Journeyman by Marc Bojanowski

Author:Marc Bojanowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Published: 2017-01-03T05:00:00+00:00

7

After shoring the foundation, Manny and Nolan set about gutting the house clean. They rip out stained carpet and padding in the bedrooms and they pry yellowed asbestos tiles from the kitchen floor. Tearing down the living-room sheetrock, they find wallpaper so brittle it crumbles into a fibrous dust in the palm of their gloved hands and swirls before their masked faces. Behind the wallpaper run redwood lath boards a true foot wide. Beautiful old wood.

The low men pull wiring hand over fist and toss porcelain insulators out gaping holes where double-hung windows once stood. They yank free heavy quilts of chipped tile and sawzall rusted galvanized water pipes from the second-story bathroom. They walk through rooms sunshot and roiling with motes as they haul moldy swaths of fiberglass down the stairs and out the back door, leaving drag marks through the farmhouse in the sheetrock and wallpaper dust. In one day alone they amass a garbage heap in the driveway nearly a story tall.

Joe meets them at the end of that day with a Mexican beer and lime for Nolan and a cola for Manny.

—A lot of trash, he says to Nolan, handing the journeyman the beer.

—Yes, it is.

They all three stand looking over the trash heap.

—One day, Joe says, all that was new.

—No más, Manny says.

—That’s what I just said, Manny. No más.

—Sí, no más.

—Always have to have the last word, don’t you, smartass?

—¿Cómo? Manny smiles, sipping his cola.

—Cómo, my ass, Joe says. You know what I meant.

It’s moments like these that leave Nolan feeling most at ease in Burnridge. He likes the camaraderie, the talk, the harmless practical jokes Manny plays on Guillermo and Joe. He also likes spending eight to ten hours of his day being held accountable for things he can handle. The tasks at hand focus his mind and keep at bay the troubles that hound him when he’s off work. On the ride to the farmhouse, he goes over in his mind the day’s jobs. As a low man with a journeyman’s experience, it’s difficult to get too excited about the work, but it reminds him of simple things he’d forgotten—how to use a shovel efficiently, how to mix quick-setting concrete effectively, how to use your body judiciously in backbreaking work.

Each morning, Manny and Joe flip a coin to determine the station to which the radio will be tuned until lunch. Joe favors classic rock to the local Spanish-language channel Manny always chooses. Nolan and Guillermo don’t care either way. When Joe wins, he lowers his head and nods while raising his right hand, index finger and pinkie splayed, thumb pressing down the middle two fingers to form Satan’s horns.

—Yeah, baby, he says. Rock ’n’ roll, baby.

To which Manny responds by turning down the corners of his mouth and raising his shoulders in a shrug.

But when Manny wins, he bends back at the waist and raises his hands before his face to play a triumphant air trombone out of the corner of his mouth while Joe covers his ears and groans.

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