The Colossus of Roads

by Christina Uss

  “Of course.” She waved breezily toward a sliding glass door. “May you find inspiration in my humble creations to create your own expression of greatness.”

  “Thank you,” he said. He skipped back to the double helix to sort through his stack of signs and selected six he knew he needed, including his two freshly painted SPEED LIMIT signs. He hugged the signs to his chest and casually backed toward the glass door, watching for any suspicious attention from Ms. Diamond or the Scouts, but no faces turned his way. Rick ducked out, as ready as he’d ever been to express his greatness.

  When he crept back in through the sliding door, Rick was flushed with pride. Things had gone amazingly, and the duct tape had worked like a charm. He had worried that someone might stop and ask him what he was doing, but no one had asked him a thing. The toughest part was darting across the busy street to put some of the signs on the other side.

  What he’d done was simple. He’d used a milk crate from a pile he’d found in the alley next to Yum Num Donuts to stand on to boost his height, and taped his signs over the signs that were already there. He increased the speed limit in one section, decreased it in another, and clarified No Parking zones and which lanes were right-turn only. Not everyone had to notice his changes for them to work. If his signs changed the behavior of a few drivers, their behavior should change a few more, who’d influence a few more, until, click-click-click, a cascade of good-driving dominoes would keep the pattern going.

  He returned to his stash of signs, relieved to see no one had taken any. Ms. Diamond waved at him from her desk. “I hope you found what you were looking for out there.”

  “Thanks, it was pretty much perfect,” Rick answered. When she beamed, he realized she was talking about her metal sculptures. No harm done complimenting her art, he supposed, even though he didn’t quite understand why art in general was considered interesting or valuable. It mostly sort of sat there.

  It’s good at holding lollipops, his stomach suggested.

  Mila came over to him with a yellow-soaked paintbrush. She glanced down at his DO NOT ENTER and his remaining stack of unpainted signs.

  “You’ve only painted one? Does it take you a really long time to decide what to do?” Mila asked.

  How to answer that? “I guess so. I think the signs deserve lots of careful decision-making,” he said.

  “Oh, okay. Come see ours!” She led him over to the biggest sign.

  The girls had covered about half of the sign with paint. They’d daubed on a background of cerulean sky and three sunshine-tipped mountains. At the mountains’ base, an ocean spotted with surfers and shark fins lapped against a beach with palm trees. A golden-maned unicorn charged up the side of each mountain.

  “I still think we should do a big ol’ grizzly bear in the center, saying something,” one girl said.

  “I think we should do a desert tortoise,” another said. “She and the grizzly could be surfing together.”

  “I don’t think we should have any mythical creatures on it,” one girl complained. “Unicorns are so not part of what makes California great.”

  Mila’s paintbrush drooped.

  Rick took a closer look at Mila’s section. The unicorns had shining eyes and playful smiles, somehow looking both impressively realistic and appealingly cartoony.

  “Those unicorns are the best part,” Rick said. Mila stood slightly taller.

  Ms. Diamond called, “Nearly time to start cleaning up, darlings. Don’t worry, your art will have plenty of time to bloom and fill the empty spaces.” She addressed the girls gathered around Mila’s sign. “I heard a fair amount of discussion here, but not much agreement. It can be hard to collaborate when it comes to creativity, but trust me, trust me, trust me, it is worth trying. When minds and hearts and paintbrushes come together in pursuit of a grand goal, whooo!” She shook her hands like she’d burned them. “Watch out!”

  Mila took her paint-filled palette and tugged Rick’s shirt so he’d follow her back over to his own sign pile. She said, “If you tell me what you’d like to do, I can help you at least get started on another one before we have to clean up.” She knelt down in front of his stack and gently took a STOP HERE ON RED off the top.

  “Oh. Um. See, well…,” Rick said, sliding the duct-tape rolls off his arm and rotating them back and forth between his hands.

  “I know it’s not easy to work with other people,” Mila said. “It also must feel weird to be the only boy here. But I promise I won’t make fun of your ideas.” She offered him a brush.

  He put down the tape, accepted the brush, and sat cross-legged next to her. He looked at the sign, dipped the brush in white, and cleaned up part of the smog-dulled background. There, that was better.

  “Really?” Mila asked, then covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry. I mean, okay.” She dipped her brush in white, too, and cleaned up another section. Rick got some black and made the H in Here as clear-edged as he could.

  “What’s up with that duct tape?” Ms. Diamond asked from behind them. Rick turned to give it to her, and she waved it away. “No, chickadee, show me the art you wanted to make with it.”

  He looked down at the sign. He peeled off a scrap of black tape and stuck it in the middle of the O of Stop like an eyeball. Ms. Diamond still seemed to be waiting, so he tore off three skinny strips and added eyelashes to the O. It gazed up at him in wonder.

  Mila covered her mouth again, but Ms. Diamond nodded. “Surrealist? Postmodernist? I’m so glad you were able to join our group.” She handed them each a lollipop. “Looking forward to seeing what cleverness appears next week.”

  “Can I take some signs home with me to keep? They’re so cool,” Rick said. If his duct-tape solution worked the way he hoped it would, maybe he could somehow duct-tape more signs to save Smotch. He was going to ask his dad to get him some yellow, red, white, black, green, and orange duct tape for that boat project. It felt good to have the glimmer of a plan.

  “You’re not the first one who’s asked me that, but no, not yet. It’s not fair to the other Scouts. I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to create”—she looked down at the STOP eyeball—“whatever their hearts desire. Let’s talk again if we have leftovers at the end.”

  Rick tapped his fingers on a tape roll. He didn’t have that kind of time. Smotch needed help now.

  Abuelita strolled up and asked, “So, did you start making something good?”

  Mila glanced at Rick to see what he’d say. “I think I did,” he answered.

  “Me too,” Mila said, smiling.

  Rick stared at the radio over his cereal spoon. Over the long Labor Day weekend he’d checked the digital maps on the traffic-alert websites and seen that the traffic on his improved section of Balboa Boulevard was moving smoothly. But now it was Tuesday and rush hour—the true test. He’d logged on to his computer first thing this morning to see if the color was closer to red or green. It had been as green as green M&M’s with seaweed salad on top.

  Blech, his stomach had commented.

  Now the radio announcer’s smooth, matter-of-fact voice was listing the morning’s traffic snarls and hot spots. Twice now, Rick had heard him say, “The Balboa entrance to the One-Eighteen reports no problems.” That was radio-announcer-speak for “Congratulations, Rick! Your signs made things better.”

  Rick let out a giggle. He’d done it. His Snarl Solution had really worked. This must have been how the Colossus of Rhodes felt when conquering Greece! Wait, was that what the person the Colossus statue was modeled on did? He hadn’t paid such great attention to that professor. He made a mental note to look it up.

  “Keep your mouth closed when you chew. And what are you giggling about?” Mom asked. “You know I don’t like being kept out of a joke.”

  “Yes, Rick, share,” Dad chimed in through a mouthful of cornflakes.

  Rick swallowed and said, “I was just thinking about something funny that happened at Ms. Diamond’s.”

  “Something funny happened wi
th Mila’s troop? Tell us,” Mom said. “I could use a laugh. I haven’t seen you so tickled since…Hold on, buster, you had better not be planning any pranks around here. I will not be laughing if I find a garter snake in my yogurt container again.”

  Rick felt another giggle rising but forced it down. “I can’t explain. You kind of had to be there.”

  “Oh, you.” Mom finished her cereal and pushed back from the table. “I guess I’ll assume you know better than to sneak more snakes into this house. That goes for lizards, too.” She ruffled his hair and smiled. “But it’s nice to see you happy. Who knew tagging along with Girl Scouts was going to be so good for you?” She looked at Dad. “I bet if your parents had signed you up for Scouts, you wouldn’t have taught your son that giving his mom a wild reptile disguised as a nice snack was a funny prank to pull.”

  “He was such a cute garter-snake snack, wasn’t he?” Dad said. “And you laughed like mad after you finished screaming.”

  “I’ve never opened another yogurt without cringing first.” She smiled one of those fleeting smiles and then let out a giant sigh. “We’re off to face another day. And those roads.”

  As Rick carried his cereal bowl to the sink, Dad said, “Your mother and I want to hear more about why this art project is so interesting to you and how we might find more activities like it, not to mention how on earth you find Abuelita’s driving better than ours. I’ve seen her, Rick. She makes it impossible for anyone to go faster than about fifteen miles an hour.”

  “She doesn’t drive that way for me,” Rick said. “Maybe it’s some magic spell. Speaking of Abuelita, could we invite the Herreras for dinner soon? To thank them for being such great neighbors?”

  Dad said, “Not this week, Roo.” The nickname didn’t bug Rick this time. Nothing could bug him. He was a kangaroo on a mission. “We’re drumming up some new business. There’s a potential client your mom and I are trying to land, and we’ve got some serious work to do.”

  “Who’s the potential client?” Rick asked.

  “Warner Brothers Studio, Burbank,” Dad said. “They’ve got big bucks to spend on catering.”

  Burbank was on the opposite end of the Valley from their house. They could take either surface streets or freeways to get there. “I’ll help you map out the perfect route tonight.”

  “That’d be great,” Dad said, and went to brush his teeth.

  Rick checked the Smotch calendar that his mom kept mounted near their front door and saw two upcoming events with long-standing clients in the Valley: a church and a state college. He and his dad had mapped the routes long ago, and Rick knew their traffic challenges. He wished he could tell his parents that his Snarl Solution had worked, but their first instinct might be to march him over to Balboa Boulevard to take things down. Nope. First he had to figure out where to get more signs and how to teleport himself around LA to duct-tape traffic into perfection for Smotch. Then they would see what an ingenious contribution he could make to the family fortune and be on board.

  SPEED LIMIT UNICORN

  ON THE WAY to school, Rick scouted out every likely-looking heap of junk on his walk for more forgotten road signs. There was a depressing number of heaps of junk, one of them guarded by two protective pit bulls. And there was a depressing number of road signs: none.

  He was reluctantly coming around to the idea that he was going to have to steal signs from Ms. Diamond. He wished his parents hadn’t raised him to know right from wrong, because this definitely fell on the side of wrong. But, he argued with his uncomfortable conscience, it was going to make something else right. Plus, the signs were recycled materials, and he’d be recycling them to a new purpose that would bring joy to Los Angeles, just like Ms. Diamond and the Girl Scouts wanted him to. He kept throwing justifications at his conscience, which would catch them, examine them, and then throw them back, embroidered with the statement Taking stuff that doesn’t belong to you without permission is wrong.

  That afternoon when he climbed into Abuelita’s big red car with Mila, he brought Aleks’s old extra-big camping backpack with him for sneaking the signs home. His conscience continued to niggle at him to figure out some other way.

  “That’s a big backpack,” Mila said, watching him wedge it down next to his feet. “What’s it for?”

  Rick touched the backpack’s top flap, where Aleks had stitched on a khaki-and-yellow patch stating BE PREPARED. “My brother used it for Boy Scouts,” he said. “I thought it’d help me feel ready to work on the Girl Scout project today.”

  Abuelita did her smooth driving for over half the ride, but then her ham radio crackled to life. “TCD, TCD, speeding motorcycles in Granada Hills, need someone now at Jolette near Balboa. I see a group of kids on foot heading toward a crosswalk.” Abuelita sucked in her breath and reached to turn off the radio, but then the voice said, “This is an emergency.”

  Rick could’ve sworn Abuelita growled. She picked up the mike. “TCD, Meteoro is on it.” And she suddenly turned down a side street. Rick’s stomach said, Hey? Abuelita then swooshed into an alleyway and onto Jolette, pulling in front of two motorcycles. Rick could smell the rubber burning from the motorcycles screeching to a halt. He heard the two riders yelling unpleasant things.

  Abuelita drove forward excruciatingly slowly and swervingly. Rick’s stomach started to panic, and he scrabbled in the backpack for a double-reinforced bag.

  Abuelita then reached a crosswalk and stopped her car diagonal to it. The motorcyclists tried to get Abuelita’s attention. She pointedly ignored them, instead waving and beaming at the children chasing each other across the crosswalk. Once there were no more kids on the sidewalk on either side, she did a slow-motion three-point turn and resumed driving in her smooth and gliding style.

  “What was that, Abuelita?” Mila asked.

  “Nothing for you to worry about,” she said. “Okay back there, Ricardo?”

  Rick checked himself out. His stomach was tense, on the verge of ghastlier things, but he wasn’t going to die. “Kind of?” he answered, but his stomach was still whimpering when they arrived at Ms. Diamond’s house. What just happened? Who was she talking to? And how do we make sure it never happens again? Rick didn’t have any answers.

  As they walked up to the front door, Mila sighed and said, “Guess it was too good to last.” She asked if he wanted to work together some more, but he told her he was all set and headed for the pile of unpainted signs. He grabbed another heavy stack—all the signs he’d need to fix his parents’ drive to the college, the church, and the movie studio—and added them to the pile he’d safely tucked in his corner last Friday. He slid one inside the camping backpack. His conscience threw a fastball embroidered with Taking stuff that doesn’t belong to you without permission is wrong into his gut and Rick exhaled with a whoof sound.

  He took the sign back out and looked over at Ms. Diamond, wondering if she was the type who yelled when she got angry. She was seated in the squeaky chair at her desk with a pencil stuck behind each ear and another between her teeth. She was using yet another pencil to write and then immediately erase things on a piece of paper.

  She must have felt his gaze, because she looked up. “Marcel Duchamp!” she slurred around the pencil in her mouth. She removed it and said, “Come on over here, please!”

  “It’s Rick,” he said with as much calmness as he could muster while his stomach shouted She knows! Run! He told his stomach to be cool and approached the desk. When he got close, he saw that the pencil behind one of her ears was decorated with saber-toothed cats advertising the La Brea Tar Pits, and the one behind her other ear with jellyfish advertising the Long Beach Aquarium.

  She gave him a friendly smile and said, “Rick it is. How’s your painting going? Have time to discuss your artistic vision? I’d much rather talk surrealism with you than keep doing this.” She used the pencil in her hand to poke the paper. “Self-explanatory, my foot.”

  Rick glanced at the paper she’d poked and did a double-tak
e. “Wow! Is that an LADOT work order?” he asked. The LADOT logo, for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, was at the top of the page, and there was a jagged black Althea Torres signature at the bottom. It had spaces demanding lots of measurements and labels, and Ms. Diamond had drawn tiny sketches of Girl Scout signs in the margins.

  Ms. Diamond poked the work order again, and Rick saw that it was made up of several papers stapled together. “My sister gave these to me so I can explain to her work crew where our art should go. I filled them out, but she sent some of them back to me after the crew couldn’t decipher them, insisting I complete them ‘properly.’ I’m not clear on what she means. If I want something hung on a fence, I thought I could write hang it on the fence—but apparently, in some locations, I need to indicate if the fence runs north to south or east to west, how many feet high and how many feet apart the signs should be hung, and all kinds of other details. It’s even more complicated if I want them installed near a road. She says I have to be that specific on all work going forward, and I’m falling way behind. Art’s my thing, not paperwork.”

  “I can help,” Rick said, eyes bright. “What are you trying to do with this one?”

  Ms. Diamond described cheering up an area where demolition had uglified a neighborhood. Rick asked, “Can we open Google Maps?” gesturing toward her computer. “Tell me the address and how you want things to look.”

  In a few minutes, Rick was sitting in Ms. Diamond’s squeaky chair with the jellyfish pencil in his hand. He translated what Ms. Diamond wanted done into clearly labeled, precise measurements on the papers, detailing how some signs should be bolted to the sides of buildings and chain-link fences, while others needed to be mounted to new metal posts sunk into the ground. “Do you have any more?”

  “Well.” Ms. Diamond put her hand to her chest. “Yes. Dozens. But I hate to ask you to give up any creative time to help with this.”