Jimmy slumped over with his chin resting on his fist and stared out the dirty window. His employee handbook clearly instructed him to clean the window once a shift, but Jimmy had misplaced his copy of those instructions months ago. As long as she could see well enough to watch the traffic flow by, Jimmy could perform his job capably. Jimmy Freeman was a tollbooth monitor and had been for eleven months and nine days by his count. There was a pay raise, a week of paid vacation, and most importantly, a bonus check waiting on Jimmy at the end of his first year on the job. He was three weeks away from celebrating his first anniversary as an esteemed employee of the state road commission.
Tollbooth monitoring was a highly important and respected position. That was the line that had convinced Jimmy Freeman, prospective state employee, to join this elite force. He began to worry about his job choice when he was able to complete the training course in thirty-five minutes. One day after accepting the job, Jimmy was alone in a tollbooth on a lonely stretch of interstate at eleven o’clock at night. Jimmy was an enthusiastic employee that first night, watching and waving at nearly every passing motorist. Seven in the morning, the end of his shift came quickly that night, and Jimmy turned his booth over to the next monitor with a smile on his face.
It only took Jimmy a few days to understand the downfall of his new occupation. Technology had passed the tollbooth monitor by several years ago, and Jimmy was finding this out the hard way. Computers and automated gates had really taken the only shred of mental stimulation out of the tollbooth monitor’s job. Jimmy and his fellow employees had basically one task to hold their attention for eight hour shifts, making sure the change baskets did not get jammed. Car after car would drive by and pitch in their change. The gate would inevitably go up and the cars would drive off. About once every two hours, a nickel would fall sideways and prevent the other change from falling into the sorter. This delay would cause the drivers to sound their horns and send Jimmy into action. He just stuck his hand into the basket and fished around until the change fell through. The rest of Jimmy’s time on duty was his to do with as he pleased.
For the first few months, Jimmy worked crossword puzzles. He would tune in some classic rock station on the small radio in his booth and work through book after book of beginner’s crosswords. He had moved up to advanced level puzzles one week, but found he was getting too frustrated and losing interest. The drone of cars driving by, the ringing of change flying into the metal basket, and the occasional car horn were the background to Jimmy’s days and soon pulled his attention away from puzzles.
Jimmy decided, after about four months in the booth, that he should let the traffic be his entertainment to pass the time. He bought a thick spiral notebook and began to tally the number of cars passing from the different states. This new pursuit worked wonderfully for a few weeks, and Jimmy actually looked forward to the lines of cars for a while. Eventually, though, Jimmy had seen each of the continuous forty-eight states represented and dumped the note book into the bottom drawer of his desk. That is not to say Jimmy did not get a rush of adrenaline just three weeks ago when a car from Hawaii drove by his booth. He hurriedly jumped to his feet and leaned out of the booth to watch the car drive off. The dusty notebook was retrieved and the first Hawaiian license plate was recorded and dated for posterity.
When the license plate tracking lost its luster for Jimmy, he stumbled upon his most effective form of passing time. Jimmy learned to sit in his booth, stare out his dirty little window, and let his mind roam free and unrestrained. Though his mother had always told him that idle hands were the devil’s workshop, Jimmy Freeman had a vivid imagination and lots of time to kill. He let every interesting car or motorist that passed him by trigger an imaginary excursion of his own. Sitting in a four-foot by six-foot filthy interstate tollbooth, Jimmy was a globetrotting, adventurous man of mystery.
The majority of the cars Jimmy saw were headed east to the coast and relaxation on the beach. Jimmy pictured himself diving into the bed of a truck loaded with coolers and beach chairs. The truck’s passengers would look back at Jimmy and laugh at the thought of a tollbooth monitor having the balls to leap into a passing vehicle. Jimmy would throw off his state-mandated shirt and use a beach towel for a pillow as the truck raced toward the ocean. He waited with breathless anticipation for the first palm tree to come into view. His heart leapt in his chest when the truck topped the final hill separating him from the white sands. As they rolled to a stop in a beachfront motel parking lot, Jimmy jumped from the truck and rushed toward the water. Shedding his socks and shoes as he ran, Jimmy rushed forward and prepared to dive headlong. He felt the warm sand on his feet and jumped.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! The sound of a Honda horn and an angry motorist outside Jimmy’s booth snapped him back to his reality. He reached outside and looked down into the basket to see Thomas Jefferson’s head on a nickel jamming up the basket. Jimmy often wondered why it usually seemed to be a nickel that caused the problems. He imagined a deceased Thomas Jefferson opposing the taxation of tollbooths and scheming from the grave to slow things down as best he could. Unfortunately, it was Jimmy and not the government that suffered the brunt of Jefferson’s curse. Jimmy often wondered what state official he needed to contact to push for changing the toll from fifty-five cents to an even fifty cents. The public would applaud the lower cost, while tollbooth monitors everywhere would see less of the dreaded nickels. Jimmy had a mind for political matters and resolved that if he ever ran for office, toll price reductions would be one of his campaign promises. Jimmy shoved the contrary nickel into the basket and watched as the gate went up and the upset motorist sped away.
Jimmy continued to lean out the window as the next car approached. A gorgeous blond was alone in the red Volvo, and Jimmy flashed her his best winning smile. She responded by throwing a handful of change into the basket at Jimmy’s waist and driving away indifferently. Jimmy immediately thought back to the most memorable passing car he had seen in his time on the job. It was a warm spring afternoon, and a Jimmy was about half asleep when he saw a bright red convertible approaching. His heart began to race as he noticed the three heads of long, flowing blond hair approaching his booth. Jimmy unconsciously straightened his shirt and mopped the sweat off his brow as the car stopped at his gate. Standing there in his small cubicle staring down at three beautiful young college girls on their way to some unknown spring break location, Jimmy was spellbound and could manage no more that a lustful stare. He noticed a few alcohol bottles lying empty on the seat and could tell the two girls in the back were a little tipsy already. Jimmy wanted to smile, but was paralyzed by the three young faces gazing back at him. While the girl handling the driving was fumbling in the car’s console looking for change, her two passengers were whispering and giggling about something. Jimmy was finally able to work a smile onto his face and was feeling pretty proud of himself when he noticed both girls turning their attention back to him. The girls slowly lifted up their sorority t-shirts to afford Jimmy a look at two pairs of small, perky breasts. His face flushed with color and his smile became an open-mouthed look of astonishment as the two girls laughed hysterically before throwing in their toll and racing away. Jimmy nearly fell out of his booth as she leaned way out to watch the red car and blond hair race away from him. Jimmy walked with a swagger and his chest puffed out for a week after that, as if he had done something to earn the peep show. He was convinced it was his handsome smile that had brought those four nipples out into the afternoon sun.
Of course, even this encounter had played out differently in Jimmy’s mind not an hour after the girls pulled away. The red convertible was sitting outside Jimmy’s booth and the girls were baring their breasts to Jimmy. He pretended to hardly notice the girls’ display and instead focused on the car’s driver and her search for change. The two in the back laughed hysterically in their inebriated state while the driver flung the change toward the collection basket. Jimmy reached out and caught a quarter to prevent the gate from allowing the ladies to leave. He climbed out of his booth and into the back seat between the sorority girls and threw the quarter. The gate went up and Jimmy Freeman was on his way with three lovely ladies. He first convinced them to turn south toward the Mexican beaches he had never seen. He later had his way with all three girls sexually in the back before taking over the driving duties. Jimmy left the top down and sped past car after car, slowing down just long enough for each to see him with his carload of beauties. He made it to Mexico in record time and found himself lying on the beach, drinking tequila, while a lovely blond tanned topless on either side of him.
“What’s with the goofy grin, Freeman?” It was Kirk Porter, the monitor who worked the shift after Jimmy. He had caught him completely off guard, yet again caught up in his daydream. At least twice a week, Kirk would have to rouse Jimmy from his fantasies and remind him his shift was over. That was the way Jimmy liked it. He could be so worked up in his own little world that real world time flew by. Eight-hour shifts could quickly become one-week imaginary excursions if any interesting car got Jimmy thinking.
Lately, though, Jimmy had noticed a disturbing trend. The more cars that Jimmy watched go by, the more he noticed the drivers glaring back at him. Some of them would laugh while others would look amazed or disgusted. Jimmy had always thought of the passing cars as his own little entertainment, but in the last few weeks he had come to a new conclusion. He realized that he was the entertainment and the passing cars were the audience, driving by to witness his human freak show. His mother, whose basement Jimmy had lived in for years, told him he was being paranoid, but he knew exactly what was happening. Jimmy resolved to prove his suspicions and started taking meticulous notes about the people going by. He immediately noticed people were taking longer to throw their toll money into the basket, pretending to be looking for the correct change. He knew they were really just stalling in hopes of letting all their passengers get a good look at him. Jimmy soon made his most significant discovery of all. He realized that the people going by his booth were not paying a toll to use the road; they were paying the toll to see him. It was not an interstate tollbooth, it was the Jimmy Freeman display case: fifty-five cents per carload.
After this discovery, Jimmy began sleeping less and thinking more. He immediately resolved to quit his job as soon as she got his bonus check that was now just one week away. Jimmy decided to try to disguise himself in hopes of disappointing the herds of motorists coming by to ogle him. He began to wear outlandish hats and absurd sunglasses hoping to throw off his audience. He focused his blood shot eyes on each passing driver watching them closely to see their reactions. Jimmy began to see his steely gaze returned by looks of bewilderment and sometimes fear. Obviously his disguises were not working, as the lines outside his booth got longer and longer. It was convenient that they all showed up at rush hour, but Jimmy knew what really brought these people out on the roads. They did not even protest when their nickels got hung up anymore. They merely waited patiently while Jimmy used a coat hanger to dislodge the coins. He had started using the coat hanger so that he did not have to stick his hand out near the public. He knew they would all want to touch or grab him or worse.
Jimmy had hung a big calendar up in the booth to count down the days until he could escape his glass cage. It was only three days away now. Jimmy had originally planned to come to work the day after he got his bonus. He was going to bring a handgun and open fire on that cursed audience that had haunted him for the past year. He decided against that plan, though, and resolved to just take his check and his freedom and walk away. Jimmy was now staring at his calendar so intently that he did not hear the honking and yelling outside his booth at first.
“What in God’s name is the problem over there, Freeman? Get the gate up!” It was the voice of Joan Kilmer, the husky woman running the booth across from Jimmy’s. He roused from his stupor and looked out the window to see an incredibly long line of angry motorists. He knew they all wanted their turn to see him and were becoming impatient about having to wait on it. Jimmy grabbed his coat hanger and looked into the basket, but there was no change jammed in the machine. He looked at the small green light that indicated that the gate was up, but the outstretched pole with a little stop sign on it had not budged. This had never happened before, as long as Jimmy could remember. Now he had to leave the safety of his booth to see what was wrong. He rushed out of the door and over to the gate. A trail of loose notebook pages and torn up crossword puzzles blew out the open door of the booth as Jimmy left. He reached the gate and tried to lift it, but it would not budge. He pushed and pulled in every direction he could, but to no avail. Jimmy could feel the blasts of car horns behind him and he turned to witness his worst nightmare come true. For as far as Jimmy could see there were sets of eyes focused on him. Jimmy felt a cold sweat break out all over his forehead and his mind went blank. He turned back to the gate and began kicking and stomping it madly. After several blows, the gate flew off its hinges. Cars began to stream through Jimmy’s line laughing and cheering because there would be no tolls paid on this afternoon. More cars soon merged from the other lanes into Jimmy’s to avoid the tolls as well. Jimmy stood there for several seconds before he realized what he had done and the chaos it had caused. He knew that he would lose his job along with the bonus check that had been just sixty hours away.
Jimmy’s mom thinks, contrary to popular opinion, that it was not until this last realization that Jimmy really lost his mind. Jimmy took the gate he had just kicked off and used it to bust into the change vault in his booth. He had stuffed his pockets with coins and fled the scene on foot. The police caught up to Jimmy Freeman a little over a mile north of the interstate. He had muttered something incoherent about “Mexican beaches” and “never going back to the booth.” He had twenty-seven dollars and fifteen cents in change on him when they found him. There was never a trial, as the state just placed Jimmy in a psychiatric hospital rather than go to court. Jimmy was actually happy at the hospital. Nobody stared at him and he was able to convince the staff to let him have a piggy band. He never told them why he had wanted one so badly, but they would have never understood anyway. Inside the little ceramic pig was nothing but nickels. Jimmy leaned back in his bed and looked out the window. Outside, in the distance, he could see the traffic flowing and he fantasized about the day when he would leave the hospital. He wanted to drive by the tollbooth and throw nothing but nickels into the basket, on his way to Mexico. |
