That Road in the Hills

There’s a road that comes down from the hills and into town. Two lanes of gray cracked asphalt cut through trees. Gravel breaks free of brittle tar. Slabs buckle where tree roots finger for new dirt. We camp in summer under a tall pine that keeps us cool. Dead red needles cover forest floor. When you’re under the canopy, deep into the hills, dulled light steals the color and it’s early evening always.

I don’t live in town. I don’t live in the hills. I’m somewhere in between. Close enough to hear the tires screech and the metal buckle. Nothing to see where I sit in the yard. After the screeching and the buckling the sirens come. When the sirens stop there’s a click under my thumb. I make a note in my pad, old times above new, then flip to a clean page. The stopwatch sits on the table, its time frozen. My wife will tut and grab my hand, give me a kiss that’s quick, then turn to her drawing. I open my book and the noise in the hills fades away.

That’s how I get to work. That’s how I get home. That road in the hills. Slow up, easy down, keeping pressure on the pedal. What you really see, driving dark in that wooded terrain, are bright yellow lines cutting sharp down the middle of broken road. Even where the road’s washed out, bare brown dirt gets its yellow too. Clean and true and ten feet long, the yellow stripes take me up and down.

She holds the kiss every morning. Standing in the street, she watches me drive away. I keep her centered in the mirror as she gets smaller. But no broken glass shines on the road today. A crackle under my tires takes me back to the time I wrote down. Looking for what the noise left, I see the deer late and swerve into the other lane. The road’s too broken and bare to spare him attention. To see if he’s still there. Still frozen. Maybe we’ll meet again on the way back.

What I don’t notice until I get to work is yellow sprayed thick on blue paint. I grab my desk chair and push it out to the parking lot. Plastic wheels catch on concrete joints. Shoes slip on wet concrete. Dewed grass sticks to my face. When it’s time for lunch, when the parking lot is almost empty, there’s a rag in my hand. Rubbing. Spitting. Picking. The yellow stays stuck. And it stays stuck when the sun sets and swirled scratches cut through blue. The blue that’s missing on the car is on the rag. The yellow that’s missing on the rag is on the car. I pull out of the lot. The chair chatters over concrete and tips over into grass. Sprinklers turn on.

No streetlights show the road’s curves. With high beams on and foot firm to the brake, I drive over the center line and down the hills. Coming to the curve I timed, I swerve right to avoid the man in the middle of the road, swerve left to avoid his truck on the shoulder, tires slide against loose gravel, the back end kicks out, I spin halfway around. High beams settle on the man in the middle of the road. After the stopping comes cramping, along with a heavy breath, and my feet stay stuck to the brake.

In his hand, shiny and small, is a can. Soda-sized. Its rim thick with cracked yellow. Little lines of yellow along the sides. In his other hand is a paint-soaked brush. Brush size No. 4 is what my wife would say. A good brush for canvas. Wrinkles around eyes or the cracks of dried lips. He doesn’t blink from my beams. He doesn’t turn away. Neither do I. He just holds his can and brush. Yellow treaded lines streak where tires ran over wet paint. I back up, the yellow following me, and park on the shoulder behind his truck.

I run my finger along the side of his truck, letting dirt pile around the tip. Where there’s still color, where no bare metal shows, the truck is white. In the bed is a plastic A-frame sign with the words “CAUTION WET FLOOR” written in black across the flat side. Next to the sign is a fishing pole with no line and a pair of roller skates with no wheels.

I face him but he still stares where I slid to a stop. “Ever heard of cones? You got to give a man due notice on a curve like this. Glass on the ground should have told you so.”

“I got some. Need them for something else.” He looked older when he was five feet from my bumper. I cup my hand and count the seconds but no sirens come because I’m standing next to him. He’s younger than me. Shorter too. With a goatee. And a hat that says “Turbo.” It’s red. Was red. Light pink around the sides. Dark where stains soak.

“You’re going to kill a fellow without them. Maybe a man’s wife and kids if they’re going to the fair. Fair’s open, you know? Traffic today should have told you so. You’d have to sleep with that.”

“Cones won’t help me see better. You drive too slow for the worry.” Crouched down, he dips his tiny brush slow into his tiny can, drags it across the rim of the can, gives back to the can the paint he doesn’t need. The hairs of the brush fan out across asphalt, laying new yellow in spots smudged by tires.

“It’s what’s on the other side of the road that’s the concern here. Speed don’t play a factor in height for a car in freefall.”

“But you didn’t. Go over, I mean.” In his back pocket is a map folded crisp. Small red dots mark a road I don’t know.

“Where’s the crew? They got you laying paint without city equipment? That’s no city truck. I need a name. Someone in supervisory.”

“City doesn’t come up here. County neither. Not many people do.”

“You aren’t municipal?”

“If I was I’d have cones. And signage.”

“This is charity?”

“This is paint. What matters is that it’s yellow.”

“Nobody’s saying it doesn’t. We’re all friends here. You, me, and the paint.” On the road is cardboard, the center cut out where a new stripe will go. I pace off thirty feet between the stripes. I kick it but the taped edges hold.

“When I get here at midnight there aren’t any yellow lines.”

“Where are they?”

“Under black.”

“You do a service then hide it?”

“Not me.”

“You mean to tell me there’s two of you out here? Describe him.”

“Someone with a bigger brush.”

“And black paint.”

“There it is.” He walks down the road. Pinky out wide and resting against cardboard, he makes his outline.

“I heard it. The other day.”

“My lines were down.” Dirt gathers in the brush hairs.

“They needed more than that. Coming from the fair. Was in the papers.”

“Good paint on a bad road.” The brush wiped clean against his leg, he starts at it again.

“Promising safe passage the pavement can’t deliver. Waste of yellow and a good brush either way.”

“It’s a service not a waste.”

“Could be.”

“It’s the right kind of yellow.”

“I timed it. Wrote it down.”

“Someone ought to.”

“You hear that?” My thumb presses down but no click comes.

“Never been to that hospital.”

“Suppose if you were pregnant or shot it would help.”

“If you’re needing to go that way I suppose.”

“I’m looking at your lines, so you know where I stand. Look here. There’s just one thing.”

“I pour it out of the can if it’s just dirt. No road left, I mean.”

“No. Confront the man that takes away the lines from a deadly curve.”

“Other stripes need my brush.”

“I’d shake your hand for that but you got paint. Well, go on. Go on then. Go on and stripe ‘em.”

“He comes later.”

“Then come later. And stop this business.”

“Stripes.”

“You got other stripes. My part in this is decided.”

I wake early and get my kiss and head to work. Passing through the curve, fresh straight yellow lies thick on crumbled road. In my trunk is a cooler, a folding chair, flashlight, large brush, gallon of yellow paint, and crowbar. On my car’s paint is the yellow that won’t rub off. My wife tutted about this business. City problem, she said. Call the police. Other stripes? I’ll wait for you. The game’s on, she said.

My chair isn’t in the grass and isn’t at my desk. I work in my folding chair. I post a note on the bulletin board about a missing chair.

“Missing Chair. Last Seen Outside. Wet.”

I’m at the curve at midnight, waiting, but no cars drive by. With a flickering flashlight in my hand and the radio playing the game out west, I fall asleep.

A metal leg of the chair slips off a rock. Black lies fresh at dawn where yellow dried at night. Everything in my trunk, except the gallon of yellow, is gone.

I roll down the window and turn the radio off. Nothing in the mirror but dead road. It’s dark and windless and damp and if you’re just traveling through you might say it’s peaceful. I have two pages of peaceful at home. I pour the yellow paint out and watch it run.

Driving down that road in the hills, I take my foot off the brake.