Twenty years

Reedsy Writing Contest #250: Antanaclasis

Write about a character doing something they’ve done hundreds of times — only this time, it’s taken on a new meaning.

Twenty years.

For twenty years, he had driven the same route, more or less, to and from work. The starting point and the ending point were the same, but the process kept changing.

Twenty years of fifty weeks a year, after deducting vacations, five days per week is five thousand workdays. Deduct holidays and days spent going directly to a job site and not to the office, and that number rounds to forty-five hundred or thereabouts. That was the math he did in his head as he pulled through the toll booth onto the highway. Roughly forty-five hundred workdays.

Three miles on the suburban streets to the toll road. Twenty miles on the toll road to the freeway. For the first half of those forty-five hundred workdays, the route included three miles on the freeway and another three miles of urban roads into the industrial park. Twenty-nine miles each way, twice a day. For the final half of those forty-five hundred workdays, a new exit off the freeway had been opened, reducing the distance on the freeway to a single mile and the distance on the urban streets to a little over a mile, knocking the most difficult four miles off the trip. Calculating the total distance traveled over the twenty years was more than he could do in his head. He would need a calculator or a spreadsheet. He loved his spreadsheets.

Today was the last time he would make this drive. He would continue to drive most of these same roads to other destinations, but at the end of today’s workday, retirement started.

He had planned for retirement for years. He had trained his successor. In fact, his successor did the job better than he did. Given a problem to solve involving significant and critical mathematical calculations, like when preparing a cost analysis for a proposal, the successor could come up with the answer in his head in less than a minute. The same calculations previously had taken fifteen minutes and a spreadsheet. The answer was the same, but the process was markedly different. It was time to pass the torch.

It has been said that no American highway is ever finished. This is to say that the drive was not always the same. There had been no construction during the first year of the commute, and the drive took roughly forty minutes in either direction. A year after starting the commute, the freeway was widened. The project took four years and increased the travel time to an hour or so.

No sooner had the widening been finished than half of the portion of the toll road he drove was widened. That took another five years. A new freeway exit was installed, shortening the commute. Once again, the freeway came under attack from the construction companies to build express toll lanes. At one point early in the construction, the travel time from the office to the freeway, a distance of fewer than two miles, increased from ten minutes to as much as half an hour.

Immediately upon finishing the widening of one section of the toll road, another section succumbed to a widening project. That project was far from finished as he made his last drive to work. Projections for the freeway modification to include express lanes were dismal at best. The project was already years behind schedule and could take another decade to complete.

All of which meant that some part of the route was under construction for the entire twenty years of his commute. Travel time varied from forty minutes to an hour and a half. Not only did the duration vary, but objects of interest along the route changed as well. The occasional multi-vehicle wreck or mechanical failure impeded traffic but provided drama and intrigue to those who wished to contemplate such things. The travel lanes shifted left and right or disappeared altogether as the forces at play in shaping the dirt to build the roads impacted the travelers that shared this bit of geography with the construction workers, not always amicably.

Giant concrete beams appeared beside the road and overnight became the beginning of a massive bridge. Bits of metal strewn in the construction zones seemed to magically bind themselves together to make frames for the concrete. Piles of dirt appeared and disappeared with seemingly little rationale. Not everyone chose to pay attention, but for those that did, it was an education. It was not always a pleasant education, but then how many are?

Leaving for work early significantly reduced the travel time. A chain restaurant coffee shop opened immediately off the new exit from the freeway. He found that if he left for work at least fifteen minutes early, he could stop, have coffee and a pastry, and still arrive at work at the same time as he would have had he left fifteen minutes later. Not having to spend that time and gasoline sitting in traffic had the added benefit of improving his mood when he arrived. The radio can only provide small comfort in stopped traffic.

The short morning visit to the coffee shop was a highlight of his day. He loved the little sillinesses he said to make the people working behind the counter laugh. One day, about a year ago, the customer ahead of him was particularly rude to the young lady trying to help him, bringing her almost to the brink of tears. After the abuser left, he said, in his best bad gangster voice, “I know a guy who knows a guy who can take a hit out on him. He’ll never bother you again.”

The manager, who had witnessed the entire incident, broke out into hysterics. “I wish I could take you up on that.”

The cashier smiled timidly. The nascent tears in her eyes dried.

The manager rested her hand on the cashier’s shoulder. “Whatever he wants is on the house.”

The cashier smiled and asked, “Your usual, sir?”

“Yes, please.”

Today, he was going in to tell the people in the coffee shop he had visited almost every day since the store opened that he would not be coming back. After a few moments of the usual banter, he told them that he was retiring and did not expect to be in this part of town again. He wished them well. After several hugs, he finished his coffee and was on his way.

The people at work had prepared a party and going away gifts. It was a pleasant party, and the gifts were thoughtfully done. The speeches were short, and in less than an hour, in time for the morning coffee break, it was over. He and his successor rearranged their desks and computers. They finished by lunchtime, and on one of those quirks of the business, neither had anything to do for the remainder of the afternoon. It was a hurry-up-and-wait sort of business. You were either slammed with work or had nothing to do, and those conditions often happened on the same day.

Whatever forces that control the roadway construction were kind to him that day. The evening commute, the last of forty-five hundred or thereabouts, was smooth and easy.

He went to dinner with his wife, and they discussed travel plans.

The following morning he joined his wife at the gym for the aquafit class she had been attending since the gym opened a year ago, and thus, a new life began.