The Tooth Road

Kayla Dills cleans children's teeth out of a mobile van, county to county, with her eight-year-old daughter riding along in the back. In Reedville, Kentucky, kids are waking to smooth pink gums and molar-shaped candies under their pillows, and a warped jingle drifts through the dark long after midnight. Something is working the hollers in a peeling blue step-van, and it keeps a ledger. Kayla's name is already in it. Her daughter's is being written now.