Emilee Kinney
Summer Help III
Our county is 837 square miles and yet, we seal cracks in the same road that leads to the first girl I kissed. Liquid asphalt folds onto the road like brownie batter from a spoon. Even the smell has become comforting: sulfur and salt. Heat presses on our parade of fluorescent vests. Our steel-toes shuffle in sync, rubber treads melting with every too-early step on fresh sealant. The foreman has decided he trusts me now. I can’t remember what I did to prove I belong here, but I’ve traded spinning the STOP/SLOW sign to pumping from a five-gallon sprayer, coating the reverse archipelago in a sheen of diluted dish soap. I follow the man filling the cracked road without missing a beat. Both our shoulders dropped: his to aim hot asphalt, mine to wash it clean. If we turn left at the next crossroad, her childhood home will be the first on the right. Facebook tells me she doesn’t live there anymore, but her mom still does. Soap bubbles kaleidoscope as they catch the sun. This is the closest I’ve been to the asphalt melter, its box framed belly rumbling a guttural song to keep us afloat. Only when it chokes, splutters to be refilled do we stop. Disgruntled cars pass us as we slow their morning commute. Jumping down from the hauler, a widower spits brown tobacco over my shoulder, asks if my grandmother is single, says he misses a woman in the kitchen. and elsewhere. Grass sticks to my melted boots. I wonder about livers, yellowed eyes creasing as the men laugh. When the melter kicks back on, we fall back to our places. The field we’re passing pulls me into its orbit—the oak in the middle echoing the salvation of its shadow. The slow crawl of the hauler creaks under the weight of what I know and my teeth ache with the din of engines. Everything reminds me of her, the girl, my first. I say her name aloud to the wet road, remember how she licked brownie batter from my lips, how we squealed when I dropped her mother’s plate in the sink. No one can hear me. A car honks. I don’t look. Every soap bubble bursts.