One vehicle after another crept past Betsy, a road construction flagger, who sometimes thought of herself, as she watched the traffic, as a member of royalty reviewing floats in a parade. The notion always made her smile because instead of a tiara and gown she wore a blazing orange helmet and reflective vest. Still, she could dream, she thought, snickering to herself.

“I’ve got a lot of cars stacked up here,” Duane, the flagger at the opposite end of the street that was being repaved, squawked into her walkie-talkie. “What about you, Betsy? You about through?”

“Just about,” she said, shifting her crossing sign to her other hand. “The last one I’m going to let through is a maroon pickup.”

“Maroon, you say?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll be looking for it then.”

Turning her sign around so it showed Stop, Betsy stepped between the pickup and a dusty blue Taurus.

“Oh, come on,” the driver of the Taurus pleaded. “I’m right here.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“I’m right here,” he insisted.

“I can’t let everyone through at once or the cars at the other end will be backed up to the next intersection.”

“I’m late for an important appointment.”

“Sorry, sir. I’m just doing my job.”

“Some job,” he fumed, glaring at her fiercely.

Some job was right, she thought, looking past the agitated driver. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined she would be working as a flagger for a construction crew. All the other places where she worked she wore suits and heels, with her face made-up and her hair done and her nails immaculate. Always she was pleased to catch her reflection in a window or mirror. Though she had been a flagger nearly three months, she still felt as if every day was her first on the job. She knew why, of course. She still regarded herself as a business woman, not someone standing alongside some street with a sign in her hand.

*

Betsy started working in a bank soon after she got out of high school, first as a receptionist then as a teller. And for the past three and a half years she was a loan officer at the main branch of Fireside Trusts and Investments. Her work product always received positive comments from her supervisors so she was devastated when she was terminated. Others at Fireside were let go because of the recent downturn in the economy but she thought she would be spared because of her consistently strong performance at the bank. Obviously she was mistaken, even though she had cultivated a very close connection with her immediate boss the past few months.

Too close, perhaps, she suspected now.

Joel was the one who gave her the awful news, insisting that he had done all he could to keep her at Fireside, but she was skeptical. Numerous times he had invited her out for a drink after work, and she always declined until one afternoon he told her he had separated from his wife. Later, she discovered this was not so and wondered if he got rid of her because she confronted him about the lie. Suddenly she had become a problem, like a set of figures that did not add up, so she was dismissed because there would always be another skirt for him to pursue.

The bastard.

*

She was so upset after losing her job, she didn’t leave her apartment for nearly a week, embarrassed not to have somewhere to go in the morning. She knew she wasn’t alone, lots of people were being laid off these days, but that wasn’t much consolation to her. Besides, she was convinced she was let go because she had become an inconvenience to her boss, not because of the dismal economy. Eventually her Uncle Tim offered her a flagging job with the construction crew where he worked and, initially, she spurned the offer but after several weeks of futilely searching for another position in banking she took it.

“I know it’s now what you’re accustomed to doing,” her uncle acknowledged, “but it’ll help tide you over until something more appropriate comes along.”

“I appreciate it, Tim. I really do.”

“Who knows,” he went on, “when the economy turns around, you might be asked back to Fireside.”

She nodded, knowing that would never happen as long as Joel was there.

*

“Some days I think I spend half my time listening to drivers gripe about why they are being stopped,” Duane observed one day at lunch.

“Half your time?” Chet, another flagger, said, surprised. “I spend practically all my time listening to ‘em piss and moan.”

Betsy smiled. “You’d think we were the ones making the decisions which streets are to be worked on.”

“But we have to bite our tongues and listen to them,” Duane remarked, after biting into a celery stalk, “because the contractor wants us to make a good impression.”

“Cordial and courteous,” Chet chuckled. “That’s what we’re always told to be, as if we’re trained seals.”

“Aren’t we?” Betsy asked.

“Wait until we start working downtown,” Duane interjected. “That’s when we’re really going to hear people bitching.”

Betsy frowned. “I didn’t know we were going to be working downtown.”

“Yep,” Chet said, wiping the corners of his mouth with his left sleeve. “As soon as we get done here. There are some pretty torn up streets near the transit mall that need to be paved.”

Silent, she took a sip of water, hoping he was mistaken.

Chet, after smothering a belch, continued, “I understand we weren’t suppose to start work there for another six months but some commissioners decided we should start now before the bad weather sets in.”

The thought of working downtown as a flagger made her cringe and, abruptly, she walked away so the others didn’t notice the concern on her face. If she could quit now she would, right this second, but she knew she couldn’t. She would have to go downtown with the crew.

*

“Think of yourself as a shepherd whose job is to herd sheep in a specific direction,” her uncle suggested shortly before Betsy started work as a flagger.

The image made her smile but it made sense. And from then on, as she directed traffic, she did indeed think of herself as a shepherd, with her crossing sign as her staff. The streets became strange meadows and the beeping of horns the sound of baaing sheep. All she needed was a straw hat to complete the picture in her mind.

*

“Keep moving. Keep moving,” Betsy urged as she herded cars through the partially paved downtown intersection.
Vigorously she waved her sign, aware she could not be heard as clearly as she could when she was working uptown because she was wearing a mask. The paper thin surgical masks were available for use at all construction sites because of all the dust and grit raised by the heavy equipment but few flaggers wore them because they wanted to be sure what they said to motorists was heard and understood. She had never worn one until she got downtown, and she did so, not because she was concerned about what she might inhale, but because she didn’t want anyone at Fireside to see her. She was just too embarrassed. So far, she had spotted a couple of tellers from the bank, as well as old Amos, one of the septuagenarian guards, and none of them recognized her.

“Keep moving. Keep moving.”

She doubted if any driver really heard her and occasionally, out of boredom, she made rude comments to see if she was right:
“You’re too fat to be driving such a small car.”

“Your hood’s dirtier than a fast food apron.”

“There’s a street named after you, mister—dead-end.”

No one ever raised so much as an eyebrow. For all they knew, she could be reciting the rosary behind her blue mask.
This was her third day downtown, and the paving project was scheduled to be completed by the end of the week, so she was pretty confident she could avoid being spotted as long as she wore a mask. Even so, as she watched one vehicle after another pass by, she kept an eye out for Joel but, so far, had not seen the creep. She knew, if she could, she’d like to make him wait a good half hour before letting him proceed but realized that was not possible because Duane or Chet would soon be screaming in her ear. Sometimes she wondered if he even remembered what she looked like, he had probably been with so many women in his squalid little life, and the thought made her seethe with resentment. People like him were immune from guilt, easily able to ignore what troubled others. She would not be surprised if she was already a vague memory that soon would dissolve and never be thought of again.

Finally, early on Friday afternoon, she saw him, a passenger in a midnight blue Pathfinder driven by an older man with crinkly white hair. They were four vehicles back in the file that was waiting for her to signal them through the intersection. Her heart twitched and, briefly, she turned her head, almost forgetting she had on a mask. Then she turned back and stared at him intently, daring him to look in her direction, but his eyes were fixed on the radio as if fidgeted with the dial. She stared so hard she could soon feel the veins throbbing in her eyes.

“It’s all clear, Betsy,” Duane squawked on the walkie-talkie. “You can send your bunch through.”

She turned her sign around from Stop to Slow and began to wave the cars through, still staring at Joel who finally looked up from the dashboard. A moment passed then he glanced over at her. Abruptly, she peeled off her mask, staring directly at him, and he saw her and immediately looked away.

He had not forgotten, not yet, the bastard.

Photo by Flickr user Chris Campbell