Half the Day Is Night (31 page)

After awhile he tried using his other foot, but that was awkward. Still, it gave him a chance to rest the cramped one. They worked for three hours, attaching the duct things to the girder. And then finally it was time to find his bike and follow Santos back to the yard.

Facon had to call his name three times before Santos said, “He's here. Hey, wake up, man.”

“Sorry,” he said. He was so cold he was stupid. They would think it was just because he was cold, they wouldn't think he had a different name.

The water in the shower was hot, thank God. Then he just wanted to go to bed until the two-hour shift in the afternoon.

“No,” Santos said, “you got to eat. Pyroxin make you empty. You feel better after you eat.”

He didn't want to eat. But he hobbled after Santos. His foot still hurt.

As soon as he smelled food his stomach contracted into a hard knot. He was so hungry he couldn't think of anything except the smell of tomato. The jocks got enormous amounts of food, huge plates of rice and beans and spaghetti and rolls and cake and doughnuts rolled in sugar. “Carbohydrates,” Santos told him, “That's the best.” Skinny Santos had rice and beans and curry. “You like chapatis?” Santos asked. “Try some. Indian food, I never have them before I come to work at the fish farm. I really like the Indian food.”

Chapatis looked like tortillas. David got spaghetti and two big soft rolls and found himself going back for white cake with pink frosting. He could not remember when he had ever eaten so much in his life.

After lunch he was so full he could barely move, but Santos chattered like a maniac. David just wanted a nap. Santos was going on, something about Big Andre, one of the other divers, who was Haitian and who did voudoun. Santos hung around while David sat on his bed and wished everybody would leave him alone.

“It's the pyroxin,” Santos said. “At first, you know, you are not used to it, and it just wipe you out, man. But after awhile you get used to it.”

And then it was two, and they had to go back to the lockers and suit up for two more hours in the dark and the cold.

Santos handed him another pyroxin. David looked at the tiny white pill in his hand. If it made him feel as bad after the second dive as it had after the first, maybe he should skip it.

“Are you crazy?” Santos hissed. “You can't stand it out there, you not take a pyroxin.”

He had made a mistake. He should never have taken the job. But what else was he going to do?

“Hey,” Santos said, “don't worry, you get used to it. Everybody does.”

*   *   *

He spent the weekend on the bright sunlit grasslands. He didn't like the shooting, but if he couldn't escape into the light he didn't know how he'd have stood it.

But after that it was Monday.

In the yard on Monday, MacKenzie said that someone would have to take samples on Wednesday. There were only three people in the yard but the air was full of voices volunteering.

“What kind of samples?” David asked Santos.

“For the project, in Miami,” Santos said. “She never take me.”

“What is so good about taking samples?”

Santos shrugged. “It's different, you know? You take the sled out, and this drill. And you work around the site, see, and when you are done, you go back, even if shift is not over.”

He wouldn't be picked. Of course not, why would they pick someone who was so new? Who didn't know how to do anything?

Still, on Tuesday he was helping mix the stuff they used like cement, turning the bag and wondering about the properties that allowed it to harden underwater the way it did. MacKenzie swam over to make Inez go up on the structure and he said, “This is interesting stuff.”

MacKenzie swung towards him, but the site was full of silt and they were close to the lights, so there was glare on her faceplate. He couldn't see a thing. She probably thought he was crazy. Or mouthing off.

“I have studied a little chemistry, see,” he said. “I am thinking about why…” His English failed him, not so much because of his lack of vocabulary as because he just went blank, could not manage the effort of thinking in English.

“You've studied chemistry?” MacKenzie asked, her clipped American voice made him feel as if he should stand up straight. “Is your chemistry like your construction experience?”

He managed to laugh, not sure if she was ribbing him or not. “No,” he said, “my chemistry experience is more.”

“My chemistry experience is
more
”?
“Better,”
he meant
better.

MacKenzie said, “Okay.” Nothing else. And then she was moving off, shouting at someone for stirring up more silt.

At shift end on Tuesday he swam back to the yard, shivering and tired. He felt bruised from the cold. The jocks would all climb out, lips blue from the cold, like when children swam at the beginning of the year and the water wasn't warm.

“Park,” MacKenzie said, waving him over.

He didn't know for a moment if he should put his bike away or not, the cold made him stupid.

“Didn't you say you had studied chemistry?”

“Yes ma'am,” he said.

“You take samples, then.”

Around the yard there were groans. “Fucking Parks?” someone said, but it didn't sound really angry.

*   *   *

Wednesday after lunch he took a nap. He was dozing when the cat jumped onto his bunk. Meph stood a moment and then curled up in his face.

“Non,” he said. Cat hair in his nose. He moved the kitten. Meph stood up and looked over the edge and David assumed that he was going to leave but he climbed over David's knees instead and curled up against the back of David's legs.

He was still there when David woke up and watched David get up but didn't move. “Is comfortable, eh?” David said.

The kitten stuck his leg into the air and started grooming.

When David left he assumed that Meph was still on the bed, but the kitten suddenly ran down the hall ahead of him and stopped. The locker room was damp and proved too much, Meph sat down in the hall. Lemile, one of the other jocks, bent down and petted him and Meph stood up and arched under his hand.

When he left, he thought maybe he could leave Meph here. Someone would see he got fed.

“Kim Park? You're taking samples? I'm Naranji, I run the lab. Are you familiar with the instruments?” he asked. He was small and neat and very dark, the palms of his hands very pale when he spread them to make a point. There was quite a bit of equipment and he went through it carefully, explaining what David should do. “If you have trouble,” he said, “I will be in the booth with Facon, just give me a holler.” Naranji smiled, “You know the phrase?”

Like Virginia. “I'll give you a holler,” he said.

He suited up. The pyroxin cleared his head, woke him up.

Out into the yard. He was the last jock out because of the time he'd spent with Naranji but Ms. Facon just said, “Park?” without reprimand.

He went out to the site and set up the little drill to take samples. He took water samples, which he thought would be full of sludge. He took a series, moving farther and farther from the site until he was surrounded by the dark and the cold, the work lights a yellow haze. The instruments steadied him, having a purpose made it easier to be out here. But it took longer than he would have thought and he wasn't done any earlier than the work crew. It was still cold. But he liked the work better than construction, liked folding up the drill and putting it on the sled. It would have been easier if his fingers weren't clumsy in the cold.

“You took a long time,” Naranji said when he got to the yard.

“I am sorry, it is the first time so I think I'm slow,” David said.

“It's okay. You took the samples away from the site? Good.”

“He was thorough,” MacKenzie said, startling David.

“Good job,” Naranji said and grinned. “I like thorough.”

*   *   *

After that it was just the same thing, day after day. A job.

Two of the jocks were arguing in Spanish, their voices hard off the concrete walls of the locker room. One of them was new. Fish jocks disappeared, new faces replaced them.

It was the second dive of the day, and this week they were diving two hours in the morning, three in the afternoon. It made for a long afternoon. David preferred to do three in the morning. He could face the cold better in the morning.

But it was pyroxin that made it bearable to suit up. He could dread the dark water but still anticipate the heat. The precious heat, starting with the chamois lining of the divers' gloves—sometimes it started in his chest, but mostly it was like the first time he suited up, and he put on the gloves and his hands were warm, and the warmth was all through him waiting for him to notice. He liked the pyroxin, but that was dangerous, no matter how much Santos told him it was not addicting.

Santos told him to just take one, but sometimes the divers took two. Big Andre almost always took two. Santos said sometimes he took two, but with Santos it was hard to know how much was truth and how much was exaggeration.

The problem was that the pyroxin didn't last three hours. He dreaded the cold, dreaded the water. The best thing would be if he could take the pyroxin halfway through the shift, just as one was wearing off, start another. He would be tired after the shift, but that was okay, he could just sleep it off. If the warmth lasted the whole shift, then it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe two would make it more bearable.

So he popped two and finished suiting up.

The divers called the surfacing pool
la luna.
It was pale blue-green, lit by a circle of light and it cast a clear cold light up under the faces of the jocks standing around it, getting ready to dive. Last night he had dreamed about the moon pool. It had been the kind of dream where he had just dealt with the unpleasantness, just done what he had to, walked down to the pool and dove in, and once through the pool he was a soldier again, fighting an underwater battle, swimming through the dark. The dream did not jerk him awake but eventually became unpleasant enough that he woke up. Lying there in his bunk, staring at the dark ceiling, surrounded by the barracks snores of the other divers and wondering who the hell the cat was sleeping with, he had tried to resolve the dream, tried to think of what he should have done instead, and afterwards he had gotten more and more disturbed, until lying awake thinking about the dream was more frightening than the dream itself had been, because the feeling of the dream wouldn't leave him.

He had the aftertaste of the feeling now, looking at the pool. He needed to quit. Even the hotel room was preferable to this. Meph would be pissed, Meph liked the fish farm. Maybe he could just leave the kitten here.

Any fool who would come here and establish dependents deserved what he got.

He sighed again and sat down beside the pool. Cool water. He pulled his facemask down, worked it a moment until it felt right against his cheeks and forehead. Isolation, and then the mic opened and he could hear the chatter from the yard. Nothing to do but get it over with. Lots of people hated their job. It was the human condition. Probably the hunter-gatherers who painted the mastodon hunts had bitched about the shaman and the tribal leader.

He pulled his legs out and turned around and fell back into the moon.

The yard was cold but lit. They were not allowed to linger, once Ms. Facon, the yard boss, had logged them present they grabbed a bike and took off for the site. He envied the real fish jocks, the ones who worked the fish pens; the two mechanics were almost always in the yard doing something. It was nice to be a mechanic, you could be anywhere and as long as you looked busy people assumed you were supposed to be there. He couldn't be a mechanic, he couldn't really fix things. Besides, the mechanics and the jocks that worked with the fish were permanent and the construction crew was all temporary. When they got the building up they'd be done.

He didn't think he'd be here for the two months that the project was scheduled.

The dark was always bad, the long ride out to the site. But he felt strong with his two pyroxin. He felt full of energy. His head was clear.

They were putting up sheeting to pour concrete. He hoped he'd be working with Patel, she didn't talk much, just worked, and he liked that. But MacKenzie, the foreman, put him with Lopez and Antoine. Antoine was all right, but Lopez talked all the time.

“Dese keed,” Lopez said, and something else that David couldn't understand. “Dese keed is estupeed.”

David thought maybe Lopez was talking about the new kid, but he wasn't sure. He always had trouble understanding Lopez's English. He usually just made agreeable noises.

The site was full of silt. He could see the separate particles, suspended. Stirring up silt brought the wrath of the foreman down on you, but no matter how careful they were they stirred it up. The filters were working, but as they went up the superstructure of the building the fog got worse until the lights were dim and far away.

They went up on the structure, prepping for putting walls up. Better than pouring cement, David thought.

He took a deep breath, his telltale said he was breathing fast, but not too fast, not hyperventilating. He felt eager to start, ready to be doing something.

The first hour flew. He was surprised to glance at the time and see he'd been out here that long. He was starting to feel a little cold, but not too bad. Mostly on his back and in his fingers and toes. The silt hung around them, defined their helmet lights so that he could see the sweep of Lopez's beam as he turned his head. Lopez's vision. Where the light was, that was what Lopez was seeing—in a way he could see Lopez's sight.

The silt drifted, sometimes in clouds, sometimes just particles. They didn't shine like dust particles, they were heavy and absorbed light.