There is a very small and exactly round hole in the precise center of the main street, too small to bump a wheel and too deep to be from wear and tear. This is why.
***
The construction companies made their bids. They wrangled terms. They argued. They wheedled.
Frank Thomas bid low – very low – and he kept his bid very low, and he never said a word after that, or moved after that, or did anything other than sit there and smile, smile, smile. He had a smile stuck on his face, Frank did. It made you want to carve him on a statue, or punch him, or something like that.
Tortoise Construction won the bid. On their trucks, it said: Slow and Steady Wins the Race.
***
The roadwork was meant to start in mid spring, as soon as the snows left. Frank got the trucks in a row with uncommon haste: by the end of May his crews were hard at work, measuring and cutting and digging and standing around asking where the hell the asphalt was, that truck should’ve been here last week, we’ve already dug up half the road, this is a total shitshow, I need a cigarette, and so on.
“Slow and steady wins the race,” said Frank when the foreman called him for the sixth time that morning asking why they had barely any gravel left with half a day remaining. And he said nothing more.
***
Come late June the holidays were creeping closer and the town was growing concerned about traffic, since Tortoise Construction had now removed the surface of every single stretch of asphalt they were meant to be working on while replacing exactly none of it with a drivable substrate, temporary or otherwise. This included the town’s largest parking lot.
“Frank,” the mayor begged him over the phone. “Frank. Frankie man. You’re killing me here, and that’s because you’re killing the fair, and that’s because there’s no way they can get the trucks down to the park because of you. My youngest grandchild is finally old enough to eat a hot dog. You are depriving my youngest grandchild of her first giant outdoor overpriced hot dog, AND her first fireworks show all at once. I’m crying, Frankie. Can you hear my tears hitting the receiver? Can you? Please, Frank. For the love of god. For the love of god, and country, and really godawful hot dogs with too much mustard.”
“Slow and steady wins the race,” said Frank, untroubled. And he stayed on the line the entire two hours, and that was all he would say.
***
The thunderstorms came in July when Frank was on site to inspect their progress; torrential sheets of water that sucked on the half-packed road like a six-year-old on a popsicle. Lightning strikes and high winds had their pick of the treeline, and some of it just happened to be over the construction – an oak was felled on Wednesday, and one of its branches took out a good-sized maple and both their efforts combined did something unspeakable to a pickup truck on the curb and its collapsing roof did something VERY speakable to its driver, who was speaking about it at the top of his voice. Oh and there were multiple live wires flailing around on the road.
“Call 911!” screamed the foreman, whose own phone had been drowned in her pocket while plucking her crew from the floods. “Call a repair crew! Call a tow truck! Call the arborists!”
“Slow and steady wins the race,” said Frank, tranquil as a calm pond on a moonlit evening. And then he took sixteen minutes to enter his password, for he had forgotten it and did not want to rush himself.
***
August had never been easy, but this one was like someone had taken a magnifying glass and nailed it to the sun. The trees withered; the grass spontaneously reverted to dirt; the ponds dried up; the elderly roamed the streets at midday cheerily greeting one another in long pants. And the very first new layer of asphalt poured by Tortoise Construction just the previous day refused to set in any manner other than goopily.
“We’ll need to remove it and start again,” said the foreman. “And quickly: it’s only getting worse the longer it sits there, and we’ve taken so much time already. We need the machines back ASAP.”
“Slow and steady wins the race,” said Frank, who did not perspire and who did not give any signal as to the whereabouts of the machinery in question. His smile did not waver, his remorse was not visible.
***
The leaves came down fast that year: September’s end just barely in sight when they sighed and slipped free, withered and crinkled. They clotted the ground in their millions, they stuck to the new road, they became sodden with morning dew and formed thick fat blankets that carpeted the whole town in a slippery film that could send anything from a toddler to a full-sized construction rig skidding merrily across the road and into an adult’s leg or a senior living home.
“Frank,” begged his business partner. “Frank. This is not a good look. We need to make a statement. Please for the love of god, just apologize or look contrite or do anything, anything at all. We need to fix this. Please. PLEASE.”
“Slow and steady wins the race,” said Frank. His teeth never showed, his lips never unsealed, his gums were not visible. Legal proceedings filled his inbox and simply slipped around him, like running water.
***
October came and went, and with its end came an early snap frost. The ground chilled and so did the asphalt, the last of its first layer only just now being laid down. It cracked, it crumbled, it shuddered, it broke apart under the wheels of the trucks, and in one case it broke off the wheels of one of the largest, heaviest, and most expensive trucks.
“Please,” said the foreman. “Please. Please Frank. Please get it fixed quickly. Please. For the love of everything. Please please please.”
“Slow and steady wins the race,” said Frank.
The foreman was taken away by some of the older and more sympathetic members of the road crew, who chipped in to get her just drunk enough to make it through the week.
***
It was November. The first snow was forecast for next week. The first of the second layer of asphalt was to be laid down this very day. Everyone was on site and ready to go.
Everyone.
“Frank,” said the foreman, desperately using this opportunity to look him directly in the eye. “Where’s our paychecks?”
Frank’s eye contact did not waver, but he did not look back. “Slow and steady wins the race.”
The asphalt was pouring, the weather was fine, the shovels and the rollers and the rakes were all there. Everyone looked at Frank.
He gazed blissfully at the asphalt as it puddled by his feet.
“Frank. We need to get paid.”
“Slow and steady wins the race,” said Frank.
“It can do by itself,” said the oldest crewman present. Then they all spat on the ground, one at a time, and walked off.
Frank watched this with unfurrowed brow and light heart, and was not moved.
This mattered, because that was why the asphalt engulfed his right leg.
Nobody was there to see what happened next, but judging by the very small and exactly round hole left in the middle of the road Frank got out at some point – not that anyone checked too hard. The rest of Tortoise Construction went to work somewhere else, and some of them came back in and finished the roads that spring. And they did it properly, which was pretty slow and steady, and the funny thing was that it didn’t take long at all.
Because slow and steady may win the race; but doing nothing’s just stuck in place.