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.
— 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.
He cleared his throat and said: Could any of you give me a lift into town?
— Could always hitchhike, said the French guy.
— I suppose you don’t have a vehicle, said Clifton.
Clifton scratched his neck. The two men who looked alike were over by their truck. The French guy was annotating his day’s hours in a pocket notebook. All at once Lee felt helpless. Clifton squinted at him and looked like he was about to say something, but then Bud appeared, zipping up his fly.
He said: I’m goin’ to town. You want a lift?
That evening, Lee was very sore. He’d stopped at the variety store downstairs to buy himself some provisions, and when he came upstairs, he packed himself a lunch in the lunch pail.
