The Colossus of Roads

by Christina Uss

  A girl across the room called out “Help, Ms. Diamond! We’re out of red paint!” Ms. Diamond turned, clearly longing to assist with art challenges instead of work orders.

  “I don’t need that much, um, creative time,” Rick said. “And I’d love to help out with something I know I’m good at.”

  “Marcel—Rick—you are a lifesaver. Here’s the deal: Please first go and paint whatever it is you are called to paint today. When you feel you are finished, meet me back here and let’s see if we can’t forge our way through a few more.”

  “That’s a deal,” Rick said. He got up to return to his sign pile to pretend to be creative for a few minutes.

  Whew, his stomach said. I did a good job being cool, didn’t I?

  A great job. Rick’s brain was fizzing like crazy. Now he didn’t have to sneak any signs home. With work orders like these, he could have official crews with the proper tools putting up his Snarl Solutions literally anywhere.

  Wait, you’re going to fill out some of those work orders with your own ideas? What if the work crew notices? his stomach asked nervously. I don’t want your conscience throwing things at me anymore. This is more serious than your duct-tape experiment.

  Rick sat on the tile floor to shift his signs around. He got a look of astonishment from his one-eyed STOP HERE ON RED. I’ll be ordering signs painted by a kid to be hung up, Rick told his stomach. That’s the whole reason for this project. All he needed to do was make sure every sign he used for his own work orders was one to which he’d added some paint. It’d be its own kind of public art—art that did something important. He decided he couldn’t worry about what the work crew might notice. He had to take this chance to save Smotch.

  Rick picked up his paintbrush and freshened the colors wherever scratches and scars dimmed a sign’s beauty. Then he autographed the back of every new sign The Colossus of Roads.

  When he got up to find Ms. Diamond and tell her he’d painted as much as he wanted to, he noticed Mila sitting near the freeway painting she’d been working on last time. She was extra still and quiet, but not her normal at-ease-with-quiet quiet. More like a wilted plant. Three older girls were making broad strokes with brown paint, finishing off a giant grinning grizzly bear. His teeth were as big as the girls’ hands.

  Rick moved to get a better view of the sign and Mila’s unicorns. But her unicorns were nowhere to be seen. It looked like they’d been painted over with lifeless brown boulders.

  Mila squared her shoulders and picked up a paintbrush and dabbed at a palette, murmuring something Rick didn’t catch.

  “No, sorry. I already told you we agreed on a plan, and it’s Chompy McChompface here,” one girl said matter-of-factly. “If you want to add some redwoods or clouds, we could use more of those.”

  Mila sat for a minute longer, not painting anything. Then she got up, still holding her paintbrush, and walked to a far corner of the room. She stopped there, stone-faced, looking at the ground.

  Rick followed her and stood beside her for a few moments. “Not interested in helping with Chompy McChompface?” he finally asked.

  “I’m just going to do my own thing. It’s fine,” Mila said, shoulders hunching.

  “Okay. Glad you’re fine. It’s a little hard to tell, since you usually have a face that says I love making art and right now you have a face that says you want to punch something,” Rick said. “Maybe you should try giving me a big chompy smile and then I’ll believe you.”

  Mila gave him a still-stony look.

  He pulled his lips back and bared his teeth in a wide grimace. “It’sh eashy, shee?” Then a stream of drool let loose from his bottom lip, making it all the way to his shirt. “Whoopsh.” He wiped his chin with the back of his hand. “That wasn’t as attractive as it could have been.”

  Mila tried to cover up her smile, but the stone had definitely cracked. Then she sighed. “All the girls from my troop are working on small signs, and I really, really wanted to decorate a big sign with some mythical creatures. They’re the best thing I can draw. They’re how I can bring joy to Los Angeles. I’m supposed to be a sister to every Girl Scout, and they’re supposed to be sisters to me, but I find it so hard to speak up with people I don’t know.” She added under her breath, “Especially people I’m not sure I like all that well.”

  “Maybe you could join a different group?” He started walking around to see what other projects were under way. Mila followed him. None of the big signs had even a hint of myth about them (although Rick didn’t hate the one that featured a giant hamburger under two crossed palm trees). They ended up at the small pile of signs that hadn’t been claimed.

  “Well, I’m out of amazing ideas,” Rick said. He looked longingly at Ms. Diamond’s desk. Technically, I’m full of amazing ideas, but none of them involves Girl Scouts.

  “Oh, okay,” Mila said. Her chin was starting to hunch in on her neck as well.

  “Wait, I just remembered I forgot to tell you my best idea of all!” Rick could not focus on making a work order until Mila put her I-love-making-art face back on. “You should paint a whole bunch of these small signs, because with enough mythical small signs, you can combine them to make one ginormous, mythically mythtastic sign.”

  “How do I do that?” Mila asked.

  “Naturally, you use a mythical type of glue. Like…centaur cement.”

  “Hm. I don’t think Ms. Diamond has any centaur cement in her supply closet,” Mila said, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

  He had a thought that seemed sure to cheer her up. “You didn’t let me finish the best part of the best idea of all,” Rick said, grabbing some small signs and taking them to his corner. “Before we locate the centaur cement, I will paint something amazing on the top part of these, and then you will paint something mythical below. We’ll plan our work and work our plan. For instance…” He pointed to a SPEED LIMIT 65 sign, picked up a paintbrush with a flourish, dipped it in black paint, and meticulously smoothed it over the letters S-P-E-E-D and L-I-M-I-T until they shone glossily. “There it is, my masterpiece. What do you have to add to that?”

  Both Mila’s eyes and her lips were crinkled now. She knelt down next to him and used sure strokes of white, yellow, and blue, until she’d covered the number 65 with the regal face and horn of a unicorn.

  “I dub this work of genius SPEED LIMIT UNICORN,” Rick said solemnly.

  Mila cracked up. “Let’s try another one.”

  Rick chose a SPEED LIMIT 55 sign and said, “Get ready. More artistic brilliance is about to be unleashed.” Once again he traced carefully over the words with black paint. “What do you have to match that?”

  “Got it,” Mila answered, diving in with her own paintbrush to cover the numbers with a fire-spouting red dragon in flight. “Here’s SPEED LIMIT DRAGON.”

  “My amazingness clearly inspires you, doesn’t it?” Rick grabbed a YIELD. “But what could you possibly do to improve this?” He started tracing the letter Y with black paint. They ended up going back and forth, until they had YIELD TO HIPPOGRIFFS, PEGASUS CROSSING, PHOENIXES RIGHT LANE ONLY, NO PARKING EXCEPT MERMAIDS, and another SPEED LIMIT UNICORN, this last one with a unicorn in profile clearly running at top speed, mane rippling in the wind.

  Ms. Diamond passed by, setting down a fresh stack of small signs. “Didn’t I promise you there was magic in collaboration? Keep it up, keep it up,” she encouraged as she moved on to the next group.

  Mila whispered, “She likes everything anyone creates, doesn’t she? Even if it’s a duct-tape eyeball. Oh!” She put her hand to her mouth. “No offense.”

  “Believe me, none taken,” Rick said. The best part about his eyeball and eyelashes was how easily they could be peeled off.

  “Want to do a few more?” Mila said, reaching for the fresh stack. She was firmly back in I-love-making-art mode.

  Rick couldn’t deny the call of the work orders any longer. “I am out of artiness at this point, and I promised Ms. Diamond I’d help her with som
e paperwork,” he said. “Those are all yours.”

  He stepped over PEGASUS CROSSING to get to Ms. Diamond’s desk. He looked at the ridiculous sign, then back at Mila, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth as she unicorned up a railroad crossing sign. Thank goodness road signs are made by machines, not artists, he thought. But he admired the curve of the flying horse’s wings, and didn’t feel that much of an urge to wipe the paint clean.

  Rick met up with Ms. Diamond at her desk and eagerly asked for more work order directions. She showed him a pad of paper on which she’d listed ten different addresses and which Girl Scout designs she wanted mounted at each one.

  “What if I try filling out a few more based on this list and show them to you?” Rick said. “That way, you’re free to help the Scouts.”

  “You do that and I’m getting out my special stash of Blow Pops for your reward.”

  Rick refreshed Google Maps and began filling out the work orders with more labels and measurements. After he showed her the first two completed orders, Ms. Diamond told him he was a godsend and ducked into her kitchen, returning with the promised bubble-gum-centered lollipops. She asked if he’d mind doing as many as he could stand. “Once they’re done, we simply stack up the signs near the garage door with the appropriate work order clipped to the top sign for each location.” She showed him a box of large black binder clips. “I’ve gathered a few piles already. The Department of Transportation delivery truck will be by to pick them up later.”

  By the time Abuelita arrived, he’d finished work orders for Ms. Diamond’s ten locations, plus filled out three more, so his Colossus signs would be put up on the routes to the college, the church, and the movie studio, which he and his dad had mapped out last night. He’d clipped the orders to the pile of signs, hiding his underneath Ms. Diamond’s.

  Being able to summon up his talent and seize this chance to help his family made him feel like he’d grown six inches. He’d also blown a bunch of noteworthy bubble-gum bubbles. He was buzzing with so much glee on the way out, his stomach had to prompt him three times before he noticed: Ask Abuelita to keep me in mind on the drive home. He did.

  Abuelita smiled and assured him, “Sí, Ricardo, I’m keeping you in mind while I drive. I keep all the children of Los Angeles in my mind when I drive.”

  Does that mean we’re safe? his stomach asked uncertainly. Rick wasn’t sure what it meant. He looked at Mila, who gave a hopeful shrug. He silently told his stomach, Let’s believe that it does.

  He turned out to be right.

  FOCUS ON THE HAPPY THINGS IN LIFE

  RICK FOUND IT impossible to try to learn anything the next morning in first-block social studies. The Department of Transportation crew must have worked overtime the night before. According to the digital maps on the internet and the radio reports, as of this morning, traffic along the routes of his three Colossus “art installations” was moving smoothly. Maybe the crew was too tired to notice, or maybe they didn’t care, but he hadn’t been caught. Rick’s stomach was extremely happy. And today, his folks were catering a lunch buffet at the state college and dropping off food for a fellowship dinner meeting at the church. He couldn’t wait to talk to them and find out how the traffic had been.

  Rick bounced his leg up and down, not absorbing anything his teacher was saying about Christopher Columbus. He stared at the poster near the door: “If you think you can, or if you think you can’t, you’re right.”—Henry Ford.

  You know it, Henry, he said to himself.

  He’d tell Mom and Dad tonight. They’d be so relieved to know their business was going to be okay, not to mention impressed at how their youngest son had made it happen. Sure, his brothers, Aleks and Thomas, could drive and cook and serve, but had they ever turned miles of roadway green before?

  The bell rang. Rick gathered his stuff in a happy haze. He high-fived the Henry Ford poster on the way out of the room.

  At lunch, Rick looked around for Tennis but didn’t spot him. He picked an empty seat and heard the students around him discussing which Lakers team member was the best of all time. One kid kept interjecting jokes that got the whole table laughing. Rick wished he understood enough of the conversation to join in the laughter and add some comments of his own, but he heeded Tennis’s advice and kept quiet. He decided to look up the Lakers broadcast schedule that night and start studying up on the players’ stats.

  Please do, his stomach encouraged him. You need more somebodies to talk to at school than your digestive system.

  But you’re such a super conversationalist, Rick thought, telling it not to worry. The only changes coming his way were positive ones. His parents would have a thriving business. He’d be able to keep spending afternoons at the Herreras’. And he’d make new friends. He tossed out his trash and fist-bumped a poster of Eleanor Roosevelt assuring him, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” He was starting to appreciate why the school hung these inspirational sayings from every available surface. Eleanor Roosevelt and Henry Ford were right on the money.

  Mom picked up Rick from the Herreras’ early again.

  “Mom!” he said as they walked from one front door to another, Rick bouncing on the balls of his feet. “How was your day? Great, right? Is Dad home early, too?”

  “Today was good enough,” Mom said. “Dad’s doing the dinner drop-off.” Once inside the house, she opened the pantry and sighed as she pondered its contents.

  Rick said, “Your day was good enough? Are you sure it wasn’t closer to great? Bet your drive to the college has never been better.” He decided to restrain himself from blurting out the great news about his Snarl Solutions until Dad got home, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t fish for a few compliments first.

  Mom tilted her head. “Now that you mention it, it was problem-free. I wish I could say that about everything else.”

  Rick was surprised she wasn’t in higher spirits. Maybe one smooth drive wasn’t enough to get her feeling optimistic again. “Are you worried about landing that new client?” he asked.

  “Dad told you about that?” Mom asked. “Yes, actually, it’s been on my mind all day. We’re catering a meeting for some movie-studio executives in a little over a week, and if it goes well, they might want to offer us a permanent gig on the studio lot serving lunch three times a week. The pay is terrific.”

  “That sounds completely great. Maybe famous actors will end up eating your kielbasa and recommend you to other famous actors, and you’ll end up playing a kielbasa cook in a blockbuster movie,” Rick said, starting to bounce on the balls of his feet again.

  Mom snorted. “Ha!” She picked up a bag of dried black beans and another of rice. “Don’t think I’m cut out to be an actress. I’ll be happy if this first job goes off without a hitch. The odds aren’t good. They’ve moved the location and the time for our trial run. To get there in time to set up and serve a very early lunch, we’ll need to get over the hill at rush hour.” With that last sentence, her head dipped and her voice took on the tone of someone saying “The end of the world is nigh.” She dumped a cup of beans and some spices into the pressure cooker.

  Rick stopped bouncing. Getting “over the hill” meant taking the 405 Freeway over Sepulveda Pass, up through the Santa Monica mountains and down the other side. His stomach did a slow roll as he imagined the 330,000 cars oozing through there on an average workday. It was one of the most scraped-skateboarder-red sections of not only the 405, but also all of LA. The traffic jams there were considered by experts to be unfixable. In fact, whenever the Department of Transportation tried to fix the gridlock by adding more lanes, journalists predicted construction-triggered traffic nightmares bad enough to be called the Carpocalypse and Carmageddon.

  Well. If his parents needed to get over the hill, then that was what had to happen. Rick would have to put together a seriously colossal new Snarl Solution for this. “Excuse me, Mom. There’s a project I need to do work on,” he said. He needed to s
tudy Sepulveda Pass right now. It looked like he’d have to put off explaining how he’d saved Smotch until he’d really saved it.

  Mom nodded. Then the bag of rice ripped and spilled on the floor. “Perfect,” she said, and went to get the dustpan. Rick bent over to start scooping up rice with his hands, but Mom waved him toward his room. “I’ve got this. You work on your project.”

  “Everything’s going to be okay, Mom,” Rick said.

  She gave him one of those fleeting smiles. “Sure it is.”

  Rick stared at 360-degree views of Sepulveda Pass online. He hoped his brain would start to fizz with the perfect solution, but this puzzle was proving much trickier than most. He could see changes he could make that would probably improve things, but maybe not enough. Rick tried to recapture the certainty he’d felt when high-fiving the Henry Ford poster at school. “If I think I can, I can,” he said to his pad of graph paper. It didn’t disagree.

  He heard Dad come home and proudly announce that traffic on the way to church had been so smooth he’d been early for the dinner drop-off. His stomach said, See, you know what you’re doing.

  That night at dinner, he told his parents he’d become a loyal Lakers fan. “Preseason games start this month. I want to see if LeBron James can top his free-throw percentage from last season.” He figured he’d start trying out some of the lingo on Mom and Dad before doing it at school.

  “Oh dear. Lakers games.” Mom looked at Dad before she said, “We need to tell you something. We decided to cancel our cable today. So…no live games. But on the upside: fewer scary news reports, fewer mindless, time-wasting shows.”

  “Aw, man,” Rick said. “I mean, okay.” There was no point in complaining. This was temporary. He would fix Sepulveda first; then his parents would have enough money for cable again, and he’d be able to join lunchtime discussions at Eleanor Roosevelt Elementary.

  “We decided renting movies at the library would do it for us,” Dad said with false cheerfulness. Rick knew Dad would miss his cable news. In fact, Rick knew all three of them would miss the fun of mindless television nights.