Bootylicious script across both thighs

The heat has finally let go of the road, so I'm working on the second board after supper with the lamp pulled close. Hal from the pie stand wants one word across two boards, split the way you'd split a name across a pair of car doors so it reads whole from the highway. He gave me a crumpled napkin with the word in his wife's hand and said, Make it look like it's been there since Eisenhower. I told him I'd need a day and a half and a bottle of black enamel.

I did the outlines first, a fine brush dragged slow, because a script word lives or dies in its hairlines. Then the body of each letter, then the swashes underneath that trail off like the tail of a kite going out of sight. The shading came last, lilac fading into a pink that looks almost grey in the dusk, the way the mesa goes at this hour. Hal stood behind me with his arms folded saying nothing, which I've learned is the highest praise a man in a paper hat can give.

Then the wind got up and blew sand into the wet paint, and I thought we'd lost the lot. I picked out the grit with a wet fingertip, very gently, and by morning it had dried into something better, a softness at the edges that no ruler would have managed. Hal drove out at seven, looked at it a long time, and said, That's the one. I'm enclosing a photograph, though the camera has flattened the purples.

Love, Dell