Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

The remaining joists are about five and a half feet above the existing slab. I imagine that they’d want seven feet clear from floor to ceiling. Four inches of concrete and a foot and a half of dirt in a seventeen-by-forty lot — fifty-one cubic yards of shit in seven hours. Mr. Simian drops the container outside on the street. The front wall shakes. Dust and bits of mortar fall down on us. I look up. Although the exterior course of bricks bellies out toward the street, the interior course bellies in. He drops the front end of the dumpster. A piece of brick about the size of a walnut lands at my feet. The six men look at each other. One very young-looking one looks up at me.

“Big man.”

He sucks his teeth and shakes his head. He’s very slender, jockey sized but without that wiry toughness. He has a little round brown face and the faintest trace of a mustache. His black hair is close cropped, almost military.

“Big man.” He’s an alto. His voice is unaffected by smoke or yelling. It’s thin and soft like his body. He throws me an open-mouthed smile. His teeth look like uncooked arborio rice — ovaline, pearlescent, and little — spaced too far apart.

“Mithter big man. .,” another says. I can’t see his face very well. His back is to the light. He’s painfully small. I stoop and squint. They all laugh like we’re in some spaghetti western. I’m the bastardized Eastwood — Blondie, that’s what Tuco called him in one — and I’m about to be initiated into a band of desperadoes, Mexican banditos. But I don’t know where these men, if they do have a common nationality, are from. They’re all short. None of them is taller than my shoulder. They’re all brown with dark hair. They’re all in a filthy, dark, hot hole looking at me. They’ve named me. I must name them now. He Has Rice Teeth. I concentrate on the four remaining: He Has One Eyebrow, He Has Big Boots, He Is So Small — Too Tiny. The last one is the largest. He has a goatee and he scowls at me and at the ditch as though he has a stomachache and we’re the cause. He Who Must Grimace. We’ve schematized each other. The naming is complete; although I know the names are too long, too formal, they will do for now. What’s the harm in labeling for expedience’s sake, anyway?

“Hey!” Roman bellows from the stoop, accompanying himself with crisp claps. “Amigo!” He points in my general direction. “Yes you! Use the hammer!” He claps again, then gestures to the rest. “Take it away!” He whistles while pointing at the door below the stoop. “Take it out here! I open! Start!”

Rice Tooth thumbs at the sledge that is lying on the slab.

“Amigo, we start. Hablo español?”

“Un picitto.”

“Okay. You.” He walks away from me to the southwest corner of the lot and stands in a strip of light about two feet wide. “Hit here.”

I pick up the hammer. Surprisingly enough, it’s new. It has a yellow fiberglass handle and a shiny black head. The label is still on the top—“Collins Axe, 10 lbs.” Rice Tooth waves me over to the spot.

“Okay, here.” The others move in and ring me, some in the dark, some push their way into the piss bush outside. I raise the hammer and let it fall. Nothing. Not a crack or even a broken bit, only a light click on impact. No one reacts. We all agree that it was only a test.

I slide my hands down the handle toward the bottom and narrow the gap between them. I swing again and get the resonate thud we all expect. I’ve cracked the slab, but they seem, especially Rice Tooth, disappointed, as though they’d wanted something more from me. I want to tell them that I haven’t swung a hammer in a while, and that in a batting cage or at the driving range, your first few swings are bound to be somewhat wanting. I don’t say anything. I lift the hammer again and bring it down harder. It doesn’t seem to do anything to lift their spirits so I put a little body behind the next one. It hits with considerably more force, but they still don’t give me anything. I wave them away from me. I lean the handle against my leg and wipe my hands on my shorts, then rub them together. I grab the end of the shaft with my left hand, stretch down low and choke the neck with my right. I pull it behind me, standing up as I do, letting the momentum almost lift me off my feet. As I start my downswing, I let my right hand slide down the shaft to meet my right. The lot booms on impact and the slab cracks for three feet.

“Good, amigo.” Rice Tooth directs me to the end of the crack and points. “Hit it there.” I do. The crack continues. He goes to point to the next spot but I wave him off and bring the hammer down. I go back to the beginning. Grimace is waiting with a pry bar.

We move east to west across the width of the building, always just ahead of the light. I hit, they pry, gather, and haul. I’ve acclimated to the stink, the heat, the lack of oxygen. Rice Tooth and Grimace pull the chunks away. I keep a consistent line going, then break off a chunk every two feet. It’s important not to pulverize the slab because they’d have to stop and take the time to shovel the bits away. I can hear the blocks thud against the steel bottom of the container. They seem comfortable with my tempo, that my aim won’t waiver, that I’ll hit the right spot, not their hands, not their heads. They must trust me with their bodies, and so I lock into the rhythm — I give them three seconds to clear before I swing; they wait three to dive in.

We reach the midpoint. Rice Tooth comes out of his crouch and holds a hand up for me to stop. Eyebrow’s just gotten off the ladder, and he whistles over to him. He points to a hose attached to a spigot on the front wall. Everyone else stops and drifts over to the water. I don’t. I can feel the sun on my calves. I swing again, moving faster than before because I don’t have to wait for the others. It’s bad form, I know, to work during a scheduled break, but I need to keep going. I’ll stop when I reach the north wall. Then there will be another task, and perhaps another to keep the day moving and my mind still — locked into duty. I feel the weight of the hammer and swing, hear its no-sound as it goes by my ear — just movement — and then the crack-boom as it meets the slab. I hear the dribbling of water from their mouths, louder still when they pass the hose along to the next man.

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.”