Working

In Sour Lake, Texas the mosquitoes are a halo around your head, they attack you as soon as you stop moving, all at once, like a trained squadron. When you slap them dead the little bodies stick to the sweat, and smear when you try to wipe them away. After a while you are wearing a vest of dirt, mesquite guts, and the mixed blood of who knows what.

I had been working with Chris for about two months at that point. Chris was from a tiny town on the Louisiana Texas, border named Vidor, near where we were working. He had smoked crack for 10 years but was recently sober when I got to working with him. I never saw Chris wear anything but Dickies overalls, a t-shirt, and boots. He was a huge man, 7’ 3”, with a big bull neck, broad shoulders, big thighs, and a gut. He smoked constantly and had an odd habit of licking his finger tips before he took a drag. Chris owned all his tools, his truck, and paid me a decent wage considering I was completely inept at everything other than painting. He lived in a small house and was pretty poor but he was proud that he owned his own business.

Once he started talking about God you could hardly shut him up, or never get a word in edge wise, assuming you had something to say about such a thing. He would make up various rituals during the work day sometimes, and ask me to do them with him. An example of this was he took to burning cedar blocks in a small fire in the yard of the cabin we were working on, and he wanted me to throw some in the fire with him. He said it chased off whatever evil spirits happened to be hanging around. He would mumble prayers as he worked. He had also taken to researching what he considered to be natural medicine. He thought that people needed to get off prescription meds to be truly healthy. I don’t know that smoking entered his thinking on this point. When he wasn’t talking about God he was talking about the natural healing properties of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and whatever else he took a hankering after.

Oscar ran a half-way house in Beaumont, Texas and had learned carpentry in Angola where he did ten years for holding up a mortuary. He shot a man during the holdup but the man didn’t die. He was a drug addict, street pimp, and two-bit con-man most of his life, but found religion in jail, got out on parole after 15 years, sobered up on the outside and started a half-way house. He basically built the house single handedly, and a lot of people in Beaumont had come through, got out, and stayed sober. He was well known in Beaumont by people who worked in the “recovery” and “rehabilitation” fields. He met Chris at an AA meeting. He had agreed to help Chris with some carpentry that the job needed.

Chris seemed impervious to the mosquitoes, they bit him steady, especially on the nose, neck, head, ears and eye-balls. He smoked madly and talked as they tried to fly into his mouth. We were on top of a 13 foot high scaffold trying to plumb a fascia board with the soffit underneath. He couldn’t get the cuts to fit together properly and was trying to man-handle them so that they would be flush. He was throwing his entire 250 pounds into the board, trying to get it to stay in place while I hit it with a nail gun, bending it as we went. He was shaking the entire scaffolding with the violence of his battle against the fascia. The scaffold was rattling and squeaking. It seemed to me that it would pop apart at any moment. He just kept talking and talking…like we were standing on the ground and were not in imminent danger of falling and being hurt.

"No, what I'm sayin' is that tomato seeds have med-I-ci-ni-al uses. The Indians new that. So I'm researchin' tomatoes see. Look, if you get cancer the thing to do is eat them tomatoes and the seeds will have a healing effect on the body system". Chris just continued smoking, ciggerett bobbing from his lips fling ashes, fighting with the beam. The mosquitoes darted around his head and whipped through the thin line of smoke.

Oscar just sat below looking up at me and Chris on the scaffold. He was regarding the battle with some skepticism. He never did any work, just told us what to do. He was the one that made the cut that was not the right angle. We were out of wood and we were trying to make that one work so we didn’t have to buy any more. Owens fucked up but nobody would say so because he was 70 years old and was working for free anyhow.

Oscar yelled up from his safe position on the ground "Adam, get closer to Chris, when he pushes it in you got to hit it with a nail quick, don’t let it spring back up. What size nails you got anyway, them little ol shitty ass things you got in that gun might not do the trick. You might need some masonry nails.”

Chris just keeps talking, seeming not to hear Owens "..so the point is to plant tomatoes in the yards, and then you get the seeds of you want to make a real strong dose, but you have to get the oil from the seeds by God, that’s where the Vitamin K2 is at , then you could cure cancer with some real high doses of tomato seed oil. The doctors know this but they’s out to make money that’s all, you can’t trust them nowadays. " He never misses a word, now more loudly so that Owens can hear better; "see its the oil in them seeds, the oil is concentrated in them seed…"
Owens stands up out of his chair in an exasperated manner, looking up, and squints, holding his hand in the shadow of the sun and interrupts Chris' discourse. "ADAM!!!! You hold that board like a little ol' girl, you gonna' make my old ass climb up there and do it for ya, put some ASS INTO IT BOAH'"

By this time Chris was getting excited and near screaming so Owens could hear him. I winced at the sound of his country logic. He has worked himself into a near frenzy over the miraculous healing powers of tomato seeds. But I can’t get the nail to stick. Chris puts the board into place and I Shoot a nail into it but the nail is not long enough to fasten the board flush. We pause a second and Owns ties a package of longer nails to a rope, throws the rope up and I haul it to us. But of course they don’t fit right in the gun.

“You gonna have to do it the old fashioned way, all ass holes and elbows. Don’t be afraid of some hard work, it’s good for you, hell that’s what made this country so damn grate, hard work. It’s all ass holes and elbows from here boy, you gonna get it, you gonna remember me one day and remember all the stuff I tell you. You gonna remember all right. Don’t never be afraid of some hard work. I’m not, that’s why I an’t gotta answer to nobody. Anybody can own their own business. You always talkin about wage slavery, well, you should start a business. “

The mosquitoes have planed their attack and Chris' sweat starts to drip onto me. I started praying despite myself, "OH shit get the board in place god please let the board!!!" The scaffold shakes wildly as Chris tries to wrestle it in place. It seems to me that it is seconds away from collapse. Owens sat back down assured that neather men are carpenters.