2/14/07

Figure 6-Jets

Of the men who brought me into this trade, the first would have to be qualified as a “true entrepreneur.” For this reason I found myself hurtling toward the airport one raw January morning, heaving the truck around traffic in the curves, to build a Quonset hut on ten acres of asphault. I have since learned to couple the term “entrepreneur” with the phrase “galloping psychotic.”

It was, of course, raining. I had the kind of hangover that turns the mind into a squirming working mass, the morning was not merely hellish. I could hurl my body into whatever task was appointed, getting the aluminum frame off the ¾ ton truck the man drove all night from South Carolina. Ride the hammer-drill deep enough to tie into the crush n’ run. I could laugh while our toolbelts got soaked, the lead carpenters would bitch and scowl. The only way to keep warm was to move quickly.

Traffic from the four-lane roared a steady pace. Hulking jets landing obliterated all language. We bolted the thin frame together for two days, the sky hung wide and low above us, racing. The aluminum skin of jets fading in and out of clouds.