The circular saw could cut through elephant bones, but today it just cuts wood. The spinning teeth scream and spit out sawdust as they chew through stacks of pre-marked planks, plywood, two-by-fours, and trusses. Jim operates the silver tool. He’s an ex-marine with a barrel-chest and two barrel-arms, and he knows jackshit about framing houses since today is his third day. But he’s my boss’s best friend, so that makes him more qualified to do the cutting than me, apparently. I never knew working for my dad’s construction company would be so political.
Even though I’m just fourteen, I’ve been on my dad’s sites since I was big enough to hold a box of screws. I’ve seen his workers measure and cut, use the nail guns, snap lines, and set windows, but I still do the dumb labor. Picking up little pieces of rubbish around the jobsite is the only task I have today, just like all the rest of the days this summer, and the summer before that. So much for gaining experience. Empty McDonald’s bags, Mountain Dew bottles, cigarette boxes, broken boards and rusty nails are the tools of my trade. At the end of the day, though, I love to see them in a big pile awaiting gallons of gasoline and one well-placed match. The best part of construction is destruction.
“Josh,” calls my dad, “come here and hold this tape measure.” He’s been designing an attic for a good half-hour, but he’s come to a rough spot he can’t measure alone because the wall is too long. In other words, my expertise as the workplace grunt is needed.
“Ok. I’m coming,” I say.
“Hurry up. My arm’s about to fall off.” He’s dramatic when he gives commands, expecting me to run like an eager rabbit to wherever he is. But I know full well his arm will still be hanging from his shoulder regardless of my pace.
“Quit jacking off and get your butt over here! It’s gonna be dark soon, and I gotta get this shit laid out before we get home.” He says that every night, always trying to make me scramble for nothing. “If I wasn’t your dad, I’d fire your ass right now.” He always says that too.
Eventually, I arrive on the scene of the soon-to-be-built attic and grab the end of the tape measure.
“Ok,” he mutters, “six and quarter, plus three-eighths is—” As his voice trails off, he scribbles down some ugly-looking numbers on a piece of scrap wood. To me they look like characters from a lost language, either alien or pre-historic, or maybe both. I’ll bet Jim the ex-marine knows how to interpret them, since comprehension of the boss’s chicken-scratch, or so I've heard, is a major prerequisite for operating the saw.
After an extended period of head-scratching, my dad looks at his wooden document with confusion and asks, “What were those numbers I just said? Those numbers? Did you hear the numbers I said?”
“Nope. Sorry.” I’m the site’s garbage man, but my memory is twice as good as the boss’s.
“Ahh, shit. I’ll have to re-measure. Here hold the tape again.”
“Wait,” I interrupt, “I think you had six and a quarter, plus three-eighths. I’m pretty sure that’s what you said.” My arm is getting tired and I’m not ready for another round of scribbling.
“Oh yeah. That’s it.” He doodles again, this time a tad more legibly. The numbers are definitely leaning towards pre-historic now.
“You’re welcome, Dad,” I cough.
“What? Welcome for what?”
“Never mind.” He can’t even remember my birthday, so it’d be dumb to think he’d remember the last pivotal ten seconds of his own life, the life in which my adolescent brain remembered his crucial measurements.
“Ok,” he says as he drops the tape into his belt, “I guess I’m all set with you here. Why don’t you go around back and get all the trash and burn it. I think Jim’s got some scraps for you. And don’t get crazy with the fire.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
As I collect Styrofoam cups stained with coffee and retrieve Jim’s wasteful scraps, I kick up little clouds of red dust. After finding the gas can, I unscrew the nozzle and pour. Yellow liquid-magic soaks the trash and beads onto the ground in tiny rivulets; the rivulets become little puddles, which become flowing streams, which eventually develop into reservoirs of astronomical potential energy. Maybe this match will show the boss how I feel.
1 comment:
I'm glad to see that almost all dads are the same. But fire does always seem to have an almost ironic "cooling of the spirit" effect. I'm not saying that we should all become pyromaniacs when we are angry, but sometimes producing energy helps. You have written an extremely well written story. The details, and the small 'tid-bits' of imformation made it a very funny read.
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