The Traffic Jam

By Philip Lear

I had my toast and coffee and was in the car in a flash heading down the interstate. I was driving along sipping my coffee when ten minutes into my commute traffic came to a sudden halt. It could be a stalled car or construction, or who knows what, but I had been in many of them and initially was hopeful that this one would be cleared in a matter of minutes.

Thirty-five minutes later I was still sitting there, not having moved an inch. Something serious must have happened up ahead, but there was no way of knowing. There weren't any police cars, ambulances or helicopters that could have been expected if there was an accident. I turned on the local radio station and listened to the traffic reports, but no delays were reported.

I looked around to see if there was any way of escaping by riding up on the apron, but the apron was steeply sloped and behind it was a barrier about 20 feet high that ran the entire length of the roadway.

My blood was beginning to boil as my patience ran thin. I didn't want to turn off my engine. I didn't want to admit that the traffic jam had gotten the best of me. But after sitting there another half hour tapping my ring on the steering wheel and watching the temperature gauge rise I turned off the motor.

To my right was a blue Oldsmobile with a man and a teenage boy in it. They looked like father and son with the same pointy chins and sloped noses. The kid had headphones on and was playing a video game, and every so often he would twist his body trying to exert some “English” to help his game. He was oblivious to what was going on.  The father looked over at the kid and I could see that he was annoyed. A little while later when I looked. The father gave the boy a little elbow in the ribs. The kid looked up indignantly and then went back to playing his game.  A few minutes later the father reached over and pulled the headphones off of his son's head. The kid put down the game and looked at his father.

In the car in front of me was a middle-aged couple that was having an argument.  The woman was doing most of the talking. She looked small and thin and made jerky little motions that reminded me of one of those nasty little Mexican Chihuahuas. She was looking at the man and pointing to her watch. It was as though she was giving him an ultimatum.

The man throws his hands up as if to say, “What do you want from me?”

The women started to cry. I could see her body was shaking. She had her head turned to him was screaming in his ear. I felt sorry for the guy and was glad she wasn't in my car.  After a while his head hung forward like a beaten dog.

On my left side was a Toyota Camry with four women in it.  When I first looked at them, they were talking and joking back and forth. Maybe it was gossip. Every so often one of them would say something that must have been titillating because the three of them almost in unison would put their hands up to their mouths and their faces would turn red.

The one closest to me in the driver's seat was an extremely heavy middle-aged woman wearing a white sleeveless blouse. I could see the rolls of fat sagging from her arms and when she laughed the fat shook. In her right hand she held a small Japanese opera fan that made her look even fatter.

A few minutes later when I looked over at the Camry the conversation had ended and the four of them were just sitting there quietly.  The fat woman was no longer fanning herself and one of the women in the back was reading.

Directly behind me was an old ford with a young couple in it. He had a ponytail and a red beard and the young woman with him had wavy chestnut hair and big brown eyes. He was running his fingers through her hair and she was smiling at him.  What a lucky guy, I thought. A few minutes later when I looked in my rear view mirror he was still behind the wheel and she was resting her head on his shoulder and he was still stroking her hair.

Outside, there was a haze in the air. It wasn't exactly like a fog or a mist but much lighter, and when the sun's rays shown through it I could see a beautiful array of rainbow colors.  Sitting there in my car looking into the haze I became drowsy and dozed off. 

When I woke up some two hours later, I got out of the car and started walking around. Looking down at the pavement, it looked much different from when I was behind the wheel driving at 65 mph. I was right there standing on it. There were little ridges in the surface, scrapes and cracks and I could see little red bugs running back and forth in the cracks.  Can you imagine, I thought, a whole ecosystem living here on the interstate? There was a nauseating odor of oil rising from the concrete in the midday heat. As I stood there the haze became thicker and my eyes started to tear.

Suddenly fear gripped me and I had a feeling that if I didn't get out of there soon I never would. Was I like those bugs trapped in the grooves on this highway? Could this be a permanent traffic jam? The strong smell of urine reminded me that I was still alive. .

It was late in the day now and the sun was setting. As the darkness took hold I could an occasional light flickering here or there. I imagined that there was nothing out there in that darkness but those lights and strangely felt absorbed in a sense of peace. Gradually I dozed off.

When I awoke the sun was rising.  I got out to stretch and with my hands outstretched, the people watching me must have thought I was praying.  Others got out of their cars and joined me. After a while there were maybe ten of us with our hands stretched upwards. Maybe we were all praying for salvation.

The woman from the ford came over and smiled and handed me a Snapple.  "Here," she said, "you look like you could use this."

"Thanks," I said.  "I am very dry."

"I always carry a case in the trunk,” she said. “These days traffic is so bad that you never know when you're going to get stuck."

An old man walked over and joined our conversation. He must have been in his 80s and she gave him a can too.

"Traffic has become so bad lately you can hardly move," he said.  "It used to be that you could get in your car and go any place you wanted. You could even go for pleasure drives. But it's not like that anymore."

"The worst jam that I was ever in until now,” I said, “was a few years ago when I was coming back from Pennsylvania on Mother's Day and there was a stoppage on Route 22 in Bridgewater.  It was hot that day and there was a chain reaction of cars overheating. People were driving on the grass and on the sides of the road and everywhere they could, trying to escape.  Hoods were up all over the place and steam was coming from radiators.  After three hours the traffic started to move.  It took me two hours to drive 120 miles and three hours to go the next two miles."

"You never know," the old man said.  "I was going to move to Florida, but I went down there and there were terrible traffic jams too.  There's no place to go anymore."

After a while we went back to our cars.  I sat there for another half hour and then I started to hear car motors starting up. And then slowly, almost imperceptibly, the cars in the line in front of me started to creep forward. At first I couldn't believe it. But gradually, like ants in a procession we started to move.  I kept my fingers crossed hoping that the traffic would keep moving.

I took a quick glimpse at the cars around me. The father in the Olds had a look of surprise on his face as though he couldn't believe it either. I guess none of us could. His son had the headphones back on and was sitting quietly.

In the car in front of me I saw the husband look over at his wife and take a deep breath. His wife was sitting quietly. I'll bet he was relieved that his ordeal was over, for now.

The women in the Toyota were sitting there talking and looking anxiously ahead. Now there was no gossiping. The fat women in the driver's seat looked completely worn out. She had bid bags under her eyes and there were large perspiration stains under her arms.

The young couple in the ford that was behind me changed lanes and accelerated past me. As they passed, the woman waved to me. I threw her a kiss.  

As I drove up the road, I looked to see what had caused the stoppage. But there were no signs of an accident, skid marks, spills, bent guardrails or construction barriers. The traffic jam ended as mysteriously as it had begun. And like so many things, there was no rhyme or reason for its beginning or end.