Alone

Rock and his father Richard were in motorized wheelchairs headed south on University Avenue in Little Rock toward the southern edge of town and I-30 en route to San Diego on California Highway 1. They reached the expressway where they were directed by highway department signs to a tunnel beneath it.
The tunnel was large enough for considerable foot traffic but was lighted by no more than a bit of spill light from narrow vents ten feet above its walkways. It had a dank, subterranean smell of abandonment that made Rock feel as if he and his father were the first to have used it in decades. With that in mind, he was stunned to see an old African American man pushing a mop and bucket toward him shortly after Richard turned his chair into a large, dark bathroom. There were cobwebs all around him and cracks everywhere, and it seemed incredible to Rock that anyone on any sort of public payroll would be in this nearly nightmarish, dark, and dilapidated place for the sake of sanitation. He felt haunted by the idea of this man alone in such emptiness.