The Carpenter (3 page)

—Morning, said Pete.

—Top of the morning to you.

—Ready for your first day?

—You bet, buck.

—I asked Barry to ask Clifton Murray where we’re going, said Pete. It’s out at the lake. Where all the new places are going up. My mom packed you a lunch. It’s on the back seat.

They went south out of town and followed a road along the bottom edge of Lake Kissinaw. Lee remembered the geography
of it, the aspect of the trees, a certain house. A sign advertised a lakeside subdivision to be built in the next year.

—I hear you don’t go to school no more, said Lee.

—I … No, that’s true. I quit.

—Wasn’t to your liking?

—You could say that. I don’t know how to explain it.

—So you work at a gas station all the time?

—Pretty much, said Pete. I’m saving some money. Before Grandma got sick, I was planning to leave.

—Is that right? Where were you going to go?

—West, said Pete. Out to the ocean. I thought I would figure it out from there. For now I just have to keep focused.

Lee felt an immense sense of strangeness with Pete, now that he’d met him and put a face to the name. It was not entirely comfortable but it was not as bad as Lee had expected it might be. Overall, it was just hard to believe that they were sitting side by side in a car all these years later.

—Was it sort of the same way for you? said Pete.

—Say what?

The kid was giving him a sidelong look, trying mostly to keep his eyes on the road as he drove.

—Staying focused. When you were … inside.

Lee thought about the question, and about the strange feeling he had sitting next to this kid. Nobody had ever asked him how he’d kept focused in prison. After a moment, he said: Well, there was this and that, I guess. The first couple of years it was all the wrong things. But later on I started looking in different places. I thought the Bible was okay. All that talk about lands of milk and honey sounded good. Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit in me. That’s one of the Psalms.

—Yeah, I think I’ve heard that one, said Pete.

—I also had some dirty magazines. Those helped too.

They both laughed.

—There really wasn’t all that much, said Lee. You’ve got to
get along with what you have. There was TV, which a lot of guys looked at, but I never cared for it. I thought a lot of the programs were bullshit.

—They mostly are.

Lee studied Pete’s profile. He never would have believed it, but this was alright, riding along with Donna’s son. This was alright. He had a fondness for the kid already.

—I haven’t known you real long, said Lee. But I can see you’re one of the good guys.

The job site was on the south shore of the lake, which was screened by a long, rocky point from the town waterfront. An orchard used to grow here and some of the apple trees remained yet, untended and straggling. A large cottage, four thousand square feet, was being built on the property. When Pete and Lee arrived, the building was just the framing and the roof and some sheathing. The ground was trampled mud. There were stacks of building material and a tall heap of half-inch crushed stone. A BobCat and two cars and two pickup trucks all stood in the driveway. Lee counted five men unloading tools. A wooden sign read M
URRAY
C
USTOM
B
LDG
, C
ALL
F
OR
E
STIMATE’S.

Pete parked behind the trucks. Lee got out and retrieved his tool belt from the trunk. From the back seat he took the lunch pail Donna had packed for him. Pete watched him.

—Do you know when you’ll be done?

—No, said Lee. Anyhow I’ll see if someone here can give me a lift back into town. Don’t sweat it.

—Okay. Have a good day, Uncle Lee.

Lee’s face quirked.

—Something wrong? said Pete.

Lee laughed. He said: How about, I’ll call you Pete, and you call me Lee. There’s no need for formal shit between the good guys.

—Okay. Lee.

Lee thumped his fist on the roof of the car. Pete gave him a little salute, rolled up his window, and drove away. Lee headed over to a man tying his bootlaces beside a truck.

—Are you Mr. Murray?

The man pointed to someone else, twenty feet away. He said: That’s Clifton.

Clifton Murray was short and bowlegged, with curly red hair going grey. He held a pencil in his mouth and was frowning over an invoice. Lee crossed over and Clifton looked up, fixed him with a gnomish squint.

—Morning, Mr. Murray, said Lee. I’m Leland King.

Lee offered his hand. Clifton shook it once. He took the pencil, chamfered and moist, out of his mouth and said: Oh. Right.

—Thank you for the job. I’ve been looking forward to it since Barry told me.

—That’s good. Pastor Barry might of told you this one: You will eat the labour of your hands, and happy will you be. So if hard work is something you like …

The man who’d been tying his bootlaces ambled by and said: Morning, Clifton.

—Good day, Jeff, said Clifton.

—Anyhow, said Lee. I got my trade. Cabinets, doors, all kinds of joining. You name it.

—Well, you can give Bud a hand getting the shingles up to the roof. I got 150 bundles that have to go up.

Fifty feet away was a gangly chap perhaps five years older than Pete. His hair was cut in a severe crewcut. He was hoisting a bundle of shingles from a stack onto his shoulder.

Clifton squinted at Lee.

—There a problem, mister man?

—No, said Lee. Just thought you needed a carpenter is all.

—I’ve got a carpenter. A darn good one. I subcontract out to him when I need to. Now what I need is those shingles on the roof.

—Okay.

Clifton spread his hands: Not five minutes you’re here. I’m taking you on Pastor Barry’s good word but I don’t need any headache.

—No, sir. I’ll get them shingles moving double-quick.

—That’s better. Now. I don’t allow profane language or idleness on my job site. You can smoke once an hour. Lunch is at noontime.

—Okay, Mr. Murray.

Lee started in the direction of the stack of shingles.

—Leland King!

Lee turned.

—A good thing to think about, said Clifton. Redeeming yourself doesn’t happen all at once. One day at a time. Deeds, thoughts, prayer. That’s from Pastor Barry and I believe it, every word.

Lee looked at the mud on the ground. He fingered the buckle of the tool belt on his shoulder. He found himself coming up against a depth of religious faith that he’d not expected. Clifton now, but also with his mother and with Barry and Donna. He should have expected it, he knew, given the letters Barry had written to him over the years. But knowing it from written letters, and finding it now in the world of free men, were two different things and he couldn’t yet figure out what that difference might mean. There had been religion in prison, and it was on Barry’s urging that Lee had sought guidance from the chaplain and had taken up reading the Bible. The chaplain, in turn, had spoken on Lee’s behalf when his parole hearings eventually came around. But behind the cinder-block walls and the iron bars, the ideas of spiritual deliverance and a Kingdom of God had a much more basic appeal. Out here, it seemed somehow different. Less tangible. His mind coursed through a number of the bible verses he’d learned, but he couldn’t seem to fix on one that might fit as a response to Clifton’s comments. Clifton, for his part, had already gone back to examining the invoice.

Over at the stack of shingles, the gofer Clifton had indicated saw Lee coming. He flopped the bundle off his shoulder back onto the stack and he swaggered over to meet Lee halfway.

—I’m Bud, said the gofer.

—Hi, Bud. I’m Lee.

—I got to get these f-ing shingles up on the roof.

—I know. I’m here to help.

—F-ing A. Let’s do this.

Bud had a small beer gut and lean muscles in his arms. He re-hoisted his bundle and carried it over to the building. An extendable ladder stood against the facer board along the edge of the roof. Lee looked around. He saw a big man gassing up the BobCat. Coming from inside the building were the hollow sounds of hammer-falls. Lee held his tool belt in his hands, considering it. Then he hid it between the top and bottom boarding of the skid beneath the stack of shingles.

He’d never done any kind of roof work. He lifted a bundle of shingles onto his shoulder and set out across the site. The mud sucked at his boots. He regarded the ladder dubiously. Overhead, Bud had disappeared onto the roof. Lee was nervous to climb the ladder with the shingles weighing heavily on his shoulder, but no other way was obvious, and Clifton was watching him, so he put his boots on the bottom rung and started up. The ladder flexed at the middle. He didn’t like that much. Then Bud reappeared at the facer board to help him over the top and direct him to where he could lay the bundle across the peak of the roof. The roof was broad and pale, naked plywood, smooth enough that if the pitch were deeper it would be dangerous. Lee didn’t care for it. He’d never even envied the guards in the penitentiary towers.

As the morning went on, bundle after bundle of shingles scraped Lee’s shoulders raw. At one point, coming across the yard, he cut into the path of the BobCat. He heard the engine shift into neutral. The big man driving it leaned out of the housing
and yelled: Anytime you want to get out of the way, okay?

Lee set his eyes forward and took another bundle up the ladder. Bud was there again, helping him over the top. Lee put the shingles down and stretched.

—Smoke break time, said Bud. You want a smoke?

—I’d have one, yeah.

Bud offered Lee a cigarette.

—Clifton doesn’t like smoking, said Bud. He doesn’t like drinking. Rick Flynn came to work hungover too many times and Clifton sacked him. You ask me, Clifton probably doesn’t even like sex.

—Well, he’s the boss. Long as he’s got work for me, he doesn’t have to like anything.

Lee passed smoke through his nose. Everything looked huge. The roof, the lake, the property around the building. The sky. The leaves on the trees had just started to change colour, but even this early contrast was vivid to his eyes. A flock of geese was traversing the sky out over the lake. All of this space, the colours, the autumn scent on the air. He closed his eyes and told himself the walls and bars were gone.

—Where you from, anyways? said Bud. Around here?

—I grew up here, yeah. Actually, when I was a kid I remember all this was just a bay. Me and a couple buddies used to catch steelhead out of season down here. There were some cabins out this way—you could rent them and whatnot—but there weren’t any big motherfuckers like this one.

Bud darted a glance around and said: Clifton doesn’t like swearing.

—Right. I forgot.

Bud grinned lewdly. He lowered his voice and said: Here’s a good one. So the dick says to the rubber, Cover me, I’m going in!

—What?

—Oh. I mean, what does the dick say to the rubber? I frigged it up.

Bud shook his head briskly, as if to clear it of the frigged-up joke. Lee chuckled dryly. They finished their cigarettes and got back to the shingles.

When they broke for lunch, Lee went over to the skid to verify that his tool belt was still hidden. It irritated him to think of the dirt collecting on it. He then joined Bud and the others, who’d assembled themselves near the trucks and were sitting on building materials while they ate. Clifton wasn’t around. Bud said he’d gone into town to see why a delivery was held up. Lee sat down and opened the lunch pail that Donna had packed. It contained a ham sandwich, an apple, a Thermos of tea, cookies wrapped in cellophane. He realized he had no idea what he would have eaten otherwise, and how he’d thought he could go the whole day on breakfast alone.

There were three men, not counting Clifton or Lee or Bud. Two of them looked much alike, brothers perhaps, maybe father and son. One of them was the man Jeff, whom Lee had seen tying his bootlace. He and his look-alike had a battery-powered radio sitting between them, and they had it set to a country station. Both of them were nodding to the music. Across from them, the BobCat driver was a big French guy. He was eating a chicken drumstick. If any of them knew who Lee was, they gave no sign of it. There wasn’t much talk at all. Lee ate his lunch in minutes. Then he massaged his shoulder where the shingles had scraped it.

—Okay, said the French guy. You can move the shingles pretty good. But that don’t mean you’re strong or fast.

—What do you mean by that, said Lee.

The French guy grinned at him and said: I mean nobody wants all the good men to be held up because of the slow guy.

Did she mention my name
, sang the radio. Lee stood up. He closed his lunch pail.

—I’m just here to work. I won’t hold none of you up.

He carried off his lunch pail and found a tree at the edge of the property to urinate against. He was just bringing out his
cigarettes when he saw a truck arriving, and then Clifton getting out.

Clifton clapped his hands and called out: Let’s go, boys. We can’t do it all in seven days, but we can try!

By two o’clock, Lee and Bud had moved most of the shingles up to the roof. They’d spaced them across the peak to distribute the weight. Then they heard someone hail them from below. They went over to the edge of the roof. Bud stood right at the drop, scratching his ass, and Lee hung back a few feet. It was the French guy calling to them.

They went down the ladder. The guy directed them to spread gravel into the driveway from the big mound of crush. Clifton was over measuring the foundation. He didn’t seem to take any issue with this other man giving orders. Wordlessly, Bud went to fetch a wheelbarrow and shovels.

They spent the rest of the afternoon at the gravel. Lee wasn’t aware quitting time had come until he looked around and saw the others packing up. Bud had gone off to piss somewhere.

Clifton waved to Lee and said: That’s a day, mister man.

Bud and Lee stowed the shovels and the wheelbarrow against the wall of the building. The shadows had grown long and blue. Lee recovered his tool belt from under the skid and put it over his shoulder. He picked up his lunch pail and went to where the men were congregating at the trucks. Nobody had anything to say about the work that had been done that day, and to look at the building and the yard around it—other than the shingles having been moved—it was hard to see any difference since morning. Lee figured maybe with a project this big, you didn’t see changes in the short term. You worked a day and then you worked the day after that, and only slowly did it all come together.