These Streets Are Paved with Blood

These streets are paved with blood, sweat, and tears. Licorice knows that better than anyone. She adjusts the orange safety vest over her hoodie and peeks out into the street, looking both ways. The asphalt on these hills is cracked with years of neglect like dry skin on a set of knuckles. She rolls her wheelbarrow over the crumbling pavement.

She stops the wheelbarrow and sets down a few traffic cones. A great yawning pothole stretches in front of her. It’s a deep one, the bottom filled with rainbow-slicked runoff, about the size of a person laying down. For a moment she wonders if she brought enough cold patch. She unloads a bucket and a tamping iron.

Somewhere, a porch door swings open and shut. Somebody shouts. Licorice hears sneakers patter across the grass. A small hooded figure dashes through a back lawn and vaults over the fence. A gunshot rings out.

Licorice tucks herself behind the wheelbarrow. Her ears whine, but she can make out the sound of footsteps getting louder. Reaching the sidewalk, they veer off to the right, and then stop. Someone pants hot, heavy breaths. Small sobs eke out between deep breaths.

“Fuck,” a soft voice mutters.

With her back turned, Licorice raises her hands. “I don’t want any trouble. I ain’t here. I ain’t seen nothing,” she recites like a prayer.

“Licorice? Is that you?”

“Andre?” She turns, peeking over the lip of the wheelbarrow.

Brown eyes stare back at her, all of 17 years old, brimming with fear. His mouth quivers. He’s holding a gun.

“Andre, what are you…” Licorice stares. “What did you do?”

A second pair of footsteps crunch across the grass. Andre grips the gun with both hands. His shoulders shudder.

Licorice tries to shoo him away, to tell him to run, but his eyes are closed. She ducks down behind the wheelbarrow, half hiding herself in the pothole.

The distant footsteps grow nearer. Through the crack between the wheelbarrow and the sidewalk, she sees the bottom of a man’s shoes. She can hear his controlled breathing. Her heart jackhammers in her chest.

“Where are you, motherfucker?” The man hisses. His grip shifts on something. A shotgun? He is coming closer.

“Fuck are you, you little shit? Sticky fingers…”

He stops right next to the hole. All it would take is a step forward, for him to look down and see her. Her fingers wrap around the tamping iron.

A twig snaps in the bushes. The man turns.

“There you are. Give me back what’s mine.”

Andre starts to move, to put his hands up, but the chrome of his gun glints in the streetlamp. The man sees. Small muscles flex in his forearms, reptile instinct flaring up in his brainstem. He raises his shotgun.

Licorice stands up.

“Don’t!” Andre yells out.

The tamping iron connects with the man’s head. One hundred and forty pounds of meat hits the pavement. A shotgun clatters into the gutter. Licorice pants and dry-heaves, white-knuckling the tamping iron. Blood rushes through her ears. A dark pool of blood collects on the sidewalk around the man’s head, coating the dandelions that poke up through the cracks.

“What did you do? What did you do?” Andre stammers. He slumps down. “I can’t. We… What?” He stands up again. He looks like he’s going to run. “What?”[Text Wrapping Break] Licorice takes a deep breath. “Andre.”

“What did you just do?” He barks, choking down desperation.

“Andre, listen to me.” She steps over the body and grabs him by the shoulders. “Listen. Can you listen to me?”

“What?” He hyperventilates.

“Andre, listen. We’re not going to run. Do you hear me? Stay here.”

He looks around at the other houses on the street, looks in the windows. “There are people. They’re going to see this.”

“No, they won’t. Not if we act fast. Help me.”

Licorice drops the tamping iron and grabs a hold of the dead man’s ankles.

“Help me move him. Andre, I’m going to need you to keep it together, buddy. It’s going to be okay. Grab his arms.”

Andre wipes his eyes with his sleeve. He looks at Licorice, and she looks back. He drops his gun and follows along. Licorice guides the body into the street. She drops the legs, and Andre lets go of the arms. The body lays in the pothole. It’s as she suspected–the pothole is about the length of a human body. Almost. Most of him fits inside, but his leg sits up on the rim of the hole.

“Shit. He doesn’t fit all the way.”[Text Wrapping Break] “What are you doing?”

Licorice grabs the dead man’s ankle and folds it underneath his torso. She stands back and checks the side angle. The body butts up too high; it isn’t flush with the road. It’ll bulge out. She thinks for a second, then unfolds his leg. She pulls on it, resting the back of his ankle on the edge of the hole. There’s hardly enough clearance, but it creates a small gap below his left leg.

“Andre, could you do something for me?”

He nods.

“I’m going to need you to jump on his knee.”[Text Wrapping Break] “What?”

“We need to break his leg. I need you to jump on his knee.”

He jostles it with his heel. He is crying.

“I need a little more force. This won’t work unless you jump on it. Do you want to switch places?”

He shakes his head.[Text Wrapping Break] “Jump on it.”

He hops up and lands on the man’s knee. A wet crunch answers back from underneath his jeans. Licorice grabs the ankle and starts to push, folding the knee in a direction it was never meant to go.

“What are you doing?” Andre gags, then vomits on the grass.

“Have you ever snapped a branch in half? You need to loosen up the bonds first. Now—” she pushes it back into place with a crack. Then, placing her hand on the side of his knee, she cranks it to the right, breaking his leg inwards. His thighs are straight, but his ankles bend together. “Now we can fit him.”

“What are you doing?”

“We’re burying him, Andre. We’re burying him where nobody will ever find him.”

The asphalt glows red under the sallow streetlamp. A halo of blood pools around the man’s broken body, oxidizing to brown in the air. Licorice moves quickly. She tears open a bag of cold patch asphalt filler, layering it across his body. She covers his face first. It feels like a courtesy. Layer by layer she goes, blanketing his arms, his torso, his mangled legs in wet, black rock. She flattens each layer with the tamping iron, filling in the cracks, spreading it smooth. She lays the shotgun in the hole. Andre tosses his pistol in alongside it. She was right earlier; she wouldn’t have had enough cold patch to fill the hole normally. Now, however, it lays flush with the rest of the road. This is how communities are built, Licorice thinks.

These streets are paved with blood, sweat, and tears. Licorice knows that better than anyone. She removes her orange safety vest, hugs Andre, and heads home.