me to see for the first time the barn’s beautiful hand-hewn post-and-beam framing. Or maybe it was always there, and I’d only had eyes for machine tools and sheet metal.
In the middle of the center bay people were finding their way to folding chairs set up in a U-shape, inside of which was a small table holding a projector and laptop computer. A screen was mounted on the opposite wall, in front of which Butch stood nervously folding and unfolding a telescoping pointer.
“Sit, sit, sit. We have a lot to cover. Arrange your chairs so you can see the screen, but keep the U-shape. Does anyone know the significance of the broken oval in ancient celestial-based iconography? The rite of the parabola?”
No one bit, preoccupied perhaps with settling into their seats.
“Come on, somebody must know. Fern, Peter, Charles? Are you serious? Amanda?” He looked out at the gathering and shook his head sadly, then popped on a wide grin. “That’s good, because there isn’t such a thing. I made it up. Okay fire up the computer. Let’s see what we’re getting our asses into.”
Without the ski masks and red jumpsuits the group looked like a normal distribution of types. I counted eleven—two girls, one of whom was black, two black men and an Asian guy, I thought Korean or Chinese, and the rest were white men in an assortment of ages and body types, though everyone in the room looked fit and bright eyed. No Evelyn.
The man named Charles worked the laptop and projector. In a moment a stylized image of a metallic finger, slightly curved in the natural way it would, appeared on the screen. It looked like the type of renderings we used to make with an airbrush, now composed on computer with enough shading and detail to look as if someone had lopped off a robot’s middle finger.
“The GF-Double-A,” announced Butch. “The question here before us is not if, but when and how. Or how, and then when, depending on how complicated the how is. Any questions so far?”
“We don’t know how to build it, Butch,” said one of the black guys. “So it’s hard to have any questions yet. Maybe you could give a couple details.”
Heads nodded around the U-shape. Butch looked excited.
“Of course you have questions. My God, how could you not? First some facts. Dione, how big?”
“Thirty-five and a half feet. Thirty-five feet is the height limit zoning puts on residential housing. Let’s see what six inches does to their little heads.”
Smiles and grunts broke out around the room.
“Dione,” said Butch. “What’s it made of?”
“Plate steel. Welded and riveted. Massively heavy so no one can afford to move or destroy it.”
“Edgar, where does it go?
I picked out Edgar from the crowd by his uncomfortable indecision.
“Wherever we want?” he offered.
Butch slapped his pointer on his palm in the style of an impatient field general. Then he pointed it directly at me.
“Our engineering consultant, Sam Acquillo, would like to address that.”
All eyes turned curiously, or maybe hostilely in my direction. There were too many faces to pick out which was which. So I kept my eyes on Butch.
“What do you think it’ll take to get this puppy up in the air?” he asked.
“More than a hydraulic jack. Though you guys make a decent pit crew.”
“Imagination’s more powerful than knowledge,” said the Asian guy.
“Right. Einstein. He also had a lot to say about the kind of energy it takes to control mass, especially within a gravitational field, like the one we got here on earth.”
“Let’s start with earth,” said Butch. “We’ll conquer space in phase two.”
Everybody seemed to like that line. Chatter broke out around the room. They had the easy way about them of a group who’d worked together for a long time. The bond of common purpose, secured by a strong leader in clear control. It would take more than a few minutes to judge all the interplay, but it felt like they’d bought all the way into Butch, happily, if not blindly. The old hands from Boston, Charles and Edgar, closer to my age, were likely lieutenants. The Asian guy, whose name was Scott, was much younger and also spoke with confidence. The young women looked docile, or overwhelmed. But eager. The rest looked like the subcontractors who showed up on Frank’s jobs. Sturdy, with strong hands and work clothes. Lots of scrapes and bruises, the telltales of tough, punishing labor. Edgar, bigger than Charles by at least thirty pounds, had a split lip sewn together with a pair of black stitches.
Butch let things roll along for a while, then pulled the group’s attention back to me.
“Okay,” I said. “First you need a hole at least twice the diameter of the base of the finger, and down about twelve feet, tamped level—likely be sand if you’re talking about the East End. Pour a pad to about six inches above grade with high tensile strength anchor rods set to the depth of the pad. Good quality concrete with lots of rebar.”
“It’ll take a steel fabricator at least a year to form the plates, assuming you can supply the dimensions. Flat steel’s easy, but here you’ll need some precise curving. Very difficult to pull off without sophisticated CAD/CAM, though the French did it in the nineteenth century with the Statue of Liberty. You just have work out the proportionality issues. If it’s going to look like a real human finger, which is almost as wide at the top as at the base, and articulated at two ascending points, you’ll have to cheat the effects of gravity. The steel helps, though I’m not sure what sort of interior framing you’ll need to redistribute the loads. Unless some of you have experience welding up boilers or skyscrapers, you’ll have to bring them in, which raises union issues, which I’m not up on. And a crane, size depending on the weight of the individual sections. All of which assumes you’ve worked out costs, construction permits and catering, none of which is in my purview.”
I sat back and took a sip of my drink. Butch still had the pointer in my direction, which he seemed to realize when I stopped talking. He resumed slapping it on his palm.
“So, it’s basically doable, am I right?” he asked me.
“Sure, anything’s doable that’s been done before. I’m talking the construction, not the idea,” I added quickly, reacting to another of Amanda’s gentle prompts, this time with her knee.
I scanned the faces around the U-shape, hoping to express casual optimism, something that never came naturally to me, though it might have helped me with board members and senior management, who often looked at me with the same vague confusion and disappointment as those gathered in Butch’s Main Hall of the Ancients.
Ever alert to the bummer factor, Dione jumped out of her seat and started distributing fruit from the big market bag. Everyone was equally appreciative of the nourishment and excuse to chatter with each other about something other than the focus of the get-together. As I crunched down on an apple, I looked over at Amanda to check her mood.
“You did fine,” she whispered. “They have to know. Better now.”
Butch waited for the interruption to work its calming effect before re-engaging the group.
“Okay Thoughts.”
It was silent for a few minutes. Butch seemed comfortable letting the dead air sit.
“We should re-evaluate the steel,” said Edgar, finally. “Too limiting in terms of placement and timing.”
“We could simulate the look,” somebody else said. “Make it out of something lighter.”
That started a whirl of commentary around the room that Butch let run on its own.
“But then it’s moveable. Destroyable.”
“Has to be defiant.”
“Subversive.”
“That’s the concept.”
“Steel is a metaphor of industrial exploitation. It’s like a fixed version of
“The one with Charlie Chaplin.”
“Will take too long. Ruins the element of surprise.”
“What about aluminum?”
“Too space age.”
“No it’s not. It’s like early twentieth century.”
“Flash Gordon.”
