“You saw it?”
“I was below. I saw him and Wayne moving positions. I think Wayne had just put another fifty feet of hose on his yo-yo. What must’ve happened, he throws it out to get some slack, not looking what he’s doing, and the rubber trips Kenny coming along behind him. I heard Kenny yell—that’s when I looked up, I see him grab hold of the beam, he’s okay, but he lets go of the beater he’s carrying. I’m looking up, shit, I see this ten-pound sledge coming at me. It hits the deck plate, bang, missed me by only about a foot. I see Kenny, he’s down flat on the beam now, the rubber hanging over it right there—you could see it must’ve tripped him. And here’s Wayne looking at him like, the hell are you doing hugging that beam? He doesn’t even know he almost killed his partner. I wasn’t gonna say nothing,” the ironworker said to the walking boss, “but you asked.”
***
Last summer when they came downtown to one of the P’Jazz concerts at the Pontchartrain Hotel, it was to see Lonnie Liston Smith, this whole block was a parking lot. They drove past a month ago, it was excavated and the piers laid, the foundation. A big sign said it would become One-Fifty Jefferson West.
Now here he was sitting a hundred and something feet above it on a ten-inch girder. Sitting again, straddling it, feet resting on the girder’s lower flange. Get tired of sitting he’d stand up, still looking out at the Detroit River, feeling the sun and a breeze that would become wind as the job rose higher. If he looked at the city skyline he’d think of work. The same if he looked down, he’d see the iron they’d shaken out, ready to hook on to the crane, and he’d be distracted by the job, all the equipment down there, the stacks of floor deck, the compressors, kegs of bolts on pallets, the steel-company trailer, knowing the guys were in there eating their lunch . . .
This was what he needed, to be by himself high up on the iron, after two days of cops everywhere he looked, different police groups coming and going, their presence bringing people out from Algonac to creep their cars past the house. He’d watched cops digging buckshot out of the livingroom wall, cops poking around in the bushes along the road and in the woods. Their neighbor across the street, the sod farmer, called to ask if there was some kind of problem. Wayne said, “If I find out what they’re looking for I’ll let you know.” He hung up and Carmen said, “Evidence,” gritting her teeth, irritated because he made remarks loud enough to be overheard.
Like when he said, “A glass eye in a duck’s ass can see they don’t know what they’re doing,” and a couple of cops gave him their deadpan don’tfuck-with-me cop look.
One thing led to another. Carmen mentioned the framed duck prints that had been shot off the living-room wall and wrecked, saying that was one way to get rid of them.
“If you didn’t like the duck prints,” Wayne asked her, “what’d you put them up for?”
“If I didn’t, who would? Think about it. What do you do around here?”
“I brush-hog the field.”
“So you can watch for deer. That’s like saying you clean your shotgun.”
“I thought you liked those duck prints. They been hanging there for five years.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“You should’ve said something.”
“Who swept up the broken glass?”
Getting picky. He should’ve told her he didn’t give a shit about the duck prints. The only reason they were up, her mom had given them as a present. He was more irritated than ever by then, though not at Carmen. This had nothing to do with the goddamn duck prints. Carmen knew it too.
She said, “This is dumb.”
So he eased back saying, “Okay, I won’t make any more observations or remarks.”
She said, “How much you want to bet?”
He tried, he kept quiet, made coffee for the cops and referred to them as Deputy or Officer when they came up on the side porch for a cup. He even tried to be cordial to the tight-assed county deputy who had asked him in the real estate office if he had an attitude problem. Wayne said to him on the porch, “Well, at least we know those two guys are still around.”
“How do we know that?” the deputy said.
“They shot our windows out, didn’t they?”
“We don’t know it was the same guys,” the deputy said.
“If you don’t, then I was right,” Wayne said, “you don’t know shit.”
Carmen got him upstairs, faced him with her arms folded and said, “You having fun? Why do you like to antagonize them?”
He shook his head and frowned, wanting her to believe he couldn’t help it. “I don’t know what it is. There’s just something about those guys that irritates me. Cops and insurance salesmen.”
Now he saw Carmen join him in a frown, sympathetic, he was pretty sure. If she didn’t understand him it would be the first time in their married life. She said, “Why don’t you get away from here for a while? Go somewhere. Go back to work tomorrow.”
He said, “I don’t know if I should leave you alone.”
Carmen said, “If you call four different police departments hanging around here being alone.”
Having your windows shot out by gunfire was a hair-raising experience. Carmen yelled his name as it happened, but she didn’t scream or lose control. After, when he said, “They’re just trying to scare us,” she said, well, they were doing a pretty good job, in that dry tone of hers. She said if they were that dumb, to drive by and shoot at the house, the police shouldn’t have any trouble finding them. Wayne didn’t comment on that.
The State Police investigator arrived as he was leaving this morning in the pickup. Wayne had to wait while the guy thought about it, saying he wasn’t sure he liked the idea; he’d have to send a man along. Wayne said, “Up on the iron with me?”
***
He stared out at the river and Canada from the top of the structure thinking:
Okay, after a while nothing happens, the cops get tired and clear out. Now it’s between him and them. He knows they’re coming, but doesn’t let on to Carmen. Except he’d have to stay home and she’d ask him what was wrong.
“Nothing.”
“Then how come you aren’t going to work?”
She would know, yeah, but that was all right, it wouldn’t change anything, except she’d be scared and want to call the cops again. Anyway . . .
Okay, it’s early morning, first light, Carmen reaches over and touches him. “Wayne ...?”
And he says, “I heard it, honey. Lie still, okay? Stay right here.”
“They’re in the house.”
“I know they are.”
He picks up the Remington from the side of the bed and slips into Matthew’s room so that when they come up out of the stairwell he’s behind them. The stairs squeak, here they come. Their head and shoulders appear. They’re careful, not making a sound as they reach the top, and then stop dead as they hear him rack a slug into the breach. “Morning, fellas.” Wham ...wham. Fires and pumps fast as they’re turning with their guns.
The cops accuse him of shooting them in the back. No, that would get too complicated. He’d think of another situation. Okay . . .
The two guys are still outside when he hears them. That’s it—he slips downstairs to the kitchen door, opens it a little. Pretty soon two shapes appear out of the woods. As they get behind the chickenhouse he walks out on the porch . . .
Wayne stopped it there. He liked the idea of getting behind them and saying something, taking them by surprise.
Okay, he sees them in the woods and runs out to the chickenhouse, yeah, and is waiting for them inside as they come past it, heading for the house. All the first part would be the same, telling Carmen to stay in bed. Or now he tells her to stay in the house. They go by, he lets them get about ten yards and then steps out of the chickenhouse behind them, that’s it, and goes, “You boys looking for somebody?”