"You're going to build this house all by yourselves?" Manuel is hot and skeptical. He sizes up Daddy and then, looking at me, his eyes ask: With just this old guy?
"That's right," Daddy answers, panting hard and stooped with pain. "And it'll be the best house in the county too."
Manuel offers good luck, more like condolences, and tries to give back the twenty dollars. Daddy won't take it. There's a brief but friendly dispute, very embarrassing, before Manuel gets in the truck and rumbles away. It's then, in that powerful silence, that Daddy lies down in the cab of his pickup and puts a wet towel over his eyes, even though I know from my reading there's still much to do before the concrete starts to dry.
"You okay?" I ask.
"Yeah fine. Be with you in a minute."
It's an hour-and-a-half before he emerges. By then I have done all I can by myself with the finishing trowel, the edger, the wood float to make my new floor smooth and even and level. My knees ache and my palms are pocked by bits of gravel.
"Gosh, Buddy, sorry I pooped out on you."
His eyes are red and glassy, his face pale; he looks hangdog and pitiful in his muddy overalls. He takes a long drink from the Igloo cooler, swallows a pill of some sort, sits on a saw horse.
"How's it look?" I ask.
"Super, super. Yeah. It looks great, you did good."
But I know better. There are swirls and hollows and an unplumbness to it all. The level square is a cruel but truthful master and its bubble tells me the floor of my house will forever tilt toward Abilene. We gaze at the slab of concrete, my new foundation, and I see again this is not going to be easy.
"Look here, Hoss, I'm sorry "
"Don't worry about it, Daddy. Let's get some lunch."
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In the afternoon we go to the lumberyard in town to buy the first load of framing materials. The lumberyard is one of these new places, a cavernous metal warehouse with most of the wood neatly displayed in racks at the back of the store. We take a long time with our selecting, checking every two-by-four against warp and curl. "Yeah yeah yeah," he chortles with a Rube's excitement each time we settle on a good one. We trundle everything to the front on two loud, rambling carts. At the checkout counter, when the nice woman has tallied it all, Daddy insists on paying. We argue quietly. I tell him I've been saving for this for years. I tell him I have all the money I'll need set aside in a special account at the local bank. This is my house we're building.
"Your mother and I would like to do this for you," he says in a whisper. "At least some of it. You should have a place."
"But I'm doing this for myself."
"I'm not saying you can't," he whispers loudly. "All's I'm saying is we'd like to help."
The woman at the counter, a puffed blonde about my age with an unfortunate cleft in her nose, has to wait while we argue. She tries not to watch, not to listen, but her shy smile implies that she knows and understands the ways of parents. He's got his checkbook out; it's on the counter; now he's ignoring me.
"Will you take a check on a Houston bank?"
"All the same to me," she says, smiling at him like he's an eccentric old gentleman, which he is. "Long as it's good."
"Oh it's good, young lady. How much is it?"
"Six-hundred eight-two dollars and ninety-seven cents."
He hesitates; the woman and I see the astonishment in his eyes, in his hand with the pen poised above the checkbook. He laughs, that odd, low yucking sound. It stops abruptly. He eyes her through the top of his bifocals. "How much?"
She tells him again, deadpan and business-like. He whistles through his teeth, says something like, "Whoa now, hawse," so I step in. I say, "I told you, Daddy, I'll pay for it."
"No no, that's fine. Super. We want to do this for you."
He writes out a check. As always this is a very slow process with him. He writes in block letters, squarish little numerals, calculating each one, and his signature is a wild flourish that no one can read. The woman and I exchange a glance, share the shame of children, and before he gets the receipt from her I am pushing one of the carts out the door to the parking lot.
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My beautiful hill now looks like a real construction site. All around are stacks of lumber, a table saw under a jerry-rigged shelter, the left-over sand in a dented pile. The slab is a dull fish color in the afternoon sunshine. There is nothing to do now but wait. The slab has to cure, to dry. We decide he might as well go on home; we'll start framing next week. "Keep that lumber dry," he says. On Saturday I drive into Austin.
"How's my poor tired boy?" Alicia wants to know. She is a good woman, a few years younger than I, married once long ago. Her hair is dark, her face a pretty oval, her eyes sharp and light like candle flames. There's enough of her for a man to hold on to, and it's that softness about her that makes it all so comfortable. She'd be my wife if I asked, I think, and we talk about it from time to time, but so far neither of us has asked.
"Papas are always like that," she says when I tell her about Daddy, tell her about my doubts. "Now put out that cigarette."
"Maybe I should just hire a couple of guys to help me."
"Oh no, it wouldn't be the same. No. You let your papa help. He's old and wants to know his boy before he dies. It could come any day, you know, and then you'll have the rest of your life to be a man. Besides he has expertise, experience. Don't you want your house to be nice?"
"But what if I murder him?"
"No. Oh no." She grins. "That's been done before."
Alicia does not like to follow in the paths of others; and she thinks we find truth in the mistakes of our lives. She is a state welfare agent and studies human mistakes. At home, a tiny apartment, she beads earrings, necklaces, hat bands brightly colored things and sells them on weekends at crafts shows out in the county. In my house I am planning a small room for her, a workshop. With this I hope to entice her away from the city.
"When can I come see your house?"
"When it's a house," I say.
She smiles and kisses me. She takes my hand. We go out for barbecue at a beer garden near the capitol. We drink beer under the dim lights in the trees and scratch our initials into the wood of the picnic table. We eat red beans and potato salad and greasy pork ribs until our faces are smeared with sauce. We kiss, licking at the sauce, and we place slices of dill pickle on each other's tongue. The band plays C&W with an occasional fifties tune and once our ribs have settled we dance, slow waltzes and two-steps and even a polka. By two a.m. we're the only ones on the floor. It's all easy stuff now, the boys in the band are lazy and quiet and ready for home, and we're doing the one-step. I'm careful of my boots against her sandals. We hold each other close, shuffle about, full of longing and friendship. Her softness is like a promise by the time the band is packing up.
"Well?" I whisper, bending to her ear.
"Well what?" she whispers back, almost asleep.
"You want to get married?"
She lays her head against my chest. She loops her thumbs through my belt loops. She says, "Not really," and then we're like strangers with each other for the rest of the weekend.
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The framing goes smoothly, nothing but sawing and lifting and hammering. We wear nail pouches and smell like animals and our hair is always yellow with sawdust. Two weeks we have the skeletons of walls and now we are ready for the roof beam.
"All right now, Pancho," says Daddy. "We got to do some serious figuring. Got to get this thing right."
He figures and figures, trying to correct for the sloping foundation. He spits Skoal into a styrofoam cup. He sucks on lollipops. He has overworked; his white hair is wild under his general's cap, and the cuffs of his crazy blue overalls drag the floor. Still he's strong; he's determined. He's up and down off the ladder; he's at the workbench scratching out numbers, writing new ones, adding, subtracting, mumbling to himself. I make a few suggestions but he never listens. My job is to hold the other e
nd of the tape measure or the board or the string and to answer a rare question, such as, "What's fifty-eight and three-fifths minus thirteen and five-eights?" I wait for long stretches.
I sit on my foundation at the place where the front door will be. I look at my view. I smoke cigarettes. It's a Sunday, very quiet out here in the hills. A buzzard wheels about on the currents. The sky is blue, the clouds enormous and gentle. A breeze is blowing and the scent of the cedars is sweet as Christmas-time. Very suddenly like a wound I miss Alicia. I want to see her, to smell her, to talk to her. Nothing much, just a "Hi, how are ya?" I get an image of her in my mind as clear as any home movie. She's right out there, stepping from her car. She waves and then she is walking up the hill under the oaks. She's wearing a light frail dress and sandals on her feet and a silver bracelet on her arm and her hair is free in the wind and her legs are like a pretty song and her neck is like a poem. And then she is sitting here with me, happy and calm, glancing around like a little bird asking about the wall plate and the door hanger and asking me with a lovely smile, "Is it a house yet?"
"Not quite," I say.
"Oh! Is that my room?"
I nod my head.
"So when can we move in?" she wants to know, but I can't answer. Then it's just me and my view again.
"Yip yip yip aw-haaa," Daddy yodels.
This means he is ready, he has figured it out. I drag myself up and we go back to work. We struggle, him on one ladder, me on the other, trying to get the roof beam plumb and secured to a couple of support posts. We measure, make our marks, tack it up, check the level square, tap it loose, try again.
"You gotta hold it steady, son," he says, his glasses crooked, sweat streaming down his face.
We try it again. Still it's off.
"You got to hold it steady, son. How many times I gotta tell ya? Let's start over."
We tap it loose. We measure again. We make our marks. Up the ladders we go, hoisting the heavy roof beam. We lift it above our heads; our arms tremble. Carefully, steadily I hold it while he tacks up his end. Steadily I hold it while I tack up mine.
"How's it look?" he says.
"Looks good to me."
Down he goes. He moves the ladder to the center of the house. At his feet are scraps of lumber, hand saws lying about, bent nails, footprints in the sawdust. Up he goes, carrying the level square. He clamps it to the wood, he ogles the bubble and I can tell by his disgusted eyes that it's off again.
"Shoot fire!" he hollers. "How many times I gotta tell you: hold it steady. We're gonna get this right even if it kills me."
By now I'm mad, I'm sick of it all, and I say something to him that I've never said before: "I've had enough of this shit."
"What's that?"
"I ain't no boy, Daddy, and you ain't no job foreman and if I'd gotten some help with the foundation we wouldn't be having this problem."
His old face shows injury; the slump of his body shows fatigue and defeat. He searches the floor as if looking for a weapon. Then he looks up at me on my ladder.
"Well fine," he says. "If that's the way you feel about it then I'll just go on home right now."
"Maybe that'd be the best."
"Maybe it would."
"Fine."
"Fine."
"You won't see me again you know."
"Fine."
We offer each other cold-blooded glares before turning away and it's then he says, "You gotta grow up, son."
I just snort a laugh and keep still.
He looks around, finds his circle saw, unplugs it from the extension cord and holds it close under his arm. He finds his hammer. He moves heavily over the tools and the lumber lying on the floor. He eases himself off the slab. He walks to his pickup and drops his tools inside. He unties his nail pouch and throws it toward the table saw. He gets in his truck and starts it. The truck idles for a long time before he puts it in gear. Then he is gone. Through all of this I've been sitting on the top of my ladder, just watching, listening. When the growl of his truck has faded out among the hills I curse a good riddance, a nice loud one, and without thinking I strike out at something with heel of my hand. The roof beam goes crashing to the floor.
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So I'll go on alone, I think on Monday, hire some guys to help me. I eat at the Tally-Ho, work seven to six, read in my room. I sleep a lot. Tuesday I change my mind; I don't want a house, none of it, all that responsibility, the expense. Maybe I'll travel again. This comes to me on Wednesday and I imagine a trip out West, nights in the tent, days on the road, plenty of time to wander. I plug in my phone and call Alicia but when her answering machine clicks on I hang up. That night in the glow of a lantern I hammer a For Sale sign to a tree in front of my house.
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On Thursday, without calling, without letting me know, Daddy shows up again just like nothing has happened. He's sitting high up on the stoop of my apartment sucking a toothpick when I come home from supper. Leaning against the door is my For Sale sign.
"I stopped by out at the site," he says. "We can lick this thing. No mistakes this time. I figured a new way to do it."
I stand on the steps below him and listen. Something about him has changed, something fundamental but obvious, and it takes me a moment to see what it is. He's gotten a haircut; his beard is trim, his neck clean. He's wearing khaki trousers with a new leather belt around his bulgy waist and on the stoop behind him lies his old guy's good Stetson. He even smells of aftershave, something sweet and cheap from his grandchildren. For the first time in years he looks more or less like himself, but older and worn out and somehow vulnerable. Of course it's my fault.
"Listen, Daddy, I'm sorry "
"Don't worry about it, Hoss."
We look at each other for a long time, and understand. We'll go on with the house, we'll see, we'll finish it.
"Oh! Some cookies your sister made," he says and holds out a tinfoil bundle. I sit on the stoop beside him. He takes a pack of Viceroys from his pocket and offers it to me along with some matches. I slip one out, light it, hand the package back to him but he shakes his head no and tells me to keep it.
"I only smoked one," he says. "Don't tell your mother."
We glance sideways, we grin, we glance away. We talk in that familiar after-dinner way of fathers and sons. We have nowhere to go, nothing to do but talk. I smoke and he sniffs the cloud I make and after a while I offer again, shaking the pack at him. This time, with a shrug, he accepts.
"Just one more," he says.
He savors the taste, the feel of it, rolling it between his fingers as he would a fine cigar and he coughs a quick little blast each time he exhales. I keep offering and he keeps taking. He shouldn't, but this is the way of men and we both know it.
So we sit there and smoke as the dusk comes on and then deepens, becomes tender, talking about nothing in particular, talking about roof beams and wood siding and wallboard, talking about dimensions and strategy, talking in low voices and muttered grunts, until the phone rings inside. It's like a jarring pulse in the atmosphere. We turn our heads to listen. I know who it is; four weeks it's been and I'm sure she's wondering. Where have you been? she'll want to know. Are you okay? And your papa? Have you murdered him? Is it a house yet? All those questions.
"A man should answer his phone," my daddy says but I keep still, keep silent, biding my time. Then the ringing stops.
Naming Mansfield
Edward Mansfield, the prize-winning journalist, has had a hard day and would like to soak in his hot tub. But the hot tub is out of commission, has been since Christmas. He believes the fault lies in the electricity, the very idea of which frightens him. Everybody knows that water and electricity don't go together without danger and he has been hesitant to test his luck lately.
He bought the hot tub at a garage sale the summer he and Marcia were restoring the old house. Those were the good days, back before Marcia quit her job to take up painting and sculpturing full time. An
artist is supposed to be crazy, he figures, and he had expected controlled lunacy, strange talk and late nights and weird people dropping by; he had not expected her to tell him she didn't love him anymore and take off for days at a time. She says she's out looking for inspiration and material, but he knows better: must be another man.
There's a piece of her work on the patio. It's an old floor lamp, denuded of all its lamp parts, with lengths of angle iron welded at right angles across the top so that it has "shoulders," as she has explained. Hanging from the angle iron are all kinds of things: antique shoes, a couple of old toasters, a bread box, a roasting pan and other such domestic items. It's all painted bright gold, like the sun. The title of this piece, she says, is FREEDOM or A MODERN-DAY SUNSET. She can't decide which.
Eddie slams one of the toasters to make it all clank together, hoping it will chip the expensive paint. Then he steps off the patio into his summer-deep Bermuda grass and slogs the fifteen feet to the hot tub, just for a look. The redwood deck he built with such care is cracked and disjointed at the corners, a risk to stand on, and the padded top, badly faded and torn now, lies off to the side so that half the tub is open to the sky. There's a beer can floating in the thick covering of scum and something else. He pokes the something else with a finger and then yanks his hand away. It's a dead squirrel, bloated and hard.
"So that's what's been stinking around here," he says.
He goes into the house to wash death off his hands. At the bathroom sink he blinks back tears thinking of that dead squirrel in his hot tub and how it must have struggled toward the end.
Time to call Matt.
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Eddie's best friend is trying to be a writer. His name, oddly, is Matt Mansfield. Back when they both worked at the newspaper this created a great deal of confusion. The city editor for instance would yell across the newsroom, "Hey, Mansfield," and they'd both look up, start to rise to see what he wanted. The editor would then get flustered and yell, "No no, not both of you, just the big fart." That meant Eddie. They don't look at all alike Eddie is large and fair, Matt about average and dark an ironic fact which still disturbs some people.
Memorial Day Page 3