Pallbearing

by Michael Melgaard

  Moira didn’t want to go. She whined and planted herself on the ground and wouldn’t budge. David tried unsuccessfully to reason with her and finally he said, “Bye, have fun,” and started walking. When he was thirty feet away, she screamed “Wait!” and ran to catch up. Once she was with him, she climbed up on the driftwood logs piled at the high-tide line and started walking along them, hopping from one to the next. David said, “Could you please try to hurry a bit?”

  She said, “I can’t put my feet down because of the lava!”

  “Come on, please. We don’t have time for that.”

  Moira kept walking on the logs until she got to the end of one that was too far from the next. She stopped and said, “Help!” David went back and bent down in front of her. She climbed onto his back and they picked their way along the rocky shore toward her mother.

  Katherine put out her cigarette when they got close. She said to David, “You took your time.”

  “I didn’t realize you had gotten so far ahead.”

  Moira said, “Dad told me that the ocean took the dead people out to sea because of eroding and all the coffins floated away.”

  David winced. Katherine said, “Why would you tell her that?”

  David put Moira on the ground and crouched down in front of her. He said, “See, I told you it was true.” Katherine tilted her head to one side and gave David her are-you-fucking-kidding-me look. He ignored it, instead smiling at Moira, then tickled her and said, “Let’s build a sandcastle!”

  She looked around the rocky beach and said, “There’s no sand.”

  “Then we’ll just have to make do with what we have.”

  David pulled a piece of driftwood out of a tangle of seaweed and tossed it on the ground. He found another that was roughly the same length and threw it on top. Then another. Moira asked what he was doing and he shrugged and kept pulling out sticks, breaking long ones so they were all the same length. Once he had a pile he carried them down to a flat part of the beach and started driving them into the ground. When Moira saw they were going to make a circle, she said, “It’s a wall!”

  “You got it. Can you grab me some more wood? Like this.” He showed her a stick and she concentrated on it, and then ran over to her mom and grabbed her hand and told her to come help.

  David worked on the wall. Moira came back a few minutes later with an armful of all-too-short sticks. She dropped them off and left to find more. Then Katherine came along with her own load. David focused on making sure one stick was in the ground right, but eventually had to turn around and get another. Katherine was staring down at him. He smiled at her. She said, “You think it’s funny?”

  He shook his head and drove another stick into the ground. “This is ridiculous. You’re angry because you walked ahead of us?”

  “I’m angry because this was supposed to be a day of us all together and you kept her with you.”

  “We were having fun and you didn’t stop.”

  “Why are you like this?”

  David said, “Almost done” to Moira, who was coming up behind Katherine with more sticks. Katherine walked over to a driftwood log and sat. Moira and David finished the wall, all crooked driftwood leaned together. He planted a few more sticks to fill in the bigger gaps and then stood. He waved his hand over it and said, “Behold, my queen, your ramparts are complete.”

  Moira looked it over and said, “It needs a roof.”

  “Absolutely. And a moat. And a drawbridge. It will be the finest sandcastle ever created!”

  “It’s not made of sand.”

  “Neither are sandwiches, but we eat them anyways.”

  “You’re silly.”

  “That seems to be the consensus around here.”

  “What’s ‘consensus’?”

  “Consensus is when everyone thinks I’m silly.”

  David started digging a moat with a flat piece of wood. Every scoop out made more pebbles and rocks to fall back in. The best he could manage was a shallow, wide ditch. While he worked, Moira leaned sticks up against the wall, trying to fill in the gaps. Katherine smoked and looked out over the ocean and then Moira got bored with trying to fix the wall and started waving around one of the sticks, commanding David to work faster in a voice that was meant to sound like a queen. David played along, grovelling and shovelling faster. Once the moat was as good as it was going to get, he said, “My queen, I’m going to find a roof.”

  Up the beach he found some rope tangled up with some driftwood. He pulled it out but there wasn’t enough to do anything with. He found some old planks and what looked like a pallet and then a little farther along he found a piece of plywood. He lifted one edge off the ground and gave the crabs time to find new shelter before he started dragging it back. It was waterlogged and heavy and he had trouble getting a good grip.

  When he got closer he saw Katherine had left her log. She was crouched on the ground by the castle and Moira was running around picking things up. Moira held something out to Katherine and then they both laughed. By the time David got back to them, they were both sitting on the ground. He said, “A roof for your castle, Your Highness.”

  Moira said, “Look, we made a garden.” They had arranged pieces of shell and wave-worn glass in spiral patterns all around the entrance to the castle. There was a little path too, and small twigs stood upright with seaweed wrapped around the tops. “Those are trees,” she explained. “Mom made them.”

  David said, “That’s very clever.”

  He lifted the plywood over top of the wall and let it down slowly. The castle shifted a bit to the left. Katherine got up and wiped the pebbles off her pants and David found a few large rocks to prop up the side that seemed most likely to give out. He stood back and admired their work. Moira was tending her garden. Katherine tapped her wrist and pointed at the darkening sky.

  David said to Moira, “Nothing left to do but move in.” He got down on his hands and knees and crawled in. He had to tilt his shoulders, and even still he knocked over one of the wall sticks.

  Inside, he tried to shift around and sit without knocking the whole castle over. Moira gave up on the garden and followed him in. David had to pull up his knees under his chin so she had room. He said, “I think it’s nicer from the outside.”

  Moira had just enough space to stand. She said, “I like it.”

  “I’m not saying it’s bad. I just wouldn’t want to spend the night here.”

  “It’d be cold.”

  “Very.”

  “We could make it better.”

  “I don’t know, it’s getting pretty late.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “It probably won’t be here tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  “It will be washed away by then.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s like the graveyard. It will get eroded by the waves when the tide comes in tonight.”

  She thought about that. David stretched out one leg as far as the opposite wall and rubbed his lower back. Sand sprinkled down from the ceiling. Through a gap in the wall he saw a freighter passing by on the horizon. The water had darkened to the same colour as the clouds. It looked like it was cutting through the air. Moira asked, “Can we stop it?”

  David took a moment to realize she was talking about the erosion, not the freighter. “I don’t think so. We’d need to reinforce it with something. Concrete maybe. Do you have any concrete?” She shook her head. “Then I think we’re out of luck.”

  Moira sat down across from her dad. Their knees touched. Now that they weren’t moving, David started to feel the cold and wet of the day.

  Outside, Katherine said, “It’s getting cold. We should get going.” Moira said no and Katherine said, “I don’t want you to catch a cold.” Moira said no again and David didn’t say anything. Katherine stared at the castle. She said, “Five minutes,�
�� then sat back down and lit another cigarette.

  Moira smiled at the extra time and turned to her dad, practically face to face. She said, “Would magic save the castle?”

  “Well, of course. Magic saves anything. You didn’t say you had any magic.”

  Moira picked up a stick. “This is a wand!”

  “What luck! Do you know a protection spell?”

  Moira waved the wand over her head while chanting something close to words. She touched the stick to the wall and spun around the whole castle. Then she tapped David’s nose with it. “You’re protected too.”

  “That’s great.”

  She waved the wand out the door, then looked around the castle, suddenly bored. David pulled her down onto his lap. He rubbed her shoulders. She banged her wand on the ground between their legs and stuck the stick in the sand, then swirled it around to make a hole.

  Eventually, Katherine said, “Time to go.”

  Moira looked back at her dad. David kissed the top of her head and then wrapped his arms around her. He said, “We can wait a few more minutes.” They listened to the waves dragging the beach into the sea.

  What She’d Remember

  Nick sat out the side of his truck with his elbows on his knees and his head hanging down between them. The morning zoo crew talked at him from the radio. Randy stood behind his truck, pulling his tools out of the back. He slammed the tailgate shut.

  Nick said, “Fuck.”

  Randy walked around front and grabbed his Thermos out of the cab. He held it out to Nick. Nick looked up, then reached under his seat and pulled out a cup. He wiped it with an old rag. Randy filled Nick’s cup and asked, “Aren’t you a little old for all these late nights?”

  Nick shook his head in a way that meant yes. They drank their coffees and listened to the hits until the DJ came on and gave the time. Randy turned off the radio and said, “Pitter patter.”

  Nick said, “Fuck off with that shit,” but flicked the last drops of his coffee at the ground and tossed the cup back in the truck. Nick tied up his boots, clipped on his Kuny sack, and limped after Randy toward the jobsite.

  Randy lifted a couple pallets of blocks up to the top of the scaffolding with the forklift while Nick got the mixer going. He hiked his jogging pants over his belly and dumped a bag of cement in the mixer, then added the water. When it was mixed, he dumped the mud into a wheelbarrow and pushed that onto a pallet that Randy had lifted up top. Then they climbed up, Nick slowly, taking one rung at a time. The sun was just coming up over the trees.

  Four buildings were going up on the site. The first was done and the tenants, a brake and lube place, had already moved in. The second building was just getting its roof. Randy and Nick had done the block work on the first two and would be done the third building in a few more weeks. Then they’d start on the fourth, which was just a hole in the ground waiting for the foundation to be laid. When the job was done, four identical cinder-block warehouses would stand in a row along the highway. It was shit work to put up ugly buildings, but at least it was steady for a few months.

  The other trades showed up while Nick and Randy worked. Some of the guys shouted hellos up to them. One had been out the night before; he let Nick know he’d lost a bet about whether or not Nick would make it in to work. Nick flipped him the bird.

  When the sun rose high over the buildings, Randy took off his sweater and Nick sat on a pallet and stripped down to his faded fluorescent swimming trunks.

  Nick said, “Anyways, I got to head out at lunchtime today.”

  “What for?”

  “Doctor.”

  “Again? You okay?”

  “Never have been.”

  “I’m serious, you good?”

  “Can’t imagine it’s too good when they call you back in.”

  “Well shit. Let me know if you need anything.”

  “I’ll be fine. Let’s get back to it.”

  Nick scooped mud onto his trowel and slid it along the edge of the blocks, covering about four feet’s worth of wall. He grabbed a block with his good arm and pulled it onto his hip and gave himself a few seconds’ rest before hauling it over the top of the rebar and lowering it into place. He tapped the block straight with the butt of his trowel, and then did the same with another. Before the mud dried, he and Randy double-checked with the plumb line and level to make sure it was all square, then Nick ran the jointer between the blocks to clean up the mud that had squished out. They did this over and over, the wall slowly getting taller.

  At ten the food wagon came by. They climbed down and Nick bought a doughnut and drank two more cups of coffee while the crew all shot the shit. Most of the guys sat down on their lunch coolers; Nick ate standing up, legs apart and leaning over a skid of bricks to avoid sitting on his hemorrhoids.

  They worked through the morning. Just before noon, the building a couple of feet taller, Nick pulled his jogging pants back on and said to Randy, “I’ll see you Monday.”

  Randy said, “Take care, okay?”

  * * *

  “How long have I been your doctor?”

  “I guess we started coming to you when Alice was pregnant with Jake. Maybe thirty years?”

  “That sounds about right. And what have I been telling you all that time?”

  “Usually to stop smoking.”

  “And drinking. And eating whatever it is you eat that makes your cholesterol tests look like they got dropped in a deep fryer.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “I try to keep things light. Anyways, we both know you’ve never listened to me and now I have to tell you that it’s time to stop.”

  “Yeah, I’ll cut back.”

  “No. That’s not going to cut it this time. If I were a betting man, I’d say the cirrhosis is going to be the one that kills you, but the over-under on a heart attack is close.”

  “Jesus. Do you talk to everyone like this?”

  “You’re a big boy. Do you want to look at the reports?” The doctor held out a clipboard; Nick shook his head. “I’ll break it down for you. Six months, a year at the outside.”

  “Fuck.”

  “If you cut everything out, the drinking, the smoking, you might get a few more years.”

  “Fuck.”

  The doctor sat down, softened. “Look, Jake was in here with your granddaughter the other day. Cute girl.”

  “Yeah. Don’t know where she gets that from.”

  “You clean up a bit, maybe you’ll live long enough that she remembers you.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Up to you though.”

  They sat there a minute. Nick said, “That it?”

  “I could give you the numbers of some alcohol treatment places.”

  Nick waved his hand. The doctor nodded. “Yeah, I figured.”

  “I guess I’ll be seeing you.”

  “I hope so, Nick.”

  * * *

  A case slid down to replace the one Nick pulled out of the cooler. He closed the door and limped over to the checkout where the clerk said, “You been keeping out of trouble, Nickie?”

  “You know it. Give me a pack of Player’s too.”

  Nick pulled a roll of twenties from his pocket and handed two over. He waved off the change. The clerk said, “What’s this for?”

  “Have a few on me after you get off work.”

  “I can’t . . .”

  “Sure you can. You always been good to me.”

  Nick dropped the case on the floor in front of the passenger seat and took out a beer. He lit a cigarette and pulled out of the parking lot, keeping the bottle out of sight between his knees.

  He’d normally go home and have a couple of drinks before heading out for dinner and a night at the pub, but he didn’t want to be in his cramped little bachelor apartment right then. Instead, he drove through
town and up hospital hill to where the roads curved around old properties that weren’t quite close enough to each other to make it a subdivision. He’d lived out that way a long time ago, when he first moved to town.

  This was the first part of town that expanded back in the seventies, during the start of the boom. Back when people still wanted trees between them and their neighbours and it seemed like there was enough space for everyone. Nick drove by the first piece of land he’d bought when he moved out here. The contractor he’d worked for then had given him a no-interest loan to get the lot, and the whole crew had pitched in to put up the house; he’d done the same for them when they got their own land, all of them working with each other during the week and for each other on weekends. It was exhausting, but they were young then and could always find the energy to help each other out.

  He was surprised to see the house he’d built was torn down, and a new one, too big for the lot, in its place. That made no sense: a well-built house, only thirty-five years old, shouldn’t be torn down. He’d only lived in the house a year, sold it for a good profit, then bought another piece of property — but it was the principle. So much wasted effort.

  Randy’s first place was still up, a few doors down. They’d done the brickwork on that house together. It had been good back then. Everyone helped each other with the hard work and then they’d all raise hell together when they were done. He’d gotten married and had Jake. The marriage didn’t last, but most of the others’ didn’t either; there were years when everyone seemed to be taking turns sleeping on each other’s couches. But he had money to burn — bricklayers were the best-paid trade back then. Now, even drywallers made better money.

  He drove around the roads that crossed each other and dead-ended with no rhyme or reason. There hadn’t been city-planning back then — a developer just bought a parcel of land and cut it up into lots; the roads were built around the features of the land, not cut in straight lines. He ended up outside the house he’d settled in the longest — still there. He was happy to see it looked the same. It was another one he’d built himself, a split-level, half-brick place.