Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

“What is it?” I say. I see nothing, though I’m assuming there is something and it can’t be good.

“These piers are poured far away from here, Frank,” Clare says as if in confidence. “Sometimes Canada. Sometimes upstate. The Binghamton area.” He employs his finger to scratch at the transparent lacquer painted on the pier’s exterior. “If you pour your forms too early in the spring, or if you pour them when the humidity’s extremely high…well, you know what happens.” Clare’s creased face turns to me — we’re very close here — and smiles a closed-mouth gotcha smile.

“What?”

“They crack. They crack right away,” Clare says darkly. He has a pale sliver of pinkish scar right along the border of his Brillo-pad hairline. A vicious war wound, possibly, or else something discretionary from his second marriage. “If your manufacturer isn’t too scrupulous he doesn’t notice,” Clare says. “And if he’s unscrupulous he notices but then has this silicone sealer painted on and sells it to you anyway. And if your home builder or your GC isn’t paying attention, or if he’s been paid not to pay attention or if his foreman happens to be of a certain nationality, then these piers get installed without anybody saying anything. And when the work gets inspected, this kind of defect — and it is a serious defect and oughta show up — it might be possible for it not to get noticed, if you get my drift. Then your house gets built, and it stands up real well for about fifteen years. But because it’s on the ocean, salt and moisture go to work on it. And suddenly — though it isn’t sudden, of course — Hurricane Frank blows up, a high tide comes in, the force of the water turns savage and Bob’s your uncle.” Clare turns his gaze back to the pier, where we’re crouched like cavemen behind the musty quicklime — smelling Doolittle house, which is built, I see, on much worse than shifting sand. It’s built on shitty pilings. “These piers, Frank. I mean”—Clare pinches his nose with distaste and home-owner pity, pressing his lips together—“I can see cracks here, and this is just the four to five inches showing. These people have real problems, unless you know a sucker who’ll buy it sight unseen or get an inspector who needs a seeing-eye dog.”

Clare’s breath in these close quarters is milky stale-coffee breath and makes me realize I’m freezing and wishing I was two hundred miles from here.

“It’s a problem. Okay.” I stare at the innocent-looking little curve of gray pier surface, seeing nothing amiss. The thought that Clare’s full of shit and that this is a softening-up ploy for a low-ball offer naturally occurs to me, as does the idea that since I can’t see the crack, I don’t have to bear the guilty knowledge that adheres to it. A thin file of stalwart ants is scuttering around the dusty foundation, taking in the air before the long subterranean winter.

“A problem. Definitely,” Clare says solemnly. “I was raised in a tract home, Frank. I’ve seen bad workmanship all my life.” He and I are straggling to our feet. I hear youthful boy-and-girl voices from the beach, beyond the dune bunker.

“What can you do about a problem like that, Clare?” I dust off my knees, stuffing the listing sheet farther down in my pocket, since it won’t be needed. I experienced a brief stab of panic when Clare revealed the cracked pier, as if this house is mine and I’m who’s in deep shit. Only now, a little airy-headed from bending down, then standing up too fast, I feel pure exhilaration and a thrumming sense of well-being that this is not my house, that my builder was a board-certified UVa architect, not some shade-tree spec builder (like Tommy Benivalle, Mike’s best friend) with a clipboard and some plan-book blueprints, and who’s in cahoots with the cement trade, the Teamsters, the building inspectors and city hall. Your typical developer, Jersey to Oregon. “I’m fine.” These murmured words for some reason escape my lips. “I’m just fine.”

“Okay, there’s things you can do,” Clare’s saying. “They’re not cheap.” He’s looking closely at me, into my eyes, his fingers pinching up a welt of nylon on my windbreaker sleeve. “You all right, old boy?”

I hear this. I also hear again the sound of youthful boy-girl voices beyond the dune. They emerge from a single source, which is the cold wind. “You look a little green, my friend,” Clare’s friendly voice says. I’m experiencing another episode. Conceivably it’s only a deferred result of my floor struggle with Bob Butts last night. Yet for a man who hates to hope, my state of health is not as reliable as I’d hoped.

“Stood up too fast,” I say, my cheeks cold and rubbery, scalp crawly, my fingers tingling.

“Chemicals,” Clare says. “No telling what the hell they spray back here. The same thing’s in sarin gas is in d-Con, I hear.”

“I guess.” I’m fuzzy, just keeping myself upright.

“Let’s grab some O 2,” Clare says, and with his bony left fist begins hauling me roughly up the dune, my shoes sinking in sand, my balance a bit pitched forward, my neck breaking a sweat. “Maybe you got vertigo,” Clare says as he guys me up toward the top, his long legs doing the work for my two. “Men our age get that. It goes away.”

“How old are you?” I say, being dragged.

“Sixty-seven.”

“I’m fifty-five.” I feel ninety-five.

“Good grief.”

“What’s the matter?” Sand’s in my shoes and feels cool. His doozie loafers must be loaded, too.

“I must look a lot younger than I am.”

“I was thinking you did,” I say.

“Who knows how old anybody is, Frank?” We’re now at the top. Lavender flat-surfaced ocean stretches beyond the wide high-tide beach. A smudge of gray-brown crud hangs at the horizon. Breeze seems to stream straight through my ears and gives me a shiver. For late November, I’m again dressed way too lightly. (I believed I’d be inside.) “I look at twenty-five-year-olds and somebody tells me they’re fifteen,” Clare natters on. “I look at thirty-five-year-olds who look fifty. I give up.”

“Me, too.” I’m already feeling a bit replenished, my heart quivering from our quick ascent.

Thirty yards out onto the beach and taking no notice of our appearance — legionnaires topping a rise — a group of teens, eight or nine of them, is occupied by a spirited volleyball game, the white orb rising slowly into the sky, one side shouting, “Mine!” “Set, seeeet-it!” “Bridget-Bridget! Yours!” The boys are tall, swimmer-lanky and blond; the girls semi-beautiful, tanned, rugged, strong-thighed. All are in shorts, sweaters, sweatshirts and are barefoot. These are the local kids, gone away to Choate and Milton, who’ve left home behind as lowly townie-ville but are back now, dazzlingly, with their old friends — the privileged few, enjoying the holidays as Yale and Dartmouth early-admissions dates grow near. Too bad my kids aren’t that age instead of “grown.” Possibly I could do my part better now. Though possibly not.

“You back in working order?” Clare pretends to be observing the volleyballers, who go on paying us no attention. We are the invisibles — like their parents.

“Thanks,” I say. “Sorry.”

“Vertigo,” Clare says again, and gives his long over-large ear a stiff grinding with the heel of his hand. Clare clearly likes the prospect from up here. It’s the view one would get from a “reimagined” floor three of the big-but-compromised Doolittle house behind us. Maybe his mind will change. Maybe cracked piers aren’t so troublesome. Things change with perspective.

“You’re from California, you don’t count,” a girl volleyballer says breezily into the breeze.