Up early and on the road five days a week, commuting to summer school classes in
a worn-out Ford. Never many notes to take
in that American Lit. survey. Thoreau had been a hero of mine in high school but
only annoyed me now, his razor-sharp righteousness
grown self-righteous and dulled. My critical energies were spent explicating the
girl flagman on the paving crew. She wore an orange vest
over her tank top and smoked Marlboro reds from a hard pack in her jeans pocket
while she flagged cars around dump trucks of hotmix
backing up traffic on 45 South, her face unreadable behind mirrored sunglasses. I
was a credit or two away from learning
the word girl had ceased to apply. The highway was two lanes narrow. Every few
miles a stand of timber crowded the roadway, almost touching
in the sky. It was a good place to think, alone in a sedan the size of Thoreau’s shack
and just as nimble in a turn. She held out the red flag
and we stopped. A line of cars moved past the paving equipment busy undoing
troughs of wear in the old tarmac. When the last one cleared,
she waved us on. I was learning that every interpretation had a load limit it was
best not to exceed: Thoreau might come off
as a smug squatter who couldn’t make his own bail. Why not leave your readings
alone—what’s left of them, anyway—like wildflowers flattened
in the pages of an unabridged dictionary, dried and perfect, maybe keeping a trace
of their scent? On any of those mornings
when she made me stop without troubling to hold the flag at a commanding angle,
I could have cranked down the window
and said something, just to hear if her voice sounded the way it still sounds in my
mind. Up ahead, the asphalt finisher was laying down
a seamless black carpet on the scarred highway, a drum roller not far behind,
pressing threads of smoke from the satiny surface.