Adam Johnson - Emporium

The flattop Power Teamer asks him very loud, “Do you want a spotter?”

“No thanks,” he answers. “I’ve already got one.” He goes ahead with the press alone, and now we know they’re running some kind of scam. But the lift is magnificent. It has us. The iron rumbles like storm drain covers, the floors moan, and we are left gripping our own elbows. Cheryl looks back at me. We shake our heads in disbelief.

Another man presses a nail into a block of wood with his bare hands, and then, in what is the most terrifying thing I have ever seen, he blows up a hot water bottle. It takes forever, veins throbbing, tendons straining, and you can hear the dry hasp of his throat rattle through a balloon that now matches the color of his reddened skin. The sight has the same life-threatening grip as the natural childbirth video they scared us with back in Health and Hygiene.

Finally, a man steps forward with a chrome crowbar, and I know this is Jack. He is older than the others, with a thick mustache and blue eyes that scan us all. His tanned skin runs loosely over his muscles as he grabs the hook and spade ends of the crowbar in his fists. He starts the bend by wrapping it around the back of his neck, but then does the final crunch, elbows out, right in front of his face. It looks like he is bending it with his mind, and when the bar starts to fold, the chrome plating crackles off into mist of sparkly flakes.

“How did you bend that?” the black Power Teamer asks.

“I didn’t bend it,” Jack says. “Jesus did.”

You can tell it took a lot out of the guy.

Then Jack goes for the grand finale, a long, boring struggle with a phone book, and it is only the white pages, from a town the size of Tucson at best. The process involves a lot of folding back and forth, and mostly it looks like he is giving the book a massage. Afterward, Jack can barely breathe. “You don’t need a phone to dial up Jesus,” he says, and then leans over, hands on his knees, panting.

“Such bullshit,” Patuni says. “What are we, dupes?”

“This is such a lie,” I say. “Everything is so rigged.”

Yellow pamphlets entitled “Yield to Jesus” file down our row and as soon as the Power Team opens things up for Q&A, I stand up.

“Answer this,” I say. “Wasn’t Jacob stronger than the angel?”

The Power Teamers look at one another.

“Forget the Old Testament,” the black Power Teamer says. “Jesus is where it’s at.”

We all wait for one of them to expand on this, but they don’t, and we’re not sure if things are over. What’s clear is that Jack is beat. I wonder if he maybe strained something. Cheryl is down by him, running a hand over his back, and even bent over, his lats are like Corvette fenders.

* * *

Toward the early afternoon, an unusual weather front moves in. It sweeps up from the Baja and stalls in the Phoenix Valley. Cloud heads rise, threaten, and dissipate, leaving the city overcast and hot. The mugginess gives my father a considered mood as he works quietly in the heat, finishing the last pink panels that will seal us into Treen’s back lot. The blocks flow with method and precision — he tamps down a row, steps back, eyeballs the line, hefts another block. Already, I have a mixer of bright yellow mortar turning for the curved, decorative wall out front, and as I feed him the last of the pink block and mortar, I keep thinking about Jack, about how much that phone book meant to him.

Halfway through the yellow wall out front, my father loses his steam. He does not like the weather, he says, and we take a late lunch. We search the back roads of Chandler for a Burger King, but we are forced to settle for a tavern that in some way appeals to my father. There used to be an air force base out this way a long time ago, and the tavern is called The Lazy Jet.

We sit at two empty stools in the center of the long bar and order drafts and a microwave Tombstone pizza. Everyone in the bar watches TV, including the bartender, whose wild, choppy hair looks like it was cut in an emergency room. Four or five people to the left of us look up to a TV that shows One Life to Live , while those to the right watch a documentary on Africanized bees.

The TVs are loud, especially all the buzzing, and we don’t really talk much. The tavern’s air-conditioner struggles to keep the place cool in this humidity, and when the pizza comes, I am hungrier than I thought, even after eating earlier. Dad lets me have the extra piece. The bar phone rings, and the bartender answers in front of us. He mutes the TVs with the remote.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay, yeah, when?” He looks at his watch and hangs up. “The caller said there’s a bomb in here,” he announces. “And it will go off in five minutes.”

Nobody makes to leave, and neither do we.

Dad uses plastic tongs to help himself to a pickled egg, which he eats whole.

The bartender sets up a silver shaker and follows a scoop of ice with a clear stream of liquor. He shakes it with two hands, and the muted rattle of ice sounds like the rocks inside the rotating drum of the cement truck when my father and I pour footings. But with the smell of chilling alcohol, I think of Loren, try to picture the inside of her house. I see a refrigerator at the center, hear Christian rock everywhere, but other than that, I mostly see objects — sports cups, crowbars, protein cereal, a hot rod in the garage — and I can’t really get them to come together, get them rolling like a movie in my head.

Dad orders two more beers. “I wish it would hurry up and rain,” he says.

I’ll confess I’m also thinking about the bomb, which is getting to me a little.

A guy at the end of the bar asks if the caller’s voice was a woman’s, but the bartender doesn’t answer him — instead, he just turns the TVs up again.

“Enough with the bees, already,” I say and get some dirty looks.

* * *

Back at the job site, Treen shit-heels us. I load up the trucks while Dad finishes the yellow wall by himself. I hose out the mixer, shovel sand, and pack the leftover cement and dye. I spray down the walls with the hose, and I like the feeling of the water coursing through the nozzle. The slower the mortar dries, the harder it gets, so this is the last part of every job, and I’m on the west wall when Treen comes out with a check that’s only half of what it should be.

Treen points to a crack in his driveway he claims wasn’t there before we stacked block on it. “I’ll have to repour the whole pad,” he says.

“Driveways crack,” my father says. “That’s how it works.”

“Nobody cracks my driveway and gets away with it.”

“Your driveway was probably cracked long before I came,” my father says.

“Look, this isn’t about you,” Treen says. “It won’t cost you anything. You’re bonded and insured. All you have to do is file a claim.”

“This is a bad idea,” Dad says. “You’ve come up with a real mistake of an idea.”

“You’re bonded and insured, otherwise you couldn’t get a license. We all know it’s a crime to contract without a license. I know it is because I’m a member of the county commissioner’s board.”

“You can barely see that crack,” I say and point, but they don’t even hear me.

My father considers Treen very carefully and then walks to his truck.

Deep down, I know my dad isn’t going to hurt anyone, but I want it to happen, I do. “You better start running,” I say to Treen, and the two of us watch my father stride toward his truck like he will return with a bazooka.

Instead, he comes back with a push broom. He sweeps out the crack to show its age, which begins a long, futile debate with Treen that leaves my father exhausted and angry. At the end, Treen holds a light check in one hand and a cordless phone in the other, threatening to call some public agency I’ve never heard of.