the midway point of her two-mile stretch of adopted road. The placement itself was dubious enough to make a few kids shudder on their way to school, wondering what might’ve happened at that particular spot.

For her part, Deirdra couldn’t be bothered by the reactions from the highway department, in as much as she couldn’t be affected by students cringing at a macabre scene. She’d had 859 days to steel herself against criticism, becoming immune to almost everyone but herself, and she was always her greatest tormentor. Why else would she come back to her hometown and tend to that stretch of Old Route 7?

When the sign was up, she studied the prerequisite safety videos, scheduled a time for trash pickup, and went to bed early the night before her day of service. Since she could no longer drive a car, she got up before dawn to make the walk from her rented trailer down to the town hall, where she retrieved her reflective vest and roll of trash bags. It had just opened when she arrived, and as she collected her things, a young man passing behind her made a polite quip about how roadside clean-up worked better when it was a group of friends taking care of the litter and not just one person. He must’ve been a well- meaning kid, young enough to still be in college, and when Deirdra looked him over, she hesitated, like seeing him was akin to seeing a ghost. That by itself could’ve been considered a bad omen, but Deirdra had been haunted for much longer than her stretch of 859 days and was able to offer him an indifferent reply—one that betrayed no emotion.

“I don’t have any friends,” she said, wilting the young man’s courteous demeanor. He quickly found something else to do in another room, and Deirdra left quietly with her things.

The next hours were spent venturing further and further out until she finally found herself approaching the intersection to Old Route 7. When the signage indicated as much, Deirdra was surprised to feel her breath catch inside of her chest. A sense of panic arose, and the top of her lungs began to throb. She worried that she wasn’t as numb as she thought, but what could be done? She’d already come this far, so she breathed deeply and turned the corner onto 7, unrolling her first plastic bag to be filled with refuse.

“Eyes down,” she said to herself, unaware that her tone mirrored her old warden’s on a bad day. Her posture went rigid, like a prisoner being publicly corrected, and she whipped the trash bag three times until it collected a giant pocket of air before slowly floating open, down to the front of her legs. Then, she marched, one foot in front of the other, plodding and methodical.

Had this been a brisk walk, she would’ve made the stretch in less than forty-five minutes, but her adopted length of road was teeming with trash, and her progress was often interrupted. Within the first three steps, she stooped forward to pick up a crushed and dampened takeout box that had its insides mercifully picked clean by the local scavengers scurrying about in the neighboring hillside. It was odorless, and she dropped it into the bottom of the bag where it landed with a thud, weighting the light plastic against the mild breeze that seemed to blow behind her, gently pushing her further down the road. If only they could all be like that, Deirdra thought to herself, imagining the various pieces of litter she’d soon come across. Dirty by virtue of its nature, but cleaner than what you’d expect. Forgivable, even.

Deirdra, however, always knew this would be a dirty job, and she soon gave up on collecting from a standing position, lest the stooping posture should destroy her lower back before covering even a quarter of a mile. Instead, she took two steps, squatted down in place, and nitpicked all of the trash within her circumference, both great and small. When her reach was exhausted, and there was nothing left to dig out of her range, she stood up, shook out her legs, and took two more steps forward, beginning the process again.

Deirdra found she could get through five or six rounds of this before needing a break, and it quickly became a new unit of time—a quirky measurement that she could use to keep pushing herself forward or justify resting when her legs could no longer handle it. The weather wasn’t bothersome, as the breeze against her back staved off the collection of heat, and the sun itself stayed imprisoned behind a large bank of clouds that resembled the color of concrete. The only thing unsettling about her endeavor was the fact that she’d yet to see a single car pass by the road nor even hear the hum of tires against pavement, signaling a force that still might be miles off. With the exception of the droning crickets and twittering birds that had yet to migrate south, she was alone, encumbered by the thoughts born out of the silence of her work—not thoughts of what she had done, necessarily, but thoughts of what she was doing now. Each item had a tale. What was the backstory of these discarded remnants, carelessly and callously thrown out where no one might miss them?

A used diaper, heavy and fully saturated with what Deirdra hoped was just rain water, could’ve come from a child she once knew, and she pictured a beautiful bouncing baby boy being driven to his christening. She tried to remember the image of his frazzled mother, pulling her car over to the side of the road to change her kid on the trunk, hoping some blowout hadn’t spoiled the white linen of her son’s baptismal gown.

A guttural laugh bubbled up inside Deirdra but got caught in her throat, and it made her heart ache in the way that all of her unexpected moments of recall did. It was a thought that stabbed at her, and there was nothing she could do but continue on until she paused to peel from the earth a flattened box once made for an individual slice of pizza. Nearby was an empty sports-drink bottle, and Deirdra pictured that same child, a little older now, sitting in the back seat on his way home from some little league game. Maybe after enjoying a quick dinner in the car, he’d thoughtlessly thrown out its remains before returning home with his mom to finish his schoolwork. Had his mother fussed at him when he did this? Was Deirdra there to see it, or was she imagining it all? She couldn’t remember.

Now, the low purr of a far-off engine began to break through the silence of the roadside, but Deirdra was too lost in thought to hear anything. Gradually, her imagination became a weight against her soul, and it could not be stopped.

Further down was a crushed pack of cigarettes, and Deirdra visualized the boy as a young teenager, just shy of high school. Of course, she couldn’t have been there to witness it, but she’d certainly heard about it, and the details formed a vivid picture. He’d stopped accepting rides from his mother by this point and instead walked along the side of the road with a group of kids, joining in to experiment with someone’s dad’s brand of menthols. Maybe he’d managed to inhale, but Deirdra doubted he could’ve kept the smoke down. The coughing fit that followed would’ve undoubtedly been an embarrassing admission of innocence.

She knew those friends eventually would disappear, but the boy’s comfort with Old Route 7 would not, and he’d continue to walk alongside it on the way to and from school, grateful for the little bit of independence he could gather for himself. Always though, he’d walk alone, and Deirdra looked at the crushed pack of menthols, asking herself if she should’ve known that about him. Shouldn’t she have known that this was something he’d begun doing? Where had she been all that time? What had she been doing with herself?

Walking was becoming harder than Deirdra anticipated, and even after filling three bags of trash and counting, she felt as though she’d accomplished nothing, except maybe only making things worse. She kept her eyes down, and she was so engrossed with her thoughts and the refuse on the side of the road that she was unaware she’d been crying—wailing even. Her breath hitched in sobs, and her moans were loud enough to drown out the din of a roaring engine, still distant, but speeding ever closer.

A few more steps, a few more pieces of trash. Now, she was alternating between squatting and stooping, as her whole body’s exhaustion was pronounced with every step she took. Each piece of refuse could’ve been a piece of the boy she thought she once knew: a broken pencil and soiled notebook that he surely must’ve dropped on his way to school; the rotten core of an apple he’d once eaten that had unnaturally kept itself for over three years; a single, blue mitten lost during a winter trek.

Closer and closer, she got to the road’s midpoint, and unbeknownst to her, louder and louder the noise of an approaching vehicle became. Her movement stagnated, slowed by the apprehension toward what she might find next, until finally she saw an artifact that arrested her progress entirely. The tint of the electric blue glass caught her eye, and she bent over to unearth it from its half-buried state. The long-neck bottle was worn, but its brand was unmistakable. This wasn’t anything the boy had experimented with. This one was her preference, and its taste, like a curse upon her lips, would never fade from memory.

The bottle shook inside her tenuous grip, but she could not bring herself to drop it in the near-full bag of trash that she dragged alongside her. She stared at it, treating it like an accusation, and when her eyes finally broke away from its cold blue glare, she saw that she’d finally stumbled upon her chosen sign, posted by the local highway department, exactly to her specifications. A yard behind it stood a small cross, crooked in the ground, weathered and aged, decorated by plastic roses with blooms that had been mangled by years of changing seasons.

The sign read: “In Memory of Nathaniel James McCoy.”

An uncertain memory flashed through Deirdra’s mind, manufactured because the truth had been blacked out, where a straight road seemed to curve into a flash of red, and now suddenly, the sound of something shrieking, like the unmistakable squeal of decaying brake pads, desperate for attention…

Deirdra turned around to see a familiar brown station wagon skidding to an abrupt halt, swerving slightly as the rubber from the tires left a dark tread mark against the surface. A woman briskly exited, reached into the back seat, and produced an aluminum bat once meant for a child. Assuming the worst, Deirdra closed her eyes and even grimaced when she felt something graze her shoulder with enough force to knock her aside. It wasn’t the cold feeling of metal that she thought was coming, however. Instead, it was the nudge of a fleshy shoulder, warm and firm, rushing forward. Still, Deirdra remained crouched and waiting until she heard the percussive sound of thin steel being mangled and bent out of shape. Each hit rang out into the open air: once, twice, three times, a fourth, and on and on until Deirdra hesitantly opened her eyes and watched the woman finish destroying the adopt- a-highway sign—until its face was pockmarked and the post was a tangle of sharp edges. When she was done, the woman let the bat drop limply to her side while she hunched over and panted breathlessly for air. A second passed before she turned towards Deirdra, her expression hardened by hatred.

But the rims of Deirdra’s eyes were red and puffy, and she could not hide the fact that she’d been steadily crying through the latter part of her sojourn. The woman must’ve recognized this because something in her expression briefly softened. For a second, they were sisters again.

“Been a while, Deirdra,” Molly said dryly.

Timidly, Deirdra replied, “859 days.”

“Isn’t that a bit early?” Molly asked.

“Good behavior,” Deirdra answered, and her sister scoffed in reply.

Deirdra stood quietly, and the warden of her mind told her to once again keep her eyes down, and so she did. Molly looked beyond her, down the stretch of Old Route 7, examining the bloated trash bags that checkered the side of the road. Then, her eyes fell upon the blue bottle shaking in her sister’s grip, and her hardness returned.

“What’s all this?” Molly asked. “This supposed to do something for you?” The anger in her voice wasn’t threatening, but existential—a permanent part of her being that was put there against her will. It made Deirdra flinch but couldn’t make her look up.

“You wouldn’t answer my letters,” Deirdra explained. “You didn’t take my calls. I thought when I put in for the road that they might get hold of you and you’d finally say something to me, but even then, they couldn’t raise you. I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Well, I’m here now, Dee,” Molly said, and a long sigh escaped her lips, like sadness permeating the air around her. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

In her 859 days of incarceration, Deirdra had devoted every night to this moment. She’d rehearsed elaborate apologies over and over as she waited for sleep to take her back to the worst day of her life. Words about paying tribute and how it shouldn’t matter where it comes from were whispered into the darkness that surrounded her cell every night—her only constant companion. Now, they had all abandoned her, and she was alone without a phrase to save her, so she stayed quiet with her eyes kept downward.

But this would not do for Molly. She stepped into Deirdra’s space, close enough so that the scent of her unwashed hair filled Deirdra’s nostrils, and her voice came in a harsh whisper with the spittle from her lips landing on Deirdra’s earlobes. These were her words, also rehearsed nightly, and they would never abandon her:

“You can’t make this right, Deirdra. You’re no better than a thief to me, as bad as the trash on the side of this road. Did you think that a memorial, some sign with my boy’s name on it, could mean anything to me? Nathaniel never got to grow up! Nobody knows who he is! He disappeared and doesn’t get to exist anymore. This won’t make that right, so why bother even trying? Just go home, Deirdra! Go home and disappear, and let the world go on forgetting you ever existed too.”

Molly leaned back and grabbed Deirdra by the chin forcefully, turning her face upwards so that she had no choice but to look into her sister’s eyes. Their pupils met, and once the moment passed, Molly let go of Deirdra’s face and walked back to her car. She tossed the bat into the back seat, got in, put the car in reverse, and turned around before speeding away, leaving Deirdra in the wake of it all.

The trash bag by her feet rippled in the breeze, and the wooden cross, resting just beyond the mangled roadway sign, remained pitifully askew. Deirdra thought things over. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe she could let go and let herself disappear. It might even be easier…

But then, no one ever really disappears, and Deirdra didn’t need 859 days to figure that out. Even if she could, now wasn’t the time to do so. She looked down at her hand and saw that the blue bottle in her grip was no longer shaking. She let it slip from her fingertips into the bag by her feet, and then, she stooped over to tie it off.

When it was time to move on, Deirdra reached over to the wooden cross and tried to straighten it in the ground. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than it had been, and that was enough to give Deirdra the courage to whip open a new bag and continue her trek along Old Route 7. After all, it was not for herself that she moved. This was a tribute; it did not matter where it came from.

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“Refuse” by Christopher L. Malone and the artwork titled In Memory Of by Sofía Hernandez appeared in Issue 44 of Berkeley Fiction Review.

Christopher L. Malone is a Maryland writer, musician, and teacher. When he’s not busy with his various projects, he can be found enjoying the company of Chasi and Cameron, his wife and son respectively. He has published two novels, Hangdog and Harold in the Name of Love, and is currently working on his next story.

Sofía Hernandez worked on the production of Issue 44 as a Managing Editor, but outside of the Berkeley Fiction Review, she enjoys drawing fictional lesbians on her tablet.