10.17.2010

Hardhat Stickers and Trophy Scars

A lull in the work and a crest in the confusion lends time to relieve myself in the three-by-three portable latrine on the jobsite. It's after eight-thirty, we've been working for over thirteen hours to get the steamlines tied back in by tomorrow's deadline-- a promise made flippantly by an absent owner at a job meeting without consulting his foreman as to the true state of things. Through the thin plastic walls I overhear another pipefitter talking to his five-year-old daughter on his phone. A welding machine buzzes and hums in the background as it guzzles gasoline.

"I'm sorry I couldn't see you today, OK? I had to work late again, OK? Do some artwork for me and I'll hang it up when I get home tonight, OK?" That last part about reaching our homes this evening feels like a goal that can't be met at this rate, but it sounds like he honestly means it. Maybe he doesn't realize how far under the gun we are. I'm the realist of the crew if nothing else. Strangely, I'm also the youngest.

We crawl back down into the manhole. There's a sixty-pound bag of grout in the way of our work that a laborer must've left behind. For his diminutive hourly rate I can't blame his lack of ambition. I pick up the bag and move it to the corner of the concrete vault, taking a moment to read a warning in fine print after setting it down. I decide to inform that fitter full of apologies of all the danger we're in.

" 'This product contains crystalline silica, which in the State of California is known to cause cancer'," I recite. "We sure are lucky we're on the other coast or else we'd be at risk!" I jest.

The joke fails, barely earning a smirk. He's got other things on his mind. And the knowledge of our certain death is beginning to rival the redundancy of a snare drum. He's moved on to bigger and better. His cell phone's in his hand again, but this time it's not pressed to his ear.

"What are you doing?" I ask. "Taking pictures of what not to do for the Union magazine?"

"No. I'm sending my wife a video. She doesn't believe I've been working for thirteen hours in the rain. She thinks I'm having a rendezvous."

I ponder what his spelling of his last word would be. It's just as doomed as he is. I decide right then and there to get out of the trade before it claims another casualty. I lift the collar of my sweatshirt over the bottom half of my face, inhale a deep whiff of decay, and realize it's too late: it isn't the wet leaves I'm smelling this time.

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