The state trooper propped the faded red sign against the casket of my mother, and the whole of the back of it, I saw now, was covered in names. Hundreds of them, in marker, in pencil, in crayon, in the careful loops of children and the scrawl of adults, crowded together edge to edge until there was no white left. He was a tall man, perhaps thirty five, broad shouldered and clean shaven, with a gold badge on his chest and tears already running down both cheeks. “My name is Trooper Daniel Mercer,” he said. “On the morning of October the ninth, 1996, I was a seven year old boy standing on the corner of Main and Fourth.”
He drew a breath that shuddered. “I was late for school. I was angry, and I did not look. I saw my friend across the street and I ran into the road.” He pressed his lips together. “There was a pickup truck, coming fast. I remember the horn. And then I remember a hand, a hard hand in a yellow glove, that yanked the back of my coat, and a stop sign that came down in front of me like a gate. Mrs. Carol Brandt stepped into the road with her sign up and her arm out, and the truck stopped four inches from her. Four inches.”
The funeral home was silent. “She never even raised her voice,” said the trooper. “She picked me up, and set me on the curb, and she knelt down and looked me in the eye. She said, Danny, you were brave to run. Next time, be brave and look. And she pulled a peppermint from her pocket and put it in my hand.” He smiled, helplessly, through his tears. “I became a state trooper because of a woman with a stop sign. I wanted to be the person who steps into the road.” He turned the sign gently so the names faced the room. “I did not know I was one of many.”
A faded red stop sign covered with names was propped against a casket by a state trooper and gave one daughter the morning to bring her stepfather to the corner.
He ran a finger down the sign. “After she retired, last spring, the kids on her corner made a card. Hundreds of them. The kids who crossed with her this year, and the kids who crossed with her twenty years ago. They asked everyone who had ever been walked across that street to sign her sign.” He held up a small notebook. “There were three hundred and forty names by the end of May. By September, there were over nine hundred.” The room made a small sound, like a breath being drawn all at once. “They brought the sign to me, because I live in Cedar Rapids. They asked me to give it to her on her birthday.”
His face crumpled. “She was supposed to get it last Saturday. She passed on Thursday.” I felt my own knees give, and I sat down hard in the front pew. The man seated beside me, a stranger in a blue suit, patted my hand. I had not known, any of it. Mom had come home every day for twenty six years with her cheeks red from the cold and her thermos empty. She had never once said that she had saved a life. She said only that the kids were good that day, or that the traffic was bad. I had been walked to school on that corner. I had been afraid of the big kids. She had stood between me and the world.
My stepfather, Gary, was sitting in the row behind me. I had not looked at him since the service began. He is a heavy man in his sixties, a retired county road worker, and he has always spoken of my mother with a kind of gentle contempt, as of a woman who stood on a corner for a living. I turned my head. His face was gray. He was staring at the sign, at the sea of names, with his mouth a little open, and I realized he was reading them. His lips moved. He read name after name, as though he were counting.
The trooper laid his hand on the sign. “I brought one more thing,” he said, and drew a folded paper from his jacket. “It is a proclamation. The city of Dubuque, by vote of the council, last Tuesday, has named the intersection of Main and Fourth, Carol Brandt Crossing. There will be a plaque and a new stop sign, in her honor, paid for by the children of that street.” There was applause, soft at first, and then rising, as the whole congregation stood. Gary did not stand. He sat with his head in his hands.
Later, in the lobby, I found him at the guest book. He had written his name in it, slowly, in a heavy, uneven hand, and he stood holding the pen as if he had forgotten how to put it down. “Katie,” he said, without looking up, “I said to the funeral director that nobody would sign the book.” His shoulders shook once. “She walked past me every morning for fifteen years, and I never asked about her day. I thought she was a woman who stood in the cold. I did not know she was the one who kept the street alive.” I put my hand on his arm. It was trembling. “Gary,” I said, “she knew you loved her.”
“I did not,” he whispered. “I never said it.” I said, “She did not need you to say it. She needed you to stand with her.” He looked at me then, his eyes red and enormous. And I said what I did not know I was going to say. “So stand with her now.” He nodded, once, and straightened his tie. When the service resumed, he carried the old sign to the front of the room himself, with both hands, and set it against the casket. He stayed there beside her for the whole of the hour. A man at the end of a long and difficult road, standing his post.
In September, the new crossing sign was unveiled. A crowd of children in raincoats and bright backpacks stood on the corner of Main and Fourth, holding paper stop signs, and the mayor spoke, and a band played, and a little girl cut the ribbon with a pair of safety scissors. Gary, in his good coat, stood at the edge of the curb in a yellow glove. When the light changed, he stepped into the road with the old red sign held high, and for the first time in twenty six years, the traffic on Main Street stopped to let the children cross.