“Okay, amigos! Vamanos!” yells Roman, checking his watch. “The truck comes to pour at three!”
I look up at the wavering front wall. I wonder how I will breathe down here. I look at the other men. They don’t seem concerned with anything, and this momentarily dispels the sense of danger. There are six of them, ranging in size from small to tiny. They seem familiar with each other, but they don’t seem to be friends, countrymen even, just coworkers, set to dig in an airless ditch in the summer heat. If they do share anything, it is a culture of bravery. And since I find myself wavering, eyeballing my escape—up the rickety ladder—I figure I could use a dose of that culture. We’re all brown and we are all, at least in part, New World Indians. We have that. That is where we begin.
The remaining joists are about five and a half feet above the existing slab. I imagine that they’d want seven feet clear from floor to ceiling. Four inches of concrete and a foot and a half of dirt in a seventeen-by-forty lot—fifty-one cubic yards of shit in seven hours. Mr. Simian drops the container outside on the street. The front wall shakes. Dust and bits of mortar fall down on us. I look up. Although the exterior course of bricks bellies out toward the street, the interior course bellies in. He drops the front end of the dumpster. A piece of brick about the size of a walnut lands at my feet. The six men look at each other. One very young-looking one looks up at me.
“Big man.”
He sucks his teeth and shakes his head. He’s very slender, jockey sized but without that wiry toughness. He has a little round brown face and the faintest trace of a mustache. His black hair is close cropped, almost military.
“Big man.” He’s an alto. His voice is unaffected by smoke or yelling. It’s thin and soft like his body. He throws me an open-mouthed smile. His teeth look like uncooked arborio rice—ovaline, pearlescent, and little—spaced too far apart.
“Mithter big man . . . ,” another says. I can’t see his face very well. His back is to the light. He’s painfully small. I stoop and squint. They all laugh like we’re in some spaghetti western. I’m the bastardized Eastwood—Blondie, that’s what Tuco called him in one—and I’m about to be initiated into a band of desperadoes, Mexican banditos. But I don’t know where these men, if they do have a common nationality, are from. They’re all short. None of them is taller than my shoulder. They’re all brown with dark hair. They’re all in a filthy, dark, hot hole looking at me. They’ve named me. I must name them now. He Has Rice Teeth. I concentrate on the four remaining: He Has One Eyebrow, He Has Big Boots, He Is So Small—Too Tiny. The last one is the largest. He has a goatee and he scowls at me and at the ditch as though he has a stomachache and we’re the cause. He Who Must Grimace. We’ve schematized each other. The naming is complete; although I know the names are too long, too formal, they will do for now. What’s the harm in labeling for expedience’s sake, anyway?
“Hey!” Roman bellows from the stoop, accompanying himself with crisp claps. “Amigo!” He points in my general direction. “Yes you! Use the hammer!” He claps again, then gestures to the rest. “Take it away!” He whistles while pointing at the door below the stoop. “Take it out here! I open! Start!”
Rice Tooth thumbs at the sledge that is lying on the slab.
“Amigo, we start. Hablo español?”
“Un picitto.”
“Okay. You.” He walks away from me to the southwest corner of the lot and stands in a strip of light about two feet wide. “Hit here.”
I pick up the hammer. Surprisingly enough, it’s new. It has a yellow fiberglass handle and a shiny black head. The label is still on the top—“Collins Axe, 10 lbs.” Rice Tooth waves me over to the spot.
“Okay, here.” The others move in and ring me, some in the dark, some push their way into the piss bush outside. I raise the hammer and let it fall. Nothing. Not a crack or even a broken bit, only a light click on impact. No one reacts. We all agree that it was only a test.
I slide my hands down the handle toward the bottom and narrow the gap between them. I swing again and get the resonate thud we all expect. I’ve cracked the slab, but they seem, especially Rice Tooth, disappointed, as though they’d wanted something more from me. I want to tell them that I haven’t swung a hammer in a while, and that in a batting cage or at the driving range, your first few swings are bound to be somewhat wanting. I don’t say anything. I lift the hammer again and bring it down harder. It doesn’t seem to do anything to lift their spirits so I put a little body behind the next one. It hits with considerably more force, but they still don’t give me anything. I wave them away from me. I lean the handle against my leg and wipe my hands on my shorts, then rub them together. I grab the end of the shaft with my left hand, stretch down low and choke the neck with my right. I pull it behind me, standing up as I do, letting the momentum almost lift me off my feet. As I start my downswing, I let my right hand slide down the shaft to meet my right. The lot booms on impact and the slab cracks for three feet.
“Good, amigo.” Rice Tooth directs me to the end of the crack and points. “Hit it there.” I do. The crack continues. He goes to point to the next spot but I wave him off and bring the hammer down. I go back to the beginning. Grimace is waiting with a pry bar.
We move east to west across the width of the building, always just ahead of the light. I hit, they pry, gather, and haul. I’ve acclimated to the stink, the heat, the lack of oxygen. Rice Tooth and Grimace pull the chunks away. I keep a consistent line going, then break off a chunk every two feet. It’s important not to pulverize the slab because they’d have to stop and take the time to shovel the bits away. I can hear the blocks thud against the steel bottom of the container. They seem comfortable with my tempo, that my aim won’t waiver, that I’ll hit the right spot, not their hands, not their heads. They must trust me with their bodies, and so I lock into the rhythm—I give them three seconds to clear before I swing; they wait three to dive in.
We reach the midpoint. Rice Tooth comes out of his crouch and holds a hand up for me to stop. Eyebrow’s just gotten off the ladder, and he whistles over to him. He points to a hose attached to a spigot on the front wall. Everyone else stops and drifts over to the water. I don’t. I can feel the sun on my calves. I swing again, moving faster than before because I don’t have to wait for the others. It’s bad form, I know, to work during a scheduled break, but I need to keep going. I’ll stop when I reach the north wall. Then there will be another task, and perhaps another to keep the day moving and my mind still—locked into duty. I feel the weight of the hammer and swing, hear its no-sound as it goes by my ear—just movement—and then the crack-boom as it meets the slab. I hear the dribbling of water from their mouths, louder still when they pass the hose along to the next man.
Someone mutters something in Spanish, and they all chuckle in a nasty way, like people who claim to mean no harm but still want to have their fun—briefly and without zeal. I throw my hips into the next swing and the greater impact shuts them up. I let go with another and another and I’m up against the west wall. I take a step forward onto the rubble. I can’t get a footing so I keep moving north—to the corner. I raise the hammer, forgetting about the joists above, and catch it on the backswing. It skips back a tick on the foundation. A cloud of splintery dust surrounds me. After it’s apparent that the beam won’t fall, they laugh, this time with greater commitment. I turn sideways to swing along the length of the beams. I don’t think. I just somehow know that the hammer is going up then down. It meets the ground, seemingly without impact, like one of those little league swings when you think that you’ve closed your eyes but you haven’t, and you don’t feel the bat hitting the ball. The ax head bounces off the slab. I catch it, cocked and ready to swing again. There’s a crash behind me. I turn. We all see a pile of bricks. We look up, scanning the interior course until the void is found—above the center window, three stories up. I smell butane.
“Amigo.”
Roman leans in the door under the stoop one flight above me. He surveys the
wall, up and down, reliving the brick’s descent.
“Amigo, don’t do that.”
He looks over the uncovered earth, nods to himself, then looks at Rice Tooth.
“Why do you stop?”
“Agua. Mui caliente.”
“Agua. Agua.” Roman waves his hand as though shooing away a pest. “More agua?”
“No, boss.”
“Okay. Vamanos!” He whistles and points at me, then to my tool bag. “You have drill? Hammer?”
I nod. He points out to the former garden, beyond the first row of pissweeds.
“Wood!” He gestures, pulling his arms into his gut, then spreading them out as though smoothing out a tablecloth over the area of the joists. He snaps at Rice Tooth, then points to the pick and shovels. He whistles and waves his arms in the air, the signal for work to begin again.
It smells worse out in the open air. Even the sunlight seems to stink. The first line of weeds is about ten feet deep, then there’s a pile of trash—dirt, drywall, insulation, bottles, cans, cardboard, and newspaper. A mattress—rain soaked and dried and resoaked many times over. I collect what usable wood I find—jagged 2×4s and 2×6s, soggy and ridden with twisted and rusty nails; random plywood shapes—and bring them back in.
If I remember anything about Roman it’s that it would be stupid to ask him about screws, so I salvage what nails I can, bend them straight. His crew used to show up on jobs needing to build concrete forms without tools or fasteners or wood. Most of the carpenters would grumble when the masons asked to borrow something, but fuck, it was rumored that even the Polish guys, the skilled masons, got only room, board, and a few bucks a day to live on. I can’t imagine that these men could have received tool-buying wages. Why would they invest in their careers? An old-timer once explained that their standard of living had been so low that anything they dealt with here was better than what they had had—wherever it was they’d come from—and that they were sending it back or hoarding it here to take back when they left for good. I look at Grimace filling the first bucket. I try to imagine him living on, let alone investing in his future with, ten bucks a day. I do my best to tie the three joists together so they won’t roll. I find more nails in the beams and pull them out. Then I lay what remaining lumber I have perpendicular to the first row and cover it with all the irregular sections of plywood—about fifteen square feet altogether. Roman clicks his lighter in the doorway as I sink the last nail; this time he lights a cigarette.
“Is it good, finished?”
I nod and extend my arm, inviting him out onto the staging. He sticks his head in the doorway, looks the platform over, and toes it.
“Okay!”
He gives me a wrinkled chin nod. Then he checks his watch and taps it.
“Okay, go down.” He pats my shoulder and then makes a flicking motion with his hand at the ladder. I climb down. Five of the buckets are full at the bottom. Tiny and Eyebrow scramble up. Roman whistles at me, gives a thumbs-up sign, then shoots it over his shoulder.
“Let’s go!”
I press a bucket up. Tiny grabs the handle, but it tips forward as he lifts, dumping a good shovel full of dirt in my face.
“Sorry, mithter.” He does look sorry. It’s not a joke to him. His brow is wrinkled with concern, making his already little face seem to shrink into its center. I shouldn’t call him Tiny. I’ll call him Lispy, short for Speaks with Lisp. I press a second bucket up. Eyebrow grabs it—more spilled dirt, although I realize now that it’s not really dirt; it’s more like clay. It’s damp and reddish and has a distinct odor, though I can’t place it. It doesn’t belong here, not with the rat and must and ammonia and rotting vegetation.
I pick up a bucket, but Lispy isn’t back from dumping the first one, so I slide it onto the plywood. I put the remaining two up. Rice Tooth drops another one at my feet, which I immediately lift and place. Lispy comes back and sighs at the work waiting for him. It doesn’t pay, really, for any of us to be efficient, to work any harder than we need. It’s just that I haven’t established that line of need. Vlad has given us an ultimatum, but the brown men don’t seem to be taking it all too seriously. Grimace and the lads have barely shoveled anything. I do the math. A five-gallon bucket holds .785 cubic feet of dirt, which means there’s about thirty-four and a half buckets per cubic yard, one thousand three hundred seventy-six or so to fill a forty-yard dumpster. At one minute per bucket, it would take twenty-two hours to fill the container. We’re moving about one bucket every ninety seconds. Eight buckets. Nine. If I stand to the side and push it up over one shoulder, Eyebrow and Lispy let the dirt fall only to the side I’m not on—it’s a tacit agreement. I slow down, let the buckets collect at my feet, a small concession, but it seems to do a lot for them. Their pace evens out, so much so that I don’t have to look or even listen for them. I count their steps in my head, eighteen for Eyebrow, twenty-one for Lispy, then into the container where they each set their bucket down, lift again, and dump. They rest. Then back inside, out of the sun, and onto the platform from which they drop their bucket onto the damp clay beside me, where Rice Tooth picks it up, brings it back to the diggers, picks up a filled one, brings it to me; I hoist it. Thirty buckets. It seems we’re moving faster now. The sun is full on their backs. Grimace wields the pick, loosening the clay for Bigboots, who chops and scoops and drops it into the bucket. He works cleanly, squaring the earth as he goes. They all work with an economy, without desperation, little bend in their backs—the eugenics of excavation. I lift another bucket, number forty.
Bigboots stabs his spade into a pile of dirt but doesn’t pick it up. Rice Tooth turns away from his bucket. Grimace buries the pick head and starts beating the dust off his pant legs. Lispy and then Eyebrow come down. Lispy turns on the spigot. The hose lurches, filled with water. He picks it up and holds it for the others as they, one by one, rinse their faces and hands. Rice Tooth turns to me.
“Big man. Mange?”
Lispy pushes the hose at me, signaling that he’ll keep holding it. I walk over and extend my hands. He splashes my forearms, then my palms. Under the water the clay gets gooey and sticks to my skin, then loosens and runs off. It’s now more like fine silt, noticeably discrete particles. I wash my face. The water is cold, and it seems to erase the morning’s work. I take the hose from Lispy and hold it for him. He washes, nods thanks, and shuts the water off.
We all climb up and out and enter the light one by one. We gather on the sidewalk, squinting. Grimace shoots his thumb in the direction of Third Avenue and starts walking. They all follow. I don’t. They pass Roman, who’s leaning against a street sign a few houses down. I sit on the stoop. I look at my arms. I didn’t do a very good job cleaning—no matter, I’m not eating. I try to picture Delilah’s face, what it would’ve done if I hadn’t gotten her drinks last night. What it would’ve done if I hadn’t walked her home. It doesn’t come. Claire’s voice does—over the phone, singing “Happy Birthday” with the kids, then taking the phone for herself and saying, “Happy birthday. We all love you,” and then the pause. It must be some kind of defense mechanism I have that prevents me from seeing her face—the face she makes when I tell her everything’s cool, the face she’d make when I tell her I’m digging a ditch for Roman and Vlad.
I know it’s Johnny Little Nancyboy because of the truck. It’s a dark blue pickup and it’s new, but it’s just like the one he used to have. It’s clean and he parks it in the same way—up on the curb, as though he’s on official business and has a permit to do so.
He gets out. He’s aged since I last saw him. He wears his cap forward now, and it’s no longer the Mets—just a logo. He’s put on weight, about fifteen extra pounds, and it doesn’t suit him well. He’s short, but he used to be wiry and hard, like an angry weasel. Now he looks more like a well-fed squirrel, until he opens his mouth. He still sounds like an angry little bastard.
“Qué pasa, homey? The Polaki treatin’ you right?” Johnny always seemed to think that because of who a
nd what he was—an Irish Puerto Rican from Queens—he could spit out racial epithets and ethnic slurs with impunity, although around me, he stayed away from the ones that disparaged blacks.
“Just shittin’ ya.” He takes his phone out of its holster and flips it open. He stares at the screen, whatever’s on it, closes it, and puts it back.
“So, professor, I was just stopping by to check in. Things going all right?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. He walks up the stoop and pokes his head in.
* * *
“Professor. You’re gonna be a professor. That’s cool.”
He had been my assistant on the old crew. We’d just installed a door jamb—trimless mahogany—and he was bringing the door over.
“So what will they call you?”
“Who?”
“Your students.”
“Professor.”
“What, that’s like one up from mister and one under doctor?”
“I suppose.”
“Do I have to call you professor?”
That was what I thought to be my last day in construction. I gave him my old chisel set.
“Looks okay.” I find it hard to believe that he, in the years since I last saw him, back when he had difficulty cutting lumber square, had learned much at all. He was a high-strung little pothead, ready to fight with anyone. I guess the kids in his neighborhood had picked on him, given him his nickname.
“You free tomorrow, you got anything going on?”
“Yeah, I’m free.”
“Cool. Cool. Call you at that same number? You got a cell?”
“That number’s fine.”
He goes to pat me on the shoulder but thinks better of it.
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