The unending construction on Michigan roads was due to the gold hidden beneath them, but all Jacob’s team had unearthed so far were corpses. Tantalized by lost Indian mines, the promise of bandit treasure thawing beneath the surface of a cryptic X, myths of sunken steamers, buried stagecoaches, outlaw caches, gangster banks, they entered potholes deep as vehicles. There were days when Jacob wished that cracked roads were as simple as fluctuating temperatures and half-assed craftsmanship, and that his life had not taken such a brutal, subterranean turn.

Jacob faced his church, an empty lot, as hundreds of cotton wisps danced sideways through the air, collecting in curb corners like snow. Any pleasantness was undermined by the groans of bars of gold beneath them.

Putzing down I-75, heading home from a dig, sunbeams refracted off the cracked windshield, blinding him. His wife, Rebecca, piped music directly into her hearing aids, mumbling ska band lyrics. Jacob cranked the knob on the dash, drowning them in static. She ignored his moving mouth. It was rare his words had a receipt. Had there been no promised pot of gold at the other end of his hair piece, Rebecca would have left. She enjoyed crumpling his body parts like leaves in her mind. Not even the wind his soundwaves floated upon mistook his stagnancy for motion. Like an anatomical cross section of them together, the road wore away in thin patterns of tread.