Journeyman Read online

  They sit at a heavily painted picnic table on the outdoor patio in the shade of an umbrella clad in beer advertisements. It was a hot workday, and Joe and Nolan drink Mexican beer with limes while Manny has an orange soda and Guillermo a glass bottle of cola. A napkin dispenser and hot-sauce bottle stand near the pole to the umbrella and salt specks are scattered on the table.

  At the far end of the patio, a trio of concrete workers sit with two empty six-packs of beer on the table before them. One table over from this, a handsome young woman sits across from a tall, light-skinned, dark-haired man wearing a two-piece suit. The woman is short and dark skinned and voluptuous. She wears a red scarf about her neck and speaks in a heavily accented English, to which the man she’s with responds without an accent, but something about his pronunciation makes Nolan suspects that English is not his first language either.

  Nolan looks to the couple because that is where Guillermo is looking. Meanwhile, Manny raises his chin toward the overpass where southbound traffic is stop and go.

  —Maybe hay un accidente? Manny says.

  —Maybe, Joe responds.

  —Is maybe un Ram.

  —You little wise-ass. Joe smiles. Here I buy you dinner and you start in on this.

  A waitress emerges from inside the restaurant carrying a red plastic tray laden with two plastic baskets of fried corn tortilla chips and four salsitas, two pico de gallo, two chili verde. While Manny and Joe argue over American-made automobiles, Nolan watches Guillermo pick at the tortilla chips and glance over now and then at the young woman.

  —No, no, no. Joe waves his finger at Manny. You don’t know, man. You just no comprendes.

  The tall, dark-haired man sitting with the young woman stands, steps over the bench seat, smooths down the front of his jacket and heads toward the bathroom. Once he’s gone, the woman removes her scarf and sets it on her purse on the bench seat at her side.

  In the six weeks that Nolan has been on the remodel, he and Guillermo have exchanged only a few words, and even then only one or two that weren’t about the work at hand.

  —Manny, Joe says, for your job. OK? For your trabajo, it is muy importante that you comprendes that un Camaro es mejor que un Mustang. OK? Bitchin Camaro, Manny. Bitchin. Camaro.

  —No mames güey. Manny shakes his head, his face scrunched.

  Nolan watches the young woman spoon salsa on a chip instead of dipping it. There’s something about the way she dabs a napkin at the corner of her mouth and sits looking with her head turned to traffic on the street that makes Nolan think she’s aware of Guillermo watching her.

  One of the concrete workers stands and walks unsteadily down the aisle. As he brushes past the woman, her scarf lifts from the top of her purse and Guillermo slides off the end of his seat, takes two steps, and snatches the scarf just before it touches the ground. He straightens his back and offers it to the woman.

  —Thank you, she says in English.

  —You welcome, Guillermo mumbles.

  The man the woman is dining with returns just as Guillermo is making his way back to his seat. As they pass one another, Guillermo nods to the man, who responds by lifting his chin at the carpenter.

  The man and the woman leave soon after this and when they’re gone Nolan says to Manny in English that a raised chin is no way to acknowledge a man’s nod and he agrees and speaks in kind to his brother in Spanish but Guillermo doesn’t respond.

  —I’d like to see that ponce even try, Joe says, swallowing the last swig of his beer. Burros, eh, Billy?

  Guillermo shakes his head.

  —He-haw, Joe groans loudly. He-haw.

  When Guillermo doesn’t smile, Joe stands and mimes struggling to lift a heavy animal.

  —He-haw, he yells. He-haw.

  The gesture is obscene and the concrete workers at the other table begin pointing and laughing at him, and Manny is laughing and Nolan is smiling and chuckling, and then, finally, Guillermo begins to smile, as well.

  9

  Monday morning Nolan rides up the gravel road to the farmhouse to find Joe pacing in front of the trash heap. The fog has burned off early and the heat of the day has already chased off shadows cast by the surrounding oaks. Joe’s serape is draped over the driver’s-side window of the Ram and he’s sweating through the underarms of a light-brown T-shirt with the words Hecho en México written in bold black letters across his chest. His arm is suspended in the dishtowel sling, his free hand holding a cell phone to the side of his head. Manny and Guillermo, Nolan notices, always the first ones on the job, have yet to arrive.

  —Listen, Joe says into the phone, my guy’s here. I have to go.

  Nolan leans the woman’s bicycle against the oak and undoes his lunch sack from the handlebars. Scarves of lace lichen dangle listlessly from the oak, their shadows playing over Nolan’s hands as he unties the knot.

  —Yeah, Joe says into the phone. No, I will. Thanks.

  Joe collapses the phone against his hip and slides it into the back pocket of his faded work jeans.

  —Morning, Nolan says.

  —Guillermo and Manny got deported.

  —What?

  —Manny got arrested over the weekend for drunk driving.

  —But Manny doesn’t drink.

  —And he wasn’t driving, either.

  —I’m confused, Nolan says.

  —Apparently, Manny and his wife got in an argument. Afterwards, he took a sniff of a beer and climbed in the front seat of Guillermo’s truck and started revving the engine outside their apartment. When the cops showed, Manny resisted, and that’s when Guillermo got involved.

  —So they hauled him off, too.

  —And neither of them have cards.

  —There’s nothing we can do?

  —My lawyer friend says no. He said Manny’s been stopped twice coming over, and if he tries a third time, they’ll lock him up. Guillermo won’t be able to make it back for at least a month, if at all.

  —What about Manny’s family?

  —Their other brother is going to take them down.

  Joe kicks the tire of his Ram, and his long, sandy-blond hair converges over his face and eyes. Tucking it back behind his ears, he says:

  —Shit.

  Nolan looks to the gravel road, then out over the valley. The vineyards are dark green with jungly vines, the hills tawny below the dark chaparral of Fumarole Peak. Heat radiates above the valley floor.

  —Listen, man, Joe says, I know I haven’t used you right, and I’ll give you a raise, or whatever, I just can’t afford to fall behind on this place, especially with the termites.

  —I’m not going anywhere.

  —You mean that?

  —I do.

  —Thanks, man.

  They stand for a few seconds until Nolan says:

  —You all right?

  —I mean, Manny and I, we had our moments, for sure, but I don’t wish any wrong his way.

  —I know it.

  —And Guillermo? Little bull’s like a younger brother.

  Joe sighs. He places the tip of his tongue in an upper molar and shakes his head with his lip snarled a bit, not in anger, but to hold back his emotions. Then, he says:

  —My wife’s sister’s kid’s going to help out until I can find someone more substantial, but, we’re good here for now?

  —No worries, Nolan says.

  —No worries, huh? Joe smiles, finally looking Nolan in the eyes.

  —It’s all good. Nolan grins.

  The next morning, Joe arrives at the farmhouse with a sixteen-year-old kid slouched in the passenger seat of his Ram. Straight off, Nolan doesn’t like the look of him. Joe says a few words to the kid, who smiles and says something back, to which Joe just shakes his head as he slides out of the truck.

  Nolan walks out to meet the contractor.

  —Shouldn’t he be in school? Nolan asks.

  —School’s out for the summer. Besides, they al
ready gave him the boot.

  —I’m not a babysitter, Joe.

  —He’s a temporary fix.

  Over Joe’s shoulder, Nolan watches the kid lift a new tool belt from the bed of Joe’s truck. It has clean cloth bags and a hammer nestled in the holster. Sunlight glints off the shiny head of the 21-oz black-handled framer. Nolan squints to make out what the kid has written along the handle in yellow grease marker.

  —Does he even know how to swing that thing?

  —He wants to be a carpenter, bro. He wants to learn the trade. That still means something, right?

  Nolan looks over at the kid. He wears cowboy boots, faded black denims, a black-and-white thin-striped two-button work shirt, and a mesh baseball cap, the greasy brim folded into a tight, inverted V. He has patchy facial hair and a fat dip of chewing tobacco tucked behind his lower lip. He’s buckled the tool belt and slung it over his shoulder and he stands leaning back against the truck bed with his boot heel jacked up on the tire behind him. He casually twirls the hammer around his index finger like a gunslinger.

  Joe says:

  —Mason, come here.

  And over swaggers the kid.

  —Mason, Joe says, this is Nolan Jackson. Nolan, Mason Drove.

  The kid flips the hammer into his left palm and offers Nolan his right.

  —Friends call me Mace.

  Nolan extends his hand and they shake. He meets the kid’s eyes, and they do not waver.

  —So, Mace says, stepping back and looking over the farmhouse, what the hell happened here?

  Nolan looks down at the kid’s hammer, holstered in its steel loop, and sees the word DEATHSTICK smeared in one long yellow word, the letters like broken teeth in a rotten smile.

  Throughout the workday, Mace spits fat globs of tobacco juice in a plastic soda bottle he keeps in his nail bags. At lunch he devours a white-bread and processed-ham sandwich, a snack bag of corn chips, and two cans of cola. Then, he sits back and lights an unfiltered cigarette.

  Bullets, he calls them.

  He smokes each bullet down to a finger-pinched nub that he stubs out on the heel of his black cowboy boot before bringing his hand level with his head and flicking the butt with his middle finger out to the trash heap. The carelessness of the action is a not so subtle reminder of how much Nolan misses working with Los Hermanos de Zacatecas.

  For three days Nolan and the kid work side by side without speaking to one another about anything besides the framing of walls, the hauling of trash, or the salvaging of hardware and wood. But on the fourth day, as they sit on the front porch of the farmhouse for lunch while Joe’s gone to the lumber yard for materials, it’s Mace who finally breaks the silence:

  —Bummer about Joe’s Mexicans getting deported.

  —Yes, it is.

  —Of course, I guess we wouldn’t be sitting here like this if they hadn’t.

  Nolan doesn’t respond, which leaves space for the kid to say:

  —All pans out in the wash, right?

  Nolan clenches his jaw and looks out over the vineyards. He can hear cicada in the oak canopy above. A scrub jay’s squawk.

  —How long since you been a journeyman, Jackson?

  —I was a little older than you when I got started.

  —How old are you now?

  —Almost thirty-two.

  —Shit, you look older than that.

  Mace leans back against the two-by-ten Guillermo cut for his noon-time rest. He cups his hands behind his head and crosses his ankles. Nolan notices scars on the heels of the kid’s boots where he stubs out his bullets.

  —You like being a journeyman? he asks Nolan.

  —I do.

  —I don’t want to be nothing else. Not never. I just love pounding nails. I bet it gets to be hard on the body, though, at your age.

  Nolan nods, but barely.

  —Where’re you from? Mason asks.

  —Here and there.

  —You married?

  —Nope.

  —Ever been?

  —Nope.

  —You like working for Joe?

  —I do.

  —No, I mean, do you like having a boss at your age? I know I wouldn’t.

  At the end of the first week with Mace on the job, Nolan rides into the hills west of town to clear his mind. The kid shows up on time, he works steadily at what he’s told to do, he asks questions when he doesn’t understand, he asks questions when he does. He’s a solid apprentice who is genuinely interested in carpentry and construction and he enjoys the labor. Nolan can see this in the way the kid handles the tools, in the way he’s getting a feel for them, experimenting with the weight of a circular saw, extending a tape across a room. He doesn’t swing or cut blindly. Ultimately, he reminds Nolan of himself. And yet Nolan has been making speeches in his head throughout the week to Joe about why he’s quitting and to Cosmo about why he’s going to leave Burnridge. In the past, Nolan has simply hitched up and moved on at first inklings like these. But this time he can’t leave, not yet. If he leaves now, Linda will see it as weakness and she’ll be right. And he’ll be leaving Cosmo, who needs him at the house, if only to cook and to clean and to listen.

  So Nolan rides. He rides to exhaust his body in hopes that his mind will follow and he’ll be able to sleep without drinking himself closer to exhaustion. He rides to work out the frustration that has accrued from working all week with the kid, who has a recklessness about him, an arrogance outside of the work that Nolan distrusts.

  In the woods, miles from town, he rides up on a set of fluorescent orange traffic cones and a sheriff’s patrol car blocking the road. A young mustachioed deputy sits in the driver’s seat with the door open. He has a cell phone open before him, and his thumbs tap at the keys. He smiles to himself, his moustache almost twitching.

  Nolan stops before the patrol car and unscrews the cap from his water bottle. Fifty yards beyond the deputy and his vehicle, several men and one woman stand around a camera set on a tripod near where a gravel road turns off the asphalt back road and disappears into the woods. The woman holds a portable, two-way radio up to her mouth. One of the men walks to the side of the road, a cell phone to his ear, absentmindedly kicking a rock.

  —Nice bike, the deputy says to Nolan without looking up from his cell phone.

  —Make me an offer.

  —It hot?

  —You know a lot of grown men who steal women’s bicycles. Pink ones at that?

  —You’d be surprised.

  Nolan drinks from his water bottle.

  —This that movie? he asks.

  —More like a car commercial.

  The deputy’s two-way radio squawks and jargon comes through that Nolan can’t make out. The deputy looks to the woman, who waves to him, to which he responds in kind.

  —Road’s closed, the deputy says in an official tone of voice.

  Nolan can hear the sound of automobile engines revving in the woods, deep and throaty in the dusky shadows.

  —You might want to stick around for this, the deputy says. Last time through, the car almost rolled.

  The engine noise grows louder, more dense as it approaches. The road looks empty and expectant in a way Nolan has never seen a road look before. As the sound swells around them, the deputy’s cell phone beeps, tiny and meek, but audible through the engines’ roar. He removes the phone from his shirt pocket, flips back the display, presses a button with his thumb, and shakes his head. Smiling to himself, he says:

  —Chick’s crazy.

  As he collapses the phone against his leg, a red convertible speeds along the gravel road with two patrol cars in pursuit. Following closely behind the three vehicles is a flatbed truck with a camera mounted above the cab. A group of people, clad in black, cling to the paneled sides.

  The red convertible screeches on the asphalt, its back end swings out, and blue scarves of smoke unravel from its spinning tires. Gravel scatters across the asphalt. The
patrol cars follow after, but the flatbed slows to a stop off to the side so that the camera on the tripod can pick up the tail end of the action. Before long, Nolan sees brake lights red in the maple shadows. The three cars stop and pull back around.

  —That’s about the sixth time they’ve done that, the deputy says. I asked them about all the track they’re laying. All the skid marks. But all they said was, “Oh, we’ll clean that up in post-production.” I said, “No, I mean, how are you going to get all the skid marks off the road?” “It’s all done with computers,” they said. Like that’s what I meant.

  Nolan sits on the love seat untangling a jumbled handful of eight-penny nails. When he arrived home, the check for the remaining balance from his insurance company was waiting for him in the mailbox. He figured out what was in the envelope by the font used to write the return address, that and by the plastic window revealing his name and address. The first non-PO box he’s had in years.

  The washing machine by the door to the house jerks into its spin cycle and a mop handle vibrates against the side of the hot-water heater. Nolan sorts out one nail at a time, with the tip pointed toward him, ready to be flipped away and hammered. He sets each nail on a new road atlas, splayed open on the cushion and beside the bright white envelope with its crinkly, clear-plastic window with beveled corners.

  The garage door is raised on its galvanized tracks, and a light breeze wends through and out the open side door. With the tip of the last nail, Nolan traces a skinny line south and west from Burnridge, south and west to the ocean, to Point Bonita. He thinks about what the envelope contains, what it stands for, what its contents portend. It’s a considerable sum of money, but the slip of paper feels flimsy and insubstantial. He traces the coastline to Año Nuevo, Harmony, Purissima, all the way to San Clemente. He turns to the back of the atlas, to Mexico, and finds Zacatecas. Then, he turns the pages to Nevada, to the city of meadows. He can see her at work, standing at the bar while ordering drinks and unloading her tray of dirties. Sliding back strands of hair behind her ears with the end of a ballpoint pen. The forgotten movements of her workday.

  A car drives past the open garage door, its headlights intersecting with the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. On the top of one of Cosmo’s cardboard boxes, directly across from Nolan, stands the blue glass canning jar Nolan unearthed when he and Manny were digging the footings. Alongside the jar is a bird’s nest Nolan found on one of his bicycle rides after work. His .38 is still buried at the bottom of the cardboard box across from the love seat. He hasn’t taken it out in weeks. He hasn’t felt the need.