Cottage for Sale, Must Be Moved (23 page)

“You tell Johnny if he wants to trade jobs, he can have this one,” Ed says, and we both laugh. Howard, in his newness, isn’t entirely sure of the joke. His smile is hesitant.

“Do you have some cardboard around so we can cover this?” Howard asks. He speaks with a strong accent: “Do ya have some cahhhdboahhhd ahhhrouhhnd so we ken covahhh this?” Despite the dropped r’s, his accent doesn’t strike me as Massachusetts. Farther north, I think, or, as he would say it, “fahhtheah nowwwth.”

“I’m sure I can find some,” I tell him. “That door will be great there,” I say to no one in particular. Ed is messing with the threshold. Howard leaning in to help. I mean to be encouraging, but they are not listening. I slip away in search of a cardboard box. On my way back to Ed and Howard, John flags me down. He’s gluing the old patio slate onto the tops of the pressure-treated boxes to make the cellar stairs.

“What do you think?” He has two steps in place already. They are not what I imagined. “I tried to match ’em up as close as I could,” he says.

That’s exactly the problem. I’d envisioned steps that blended blues and grays and purples and reds, and he has created steps all of a neutral green-blue. But I’m not sure how to say that politely. I dive in. “Oh, I like them—but I’d imagined the colors mixed.”

“Oh,” he says. A pause. “I thought you’d want to match ’em up.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“You want me to take them up?”

I think about it. “No,” I say, “let’s leave them. We can make the top step with some colors, and make a little landing that blends the colors too.”

“You’re the boss,” he says. “If you want me to take them up—”

“No, let’s just use more color on the top step.”

Near the end of the day, John finds me. “You’re the color person. You tell me how you want that top step.”

I lift and position the stones while John watches. Peter is nearby, Howard too, and soon Ed. Everyone watches me with the slate.

“This is just like
This Old House,
” Peter says, “except without the budget.”

Everyone laughs. I feel good in the middle of things. I don’t even mind they are looking—and laughing—at me.

Howard chances a remark. “She has the camera, too.”

“Yeah, but what she really needs is a video,” Peter says.

“Whaddya think?” I say, stepping back from my arrangement. They all crowd in, and nod.

“I’ll glue ’em into place,” John says. He steps in, and I step away. The camera is still around my neck so I sneak a shot of all the men, looking down at the slate. Peter and John complete the landing while Ed and Howard clean up for the day.

“Stairs look good,” Ed says a little later.

“And the door,” John says, “—and the windows?”

Ed smiles. “You want me to pick up stone tomorrow?” he asks John. “I can have ’em load it in my truck. We don’t need that much. Bluestone okay?” He asks me.

“Bluestone? Is that the color?”

“Yeah, you have your choice. There’s bluestone, which is darker, more blue-gray. Or I can get a lighter gray stone if you like that better.”

I’m thinking redstone, but I don’t say anything. “It will go at the bottom of the stairs?” I ask him. He nods. The blue will look good with the slate, I decide. “Blue sounds good,” I say to Ed.

Ed will pick up stones, Peter some lumber. John will be a little late; he’s working at the firehouse all night. Howard will be here first; he’ll start stripping the blue boards on the back side of the cottage. Arrangements are complete. There’s a pause.

“What a day,” I say. “We really got so much done. It was great.”

“My first day back,” Ed says. “See what happens when I’m on the job?” He smiles at me.

John grins at him. “You think you’ll finish that door tomorrow or the next day, Dad?” Ed laughs. Peter and Howard are smiling, too.

I am happy. I am happy with my French doors, and happy with my basement door and windows, happy with my steps, which almost look planned, and happy at the prospect of bluestone tomorrow. I don’t even care if it takes Ed and Howard two more days to get that door in perfect place. I am happy, most of all, with the feeling of movement. Four guys again tomorrow, and talk of starting on the roof next week. And the timing seems just right: the cooling days after Labor Day, the start of the new school year, a time of renewal and of preparation too, a time to ready ourselves and our homes for the coming winter, a time to harvest what we have sown: in this case, a tiny cottage planted on a sandy hillside late last May.

THE ROUTINE BECOMES ESTABLISHED.
Most mornings, John arrives first, followed by Howard, then Peter, and Ed, usually last. The schedule at the fire station affects attendance on my job. When John works a day shift, only Ed and Howard are here. If John works an overnight, Peter will get things under way before John pulls up and climbs out of his truck, looking beat but determined to get on with his day. He likes to work back-to-back shifts at the station to give himself more time for the construction business, and I cannot say that his work seems to suffer. Just this spring he was recognized as best EMT of the region, and on the building side, he has many return customers. But I worry he will make himself old and weary ahead of his time. “Do you get any sleep?” I ask him one morning after he’s just finished up a double.

“We usually get a couple hours on the overnight. Maybe four or five on a good night. It’s always better now, after Labor Day.” That makes sense, fewer people on the Cape, fewer calls. “They do some crazy things in the summer,” John says, letting me know it is not simply quantity of people but their inclination toward mischief that subsides when the tourists depart.

Thanks to John and Peter, I have a new interest and awareness of the fire station in Hyannis. Now when I drive past it on my way downtown, I peer into the parking lot, looking for John’s little white Miata. Sometimes I see it, and once or twice, I have spied his big paneled truck, the truck that has been spending many days in my driveway, the truck that a couple of days ago, Egypt inspected thoroughly. I snapped some photos of the cat detective from the rear before he turned around and faced me, annoyed at the intrusion, but willing to pose for a few more shots: silver-gray cat, tail up, gold eyes glowing in the darkness of the truck filled with tools; bumper sticker in the foreground suggesting voters vote Yes to a ballot question that will affect the funds allocated to emergency services.

I find myself thinking about John’s day job—which he often performs at night. I wonder about the matter-of-fact way he says, “I won’t be here tomorrow. I have to be a fireman.” I wonder how it feels, being a fireman. Answering calls that could be a matter of life and death, placing yourself in danger in order to help others. Another member of the band that I play in—an excellent trumpeter—is the head of Emergency Services for the Cape Cod region. The other night at rehearsal, his beeper went off. He apologized for the interruption, saying, “Don’t plan on a medical emergency tonight. Cape Cod Hospital is full and now we have to take everyone to Falmouth. If they fill up, we’ll be trucking patients off-Cape.”

The next morning, when John came into my kitchen, I knew he hadn’t had an easy night. In our town, all firefighters are also certified as EMTs, and the fire department responds to all 911 calls. John has explained to me that there is a rotation, that whether you respond to fire alarms or work as an EMT varies shift by shift.

“Heard Cape Cod Hospital filled up last night.”

“Yeah, what a nightmare.”

I can only imagine the daily courage, stamina, and strength of character that John’s job requires. But I am learning something about the kind of men who choose his profession. Now that the red roof is under way, two more colleagues from the station, Eric and Paulie, have joined the crew. Eric is blond and broad-shouldered; he’s the youngest man on the job so far. Paulie is quiet and polite, with dark hair and a dark mustache and wire-rimmed glasses. As the roofing crew works overhead, I hear snatches of their conversations. Much of it is related to the task at hand, but especially when Eric is working, I catch some firehouse gossip. He likes to talk more than his coworkers, and the older men are patient with him. They listen, and on occasion, I hear their gentle corrections—both of his work on the roof and of his youthful assessments of their work at the station.

As a consultant, I move from workplace to workplace, always the outsider looking in. I can get a lot accomplished that way, but sometimes I miss that feeling of belonging, the ability to talk shop with a trusted peer. I know my friends with nine-to-five jobs envy me my freedom. Indeed, I do not miss the office politics. But this workplace on my roof. It seems free of petty grievances and corporate intrigues. As the project progresses, I am struck, again and again, by the easy camaraderie of my firefighting builders. They work together, joke together, rely on each other. And that leads me back to thinking of their jobs as firefighters. Any one of these guys trusts any other with his very life. It isn’t the sort of bond you forge in just any workplace.

More than one person has told me, “You are lucky with your builders.” But I think the truth is we are lucky with our firefighters. I can’t figure out if every one of them is a genuine, nice guy who became a fireman, or if they were just average guys who got nicer on the job. In either case, I feel safe and certain when I hear their heavy boots move across the roof and their light voices drift in through my office window.

“Firemen,” I say to Harry one day on the phone, “are the last American heroes.”

“Huhh,” he says. Harry has a full-time job now, doing programming for a financial services company. I’m not sure if he is thinking or just biding time while he works on a computer operation. I dive in anyway.

“Think about it. We don’t trust our leaders anymore, not like we used to. Politicians are not heroes. And we aren’t at all sure how to feel about the military. We want them to defend us, but we feel uneasy about the whole military thing.” I pause, wondering if Harry will require a better definition of “military thing.” He says nothing. “The police, it’s the same deal. We want them to protect us; we depend on them to catch the crooks, but we sure don’t like them when they pull us over for speeding. Not to mention there’s that same follow-the-orders kind of aura around them, too. We don’t really trust the cops either.”

“It’s true,” Harry says. I guess he’s finished whatever he was doing on the computer.

“But firefighters. They don’t enforce rules or kill people in the line of duty. They save people’s lives. That’s their job. Rescue people, animals. Put out fires. Stop heart attacks. I mean, these are men and women who place themselves at risk every day to save the lives of strangers they don’t even know.”

“So you like having all those firefighters around, working on your house?” Harry has distilled my speech to its essence.

“Yes,” I say, “I do.”*

*
THIS MORNING,
Peter arrives at 7:20
A.M.
I hear him moving ladders from the back to the front of the house. Yesterday, it was John who woke us up, around seven in the morning, as he clomped on the roof over the bedroom. Egypt looked at me, made the final determination that I was the craziest human he’d ever known, jumped off the bed, and headed for the door. “Out,” he said, “I want out. Now.”

Today the wake-up call is a little easier to take. Peter isn’t walking on our heads in his boots. Still, Egypt believes it would be best to go out before breakfast just to make sure Peter is doing his job. After ten or twelve minutes of covert operations, the Cat-in-Charge decides it is time to come home to eat; he bangs on the bedroom window, requesting that I lift the screen. While I am making Egypt’s breakfast—half a thyroid pill, half an antibiotic pill ground up and sprinkled in Max Cat chicken—Howard appears at the new side doors, the bargain French doors that cause me sinful pride. I unlock the left-hand door to let Howard climb up and into the house.

“All I need is the Tyvek.”

“Ah, the mysterious Tyvek,” I say, because yesterday afternoon, he and Ed had searched everywhere for it, never thinking to look in the hall. Perhaps because it is not yet a hall.

“The worst thing is,” Howard says, “I think it was me who put it here.” I like him even more for this small admission.

Howard is, I would guess, in his late sixties or early seventies, possibly older. His work is slow and steady, and he is a perfect partner to Ed. Now that I have watched the dynamics of this building crew for awhile, I have learned not only that Ed and Howard can be trusted with the small details, but that John has a good sense about who should do what on any given project. He knows his father and Howard won’t cringe when I say I want to save boards, move a window, or reuse a door. My recycling makes sense to them, and they don’t mind small jobs.

John, on the other hand, much happier with a big job to do, issues a warning whenever I say I want to reuse something: “Whatever you save, you’re gonna end up spending on labor.” He says “laybah.”

I’ve learned to stand firm with John on my recycling impulses. Last week, we moved a cottage window from the section of wall that will be removed to make the opening to my office. “It has to go,” I told John. “And a window in the eastern corner of my office will give me morning light and a view of the holly tree from my desk.” John agreed an east-facing window was a good idea, but suggested a new unit would be easier to install. “The window I want in that spot is the old window, the window that matches all these other windows,” I told him.

John smiled, shrugged, and put Ed and Howard on the case.

Today Ed and Howard are applying the Tyvek to the formerly blue-planked section of the cottage, in preparation for a coat of red cedar shingles. And you can bet we saved every blue board. Howard and Ed and I are sure they will come in handy along the way. They are pine tongue and groove, and in perfect shape on the side that isn’t blue.

When I go outside to say good morning, Ed asks if he can come in to use the phone. “Better get a building inspector over here,” he says to me. “Time to start talking to them about that deck.” Ed reaches voicemail, gives my address, and asks the inspector to stop by, have a look at the deck—or the imagined deck, to be more precise, the deck we hope to build.