The brooms arrived on Friday afternoon, and by Friday evening there was nowhere to sit in the break room.
Theo had bought forty-two of them from Kessler's Hardware on Route 9. Mr. Kessler had to call a second store to make up the difference. They were wide push brooms with yellow handles and stiff black bristles. Theo stood them along the wall in rows, like a very small and very clean army.
"Forty-two," I said.
"One per compartment," said Theo. "It seemed right."
"That's not a reason."
"It's a symmetrical reason."
Marguerite came in with her coffee, looked at the wall of brooms, and went back out without a word. A moment later I heard the marker.
You cannot simply sweep a public road in Calder Falls. I knew this before Theo did, because I had found Form PW-17 on the city website. It was the Volunteer Right-of-Way Maintenance Permit. It was nine pages long.
I read it at my desk with a highlighter, the way other people read thrillers.
The applicant needed a sponsoring organization. The applicant needed a certificate of liability insurance.
Every volunteer had to wear a high-visibility vest and sign a waiver. There had to be one volunteer for every five hundred feet of roadway. And the applicant had to submit a traffic control plan, "including but not limited to cones."
"How many cones?" asked Theo.
"It says 'including but not limited to.'"
"That's not a number."
"It's a philosophy," I said.
I did the math on a sticky note. Six miles was about thirty-one thousand feet. At one volunteer per five hundred feet, we needed sixty-three people.
"We have forty-two brooms," said Theo.
"Then some of them share."
Marchetti Family Dentistry became the sponsoring organization. Our insurance agent, a soft-spoken man named Gil, said it was the strangest rider request of his career. He had once insured a llama for a petting zoo. He said this was stranger.
Then Theo began to recruit.
He did it the only way he knew how, which was during appointments. I would finish a cleaning and call him in for the exam. He would sit on his stool, adjust his light, look into the patient's mouth, and begin.
"Everything looks good, Mr. Haskell. A little buildup on the lower left. Now, I wonder if you've heard about Old Mill Road."
Mr. Haskell, whose mouth was full of Theo's mirror and my suction tip, said, "Ahh."
"The city is putting down gravel three weeks before the marathon. I'm organizing a group to sweep it. Two hours on a Saturday, vests provided. Would you be interested?"
"Ahh," said Mr. Haskell.
"Wonderful," said Theo. "Rosa, put him down."
"Theo, he can't answer."
"He nodded."
"You were holding his jaw."
Theo looked down at his own hand, then at Mr. Haskell. He removed the mirror. "Mr. Haskell, would you like to help sweep Old Mill Road?"
Mr. Haskell considered it. He was seventy-one and had once driven a snowplow for the county.
"Sure," he said. "I've got a broom."
"We have forty-two," said Theo.
By Wednesday, the whiteboard behind reception had been completely reorganized. Marguerite had wiped the day's appointments into a small corner. The rest of the board was a sign-up sheet titled BROOM BRIGADE, with names in three colors of marker.
Mr. Haskell was first. Mrs. Albescu was second; she had signed up during her crown, between the temporary and the permanent. The Feeney twins, thirty-four, both accountants, signed up together and asked if they could have adjacent sections. A man named Doug, who had come in with a chipped incisor from a softball game, signed up and then brought his entire softball team.
On the right side of the board, Marguerite kept a separate column.
BRIGADE REACHES 63: 3 to 1 CITY APPROVES PW-17: 5 to 1 HAROLD VOSS SHOWS UP FOR HIS CLEANING: 200 to 1
"That last one isn't related," I said.
"Everything's related," said Marguerite. "That's the whole point of gambling."
On Thursday, Craig Pell came by the office. He was carrying a cardboard carton of fluorescent yellow vests, which he set on the reception counter.
"Heard you need sixty-three," he said. "These were for a promotional fun run. The fun run fell through. Nobody wanted to run in October in a vest that said STRIDE THEORY: FIND YOUR PACE."
"That's very generous, Craig," said Theo.
"They're free," Craig said.
Then, from under his windbreaker, he produced a shoebox. "This is still size eleven. Whenever you're ready."
"Not today."
"Worth asking." He paused at the door.
"Put me down for a section. I'll bring my own broom. I don't trust a yellow handle."
Marguerite wrote CRAIG on the board in green. That made fifty-one.
The trucks came on Monday, the sixth.
Theo drove out to watch them at seven in the morning, before his first patient. I went with him because he asked me to, and because I wanted to know what his face would do.
There were four trucks. The first one sprayed a dark, steaming layer of liquid asphalt across the road. The second one followed close behind, tipping out a steady curtain of fresh gravel.
Then came a roller, and then another roller. Behind them walked a man in an orange vest, supervising the rollers by pointing at them.
The gravel was pale gray and slightly glittering. It went down with a sound like a very long bag of chips being poured.
Theo stood at the edge of the road with his hands in his cardigan pockets. He did not speak for nine minutes. I timed it.
When the trucks had moved on, he crouched at the shoulder and picked up a single loose chip. He turned it over in his fingers. It was about the size of a pea, with edges like a little broken plate.
"Are you keeping it?" I asked.
"No," he said. "It's not a race. It doesn't get a receipt."
He set it down exactly where he had found it, which was a very Theo thing to do. Then he stood up, brushed off his hands, and checked his watch.
"I have a filling at eight," he said, and we drove back to town.
We submitted the permit on Wednesday. It was eleven pages including attachments, plus a traffic control plan that I had drawn on graph paper. It showed forty cones. Cones, it turned out, were not limited to.
We had sixty-four names on the whiteboard. Doug's softball team had brought their wives. Two of the wives had brought their own wives.
Marguerite changed the odds. BRIGADE REACHES 63 was crossed out with a satisfied flourish. CITY APPROVES PW-17 moved to 2 to 1.
On Friday, at four-fifteen, the phone rang.
Marguerite answered it in her phone voice. Then she put her hand over the receiver and turned to me with an expression I had not seen before. It was the face of a woman who had money riding on something and was about to lose it.
"It's Amos Gaines," she said. "For Dr. Marchetti."
Theo took it in his office. I stood in the doorway. I'm not proud of it.
The call lasted four minutes. Theo said, "I see," three times and, "That's a very good point," once, which was how I knew it was bad. Then he said, "Could you email that to me, please, Amos? Thank you," and hung up.
"Denied," he said.
"Why?"
"The new surface has to cure for ten to fourteen days. Sweeping it by hand before that could pull out chips that are still setting. He called it 'unpermitted surface alteration of a public asset.'"
"And after it cures?"
"He said to read the email."
The email arrived two minutes later. It came from Amos's city address. The subject line was RE: PW-17 (DENIED). I read it over Theo's shoulder.
The letter was polite and very firm. Paragraph two explained the cure time. Paragraph three said the city appreciated our civic spirit. Paragraph four was the one that mattered.
Per Section 9 of the City's agreement with Benning Paving, post-cure sweeping is the exclusive responsibility of the contractor. This work has been deferred pending budget review, consistent with prior practice.
"Consistent with prior practice," I read aloud. "What does that mean?"
Theo didn't answer. He was looking at the screen. He read paragraph four again. Then a third time, his lips moving slightly.
Then he got up, walked past me down the hall, and went into the supply room.
I followed him. He was standing in front of the drawer.
He pulled it open and reached, without searching, for the compartment in the second row. He lifted out pebble number seventeen. The flat, dark, glossy one.
BIRCH HOLLOW 5K, 23:51. DISPUTED.
"Prior practice," said Theo quietly. He held it up to the light. "I know exactly what prior practice looks like, Rosa. I've been keeping it in a drawer for four years."
Up next: Pebble Seventeen
Continue to Part 4 →