Someone mutters something in Spanish, and they all chuckle in a nasty way, like people who claim to mean no harm but still want to have their fun — briefly and without zeal. I throw my hips into the next swing and the greater impact shuts them up. I let go with another and another and I’m up against the west wall. I take a step forward onto the rubble. I can’t get a footing so I keep moving north — to the corner. I raise the hammer, forgetting about the joists above, and catch it on the backswing. It skips back a tick on the foundation. A cloud of splintery dust surrounds me. After it’s apparent that the beam won’t fall, they laugh, this time with greater commitment. I turn sideways to swing along the length of the beams. I don’t think. I just somehow know that the hammer is going up then down. It meets the ground, seemingly without impact, like one of those little league swings when you think that you’ve closed your eyes but you haven’t, and you don’t feel the bat hitting the ball. The ax head bounces off the slab. I catch it, cocked and ready to swing again. There’s a crash behind me. I turn. We all see a pile of bricks. We look up, scanning the interior course until the void is found — above the center window, three stories up. I smell butane.
“Amigo.”
Roman leans in the door under the stoop one flight above me. He surveys the wall, up and down, reliving the brick’s descent.
“Amigo, don’t do that.”
He looks over the uncovered earth, nods to himself, then looks at Rice Tooth.
“Why do you stop?”
“Agua. Mui caliente.”
“Agua. Agua.” Roman waves his hand as though shooing away a pest. “More agua?”
“No, boss.”
“Okay. Vamanos!” He whistles and points at me, then to my tool bag. “You have drill? Hammer?”
I nod. He points out to the former garden, beyond the first row of pissweeds.
“Wood!” He gestures, pulling his arms into his gut, then spreading them out as though smoothing out a tablecloth over the area of the joists. He snaps at Rice Tooth, then points to the pick and shovels. He whistles and waves his arms in the air, the signal for work to begin again.
It smells worse out in the open air. Even the sunlight seems to stink. The first line of weeds is about ten feet deep, then there’s a pile of trash — dirt, drywall, insulation, bottles, cans, cardboard, and newspaper. A mattress — rain soaked and dried and resoaked many times over. I collect what usable wood I find — jagged 2×4s and 2×6s, soggy and ridden with twisted and rusty nails; random plywood shapes — and bring them back in.
If I remember anything about Roman it’s that it would be stupid to ask him about screws, so I salvage what nails I can, bend them straight. His crew used to show up on jobs needing to build concrete forms without tools or fasteners or wood. Most of the carpenters would grumble when the masons asked to borrow something, but fuck, it was rumored that even the Polish guys, the skilled masons, got only room, board, and a few bucks a day to live on. I can’t imagine that these men could have received tool-buying wages. Why would they invest in their careers? An old-timer once explained that their standard of living had been so low that anything they dealt with here was better than what they had had — wherever it was they’d come from — and that they were sending it back or hoarding it here to take back when they left for good. I look at Grimace filling the first bucket. I try to imagine him living on, let alone investing in his future with, ten bucks a day. I do my best to tie the three joists together so they won’t roll. I find more nails in the beams and pull them out. Then I lay what remaining lumber I have perpendicular to the first row and cover it with all the irregular sections of plywood — about fifteen square feet altogether. Roman clicks his lighter in the doorway as I sink the last nail; this time he lights a cigarette.
“Is it good, finished?”
I nod and extend my arm, inviting him out onto the staging. He sticks his head in the doorway, looks the platform over, and toes it.
“Okay!”
He gives me a wrinkled chin nod. Then he checks his watch and taps it.
“Okay, go down.” He pats my shoulder and then makes a flicking motion with his hand at the ladder. I climb down. Five of the buckets are full at the bottom. Tiny and Eyebrow scramble up. Roman whistles at me, gives a thumbs-up sign, then shoots it over his shoulder.
“Let’s go!”
I press a bucket up. Tiny grabs the handle, but it tips forward as he lifts, dumping a good shovel full of dirt in my face.
“Sorry, mithter.” He does look sorry. It’s not a joke to him. His brow is wrinkled with concern, making his already little face seem to shrink into its center. I shouldn’t call him Tiny. I’ll call him Lispy, short for Speaks with Lisp. I press a second bucket up. Eyebrow grabs it — more spilled dirt, although I realize now that it’s not really dirt; it’s more like clay. It’s damp and reddish and has a distinct odor, though I can’t place it. It doesn’t belong here, not with the rat and must and ammonia and rotting vegetation.
I pick up a bucket, but Lispy isn’t back from dumping the first one, so I slide it onto the plywood. I put the remaining two up. Rice Tooth drops another one at my feet, which I immediately lift and place. Lispy comes back and sighs at the work waiting for him. It doesn’t pay, really, for any of us to be efficient, to work any harder than we need. It’s just that I haven’t established that line of need. Vlad has given us an ultimatum, but the brown men don’t seem to be taking it all too seriously. Grimace and the lads have barely shoveled anything. I do the math. A five-gallon bucket holds.785 cubic feet of dirt, which means there’s about thirty-four and a half buckets per cubic yard, one thousand three hundred seventy-six or so to fill a forty-yard dumpster. At one minute per bucket, it would take twenty-two hours to fill the container. We’re moving about one bucket every ninety seconds. Eight buckets. Nine. If I stand to the side and push it up over one shoulder, Eyebrow and Lispy let the dirt fall only to the side I’m not on — it’s a tacit agreement. I slow down, let the buckets collect at my feet, a small concession, but it seems to do a lot for them. Their pace evens out, so much so that I don’t have to look or even listen for them. I count their steps in my head, eighteen for Eyebrow, twenty-one for Lispy, then into the container where they each set their bucket down, lift again, and dump. They rest. Then back inside, out of the sun, and onto the platform from which they drop their bucket onto the damp clay beside me, where Rice Tooth picks it up, brings it back to the diggers, picks up a filled one, brings it to me; I hoist it. Thirty buckets. It seems we’re moving faster now. The sun is full on their backs. Grimace wields the pick, loosening the clay for Bigboots, who chops and scoops and drops it into the bucket. He works cleanly, squaring the earth as he goes. They all work with an economy, without desperation, little bend in their backs — the eugenics of excavation. I lift another bucket, number forty.
Bigboots stabs his spade into a pile of dirt but doesn’t pick it up. Rice Tooth turns away from his bucket. Grimace buries the pick head and starts beating the dust off his pant legs. Lispy and then Eyebrow come down. Lispy turns on the spigot. The hose lurches, filled with water. He picks it up and holds it for the others as they, one by one, rinse their faces and hands. Rice Tooth turns to me.