Special Events

THE GREATER LEHIGH VALLEY WRITERS GROUP
ANNOUNCES THEIR 2ND ANNUAL SHORT STORY CONTEST!

We would like to extend a special Thank You to all of our participants!

And the winners are:

First Place: Stop Sign by Kelly Farrell - Southern Lehigh High School - Grade 9
 
Second Place: Harold Eldridge the Third by Kathryn Middleton - Blair Academy - Grade 10
 
Third Place: The King and Queen of Drama by Leo C. Behe - Homeschool - Grade 11

First Place
Stop Sign
By Kelly Farrell

The twisted lanes of Faulkner Drive stem from a large parent highway, which drifts out of sight, where, cities away, the road is replaced by a new name. If you follow Faulkner away from the interstate, past the dusty ghost town of a children's park and the four-acre cornfield, you come upon a small neighborhood of houses, ending with a grand mansion which looks thoroughly and decidedly out of place. The homes in the neighborhood range from well-kept cottages to dark, unclean dens whose gardens died off before they were even listed on the market. Its occupants range from an old couple quietly waiting out the months in the peace of rooms sheltered by lace curtains to a seventeen-year-old boy, emancipated after a broken bottle forever implanted the depth his father's love for him in a jagged scar under his left eye.

There are three children living there, each in grade school, who catch the bus every morning under a crippled stop sign whose rusted face has been faded and illegible since the end of the Clinton Administration. In fact, there isn't even an intersection or any other reason for the sign's presence. No one knows why it is there. Even the elderly couple cannot explain why the barely green signpost still sticks out of the earth, its spine bent backwards after a hurricane still referenced to at the drug store several miles down the highway.

The wealthy family living in the mansion often comment, "When are they ever going to get rid of that repulsive stop sign?" Or, "Why anyone would put a stop sign here is beyond me." The sign droops a little, knowing that it is unwanted. The middle-class residents no longer question the sign's authority. After all, it has been there longer than they have. Half of them still wearily hit the brakes, afraid that some higher power will punish them for disobeying its message, and the other half considers it a quirk that makes Faulkner Drive home. Sometimes, a young photographer will get out of his car and kneel on the side of the road to capture the sign's pathetic being as a tribute to life in small-town America. Sometimes, one of the middle-aged fathers will take a walk with his daughter, who will always look up at him and ask, "What is that sign there, Daddy?" He will always chuckle and say, "I don't know. Maybe we'll find out soon, Janie," ruffling her hair as they continue to what's left of the playground.

The sign has seen the same father leaving his house in the midst of baby screams, walking briskly towards a dilapidated oak tree nearby to light up a cigarette, breathing heavily to escape the unwanted anger. Occasionally, he'd fall against the trunk, sliding into the ground with his head between his hands, hastily eliminating any evidence of anguish before pounding the smoke into the ground bitterly with his heel.

The teenager comes once, climbs the branches of the oak tree at dusk. From the top, he'll softly cry, his face covered with branches, "Come on, Dad! Race me to the bottom?" Other times, he'll take out the silver locket he left in a knot about halfway up the trunk, opening it to reveal the old picture featuring a woman only about ten years younger than him, a face nearly her own staring right back at her under the graying sky.

The stop sign is also a romantic hotspot, serving as a shelter for feather-light kisses and Chuck Palahniuk quotes shared by the young photographer and his red-haired girlfriend, and a witness to sloppy love born from a case of Corona and two recent college graduates on a blanket (a housewarming present from the girl's mother, no less). The other two resident children—a pair of thirteen-year-old boys—often come here with filched copies of Playboy, ogling at its glossy pages while spouting mouthfuls of obscenities they wouldn't dare to utter under their mothers' roofs.

The sign remembers the day the old man proposed to his wife under the tree; when their hair still shone under the autumn sun, and they stood straight and tall, un-medicated, and smiling. It remembers when Janie's father and his friends used to smoke pot on the side of the road, taking a quick hit to loosen up before facing the stern gaze of their mothers. It remembers the icy pain of a razor scratching initials into the back of its head.

It watches as the wealthy man speeds out of his driveway, the tires of the Porsche screeching as he peels out of the neighborhood for what would be the last time. It watches as another man calmly backs out of the mansion a few hours later. He'd later come to live in its majestic halls. The sign sees Janie ride down the street on her big-girl bike, finally adjusted to the loss of training wheels, her ponytail stretched out behind her like the tail of a kite.

The sign has never seen the end of Faulkner Drive. It remembers in some distant corner of its memory its arrival via the interstate highway, yet it has never seen any point past its home. It assumes that one day, it will reach the end, either finally dug up from its perch and brought to a dumpster, or perhaps high winds will snap its aging post and it will simply blow away, simple another reminder of how things change (are replaced).

One of the photographer's snapshots makes it into a famous magazine, and the stop sign is plastered in its pages. The young man comes back to visit the sign one last time before driving off to somewhere enchanted. His lover sits in the passenger seat of his new Cadillac, her flowing red hair tickling the edge of the sign's face as she sticks her head out the window to say good-bye. Janie watches them go from her front lawn and wonders why they came to this neighborhood only to leave again.

The sign watches them all grow, already guessing where they will end up. The two boys eventually age up to high school, already dying to get out of the best four years of their lives. Janie grows out her bangs and refuses to wear pink, vows to become the president, and is already disgusted by the boys in her class. The emancipated teenager celebrates his eighteenth birthday with a shotgun on top of the tree, running up the branches one last time and shouting, "Catch me if you can, Dad!" His father comes two days later, retrieving the boy's things and depositing them in the plastic garbage can on the driveway without a word. The sign wonders if he even went to the kid's funeral.

No one climbs the tree anymore.

The twenty-something couple starts improvements on their house, but only a few days after the first Bombay package is removed from the bed of their pickup truck, a "For Sale" sign appears on the lawn. The sign is less surprised by its arrival than its withdrawal (in favor of a proud declaration of, "SOLD!"). It realizes it ought to be less shocked by the way things work by now; it's simple: things are put on this world so they can be replaced.

"Daddy, what should we call that stop sign?" Janie asks one night as she and her dad skirt the depressing mood radiated from the tree.

"A stop sign, what else?" He's endured the ceaseless barrage of childhood questions long enough to know that most of them have no answers.

"Well, it doesn't say 'Stop' anymore. It's not even red! It might not be a stop sign at all!"

"It is old, honey," he gestures towards its rusty post.

"I don't think it's a stop sign anymore. It's just ... there."

Faulkner Drive ends at the edge of a lake just under a mile after the mansion's domain. Between this and its gravelly demise, there is nothing of importance; a few more cornfields and trees speckling the sides of the road. It's a humid August day when the sign is finally removed. Officers investigating the recent suicide saw the sign at its ageless vantage point and noted its lack of purpose. The stop sign is torn from the earth without a fight, plucked like a flower from the grass. The two misfit boys watch it being thrown unceremoniously into the back of the police car from their skateboards.

Life goes on in the neighborhood. A few residents notice the sign's absence, and it becomes a common dinner-table subject for a few days. The old man automatically presses his foot to the brake at its former home for at least a week afterwards, but even he soon adjusts to the change. Janie makes her own, paper version of the sign and tapes it to a yardstick, but the creation is whisked away by the wind only days after being placed in the hole of its predecessor. Otherwise, the sign is not replaced. Even when a crossroad is built for a legion of mansions dwarfing the one that came before it, the right of way is given to the right lane of Faulkner. The sign lies in a dump, its last splintering remains wondering if it had ever really seen anything after all.