At 6:30AM Bill and I pull up to a dusty stop outside the jobsite trailer.  Already the thermometer lashed to the trailer window’s burglar grill is pushing 75°F: By mid-morning it’s nudging up against the thickened red line that marks 100°F.  It hurts to have those intense rays flaking down on my bare-arms and face.  But out of the too-cold air conditioning of the trailer I must venture to tangle with the bricklayer: Dony Hagerty, a fifty-something Corkman, with that special skill of viewing the world only through Corked-eyes.

I stand with Dony next to his already too-hot-to-touch scaffolding.  Both of us stare silently at the blue metal structure, entirely deserted now, other than small piles of red brick stacked on the planks yesterday by a gang of grumbling, guttural-cursing Connemara men.

“What in t’fuck is goin’ on here?” I aim my index finger accusingly at the mute mixer

The air above the stack of battered mortar pans next to the mixer shimmers and distorts.

“De’re gone is wats gwoin’ on,” Dony jerks his thick head of greying-black hair through a quarter-swivel to further compound his cryptic answer.

“What in the fuck does that mean?” spitting mad, I wave my clipboard in his broad flat-featured face.   “They’re gone?  They’re gone? Did a fucken spaceship kidnap them, ‘cause that’s t’only acceptable eggcuse for not havin’ yer crew here today!  We have a fucken schedule ta mee….”

“NAH, NAH, nah, no focken spaceships, … I wish,” he squints at me for a second from under his unruly eyebrows then turns away. 

“Nah, dat bollix above in de motel, he … he, … he took all de bhoys stuff, like deir clothes an’ ever’thin’.  Even Tommy-Joe’s viday…oh player an’ all he’s porn…oh…graphic filums … ever’thin’.  T’Injun as owns de motel, he done dat.  Took de lot,.

“How cum?” I shake my head, trying and failing to stay out of bricklayers-domestic problems.

“Ah, de bill, don’t ya know, sure.  See, I don’t get paid here for ‘nudder two wakes an’ we’re above in dat motel near a munth awready.  Dem Injun fellas won’t wait for no money ta cum de ways ye fellas pay – thurty days from d’end a de month ye pay.  Sure, a lad cud be dead n’ haf t’gravestone up be de time yer check arrives.”

“You signed t’contract with them terms an’ them fucken bricks aren’t goin’ ta lay themselves!  We need FUCKEN BRICKLAYERS!”

“You needs bricklayers!” he jerks his big thick head violently.  “I needs ‘em fucken worser … an’ gud wans too.”  

He storms off toward his pickup, the thick shoulders on his squat torso bopping up and down as he covers the rough ground fast.

“WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GOIN’?” I yell after him.

My yelling makes no difference: He couldn’t stop now: Even if he wanted to. 

“We have ta solve this,” I say to no one.

The sun hurts on my arms; drops of sweat run down my back.

WE HAFTA GET SOME FUCKEN BRICKLAYERS!” I yell quixotically into the swelter of heat and dust and fear-anger.

I stomp back to the trailer, boiling with the stress of Dony’s missing crew, the unbearably hot day and the frustration of knowing too well you’re alive but never knowing why. 

Looking to blank my mind, I give the trailer door a fucking-enormous slam.

The windows rattle inside their burglar grills. 

The tepid coffee in the pot ripples.

Caleb, the super, shoots upright from the plan table, a mechanical pencil in one hand, a ruler in the other.

The AC in the trailer is set so low that the sheen of sweat now coating my body chills on contact with the cold air.

“He fucked us, … right?” Caleb snaps, staring out over the top of his cheap, thick-framed reading glasses.

When he sees the expression on my face, he nods so violently his glasses slip down his nose; catching them before they fall, he whips them off the bridge of his nose and aims them at me.

“I need masons on that scaffolding A…S…A…fucken…P.  I got that fucken asshole from hell of a roofer you signed up coming in three weeks.  Them bumpkins outta Central Mass is gonna start roofin’ whatever the fuck is out there, whether it’s got walls or not!”

I stomp over to the wall phone.

“Now we got no choice,” I release a long-overly-dramatic sigh and grab the beige handset like it’s a lifeline.

“Ah…greed, but yer countryman there’s gonna shit a fucken Volkswagen when he hears,” he laughs a dry laugh. “Give me some warnin’ so’s I ken be on a site walk.”

“Well, we gotta make sure they’ll do it first,” I sigh my thoughts out loud.  “Then we have make sure that fucken fool knows it’s his only chance ta not get ate alive be our ….”

I slam the phone back into its cradle.

“Let me see …,” I sigh a long involuntarily sigh, hesitating in the face of confrontation.

I stomp over to the window, push my face against the glass and try to peer through the burglar grill and the enormous drops of condensation pooling on the outside of the window.

“Fucket,” I give up and stomp outside, slowing just enough to slam the door hard.

Emerging from the fabricated cold of the trailer, the dead heat hits even harder.

Through the air shimmering above the site’s broken ground, I see Dony’s black pickup idling in the dirt parking lot.  I amble over to the truck, stumbling on the rough ground as fear-anger sharpens my focus for confrontation.

Dony badly feigns oblivion when I knock hard on the truck’s driver side window.  He turns his big head to look at me, arching his back too much.

I take a few steps back, almost threateningly, so that he knows getting out of the truck is what I’m anticipating. 

His window slowly whirs open.

“Yeh, wat can I do fer ‘ou?” he asks, like I’m canvassing for his vote.

“Come with me inta the trailer, there’s on’y wan way I see for you to not get ate alive in this situation.”

“Aha, I see now, de focken Mayo man is out ta break me balls, an’ me doin’ my vury bhist ta… ta … an’ who are ‘ou anyways ta ….”

“Shut up ta fuck wudya,” I snap, spit flying from my lips.

I step back to the truck and start to lean forward to deliver the hard truth of our contract.  Dropping my palms on the black metal door, I instantly snap them back – scorched.

“Lookit we’ll have no choice but ta bring in another mason,” I rattle the words out rapidly, trying to recover some dignity.

His face is solid, unreadable. 

I pause, shrug my shoulders.

“And … whatever the fuck we do do …,” I pause again, stare him coldly in the eye, “will be at your cost, … on your nickel.”

“‘Ou’d focken do dat ta yer own countryman would ‘ou?  An’ me here with de red a me arse out tryin’ ta git this job done fer ‘ou!  ‘Ou focken Mayo bollox ‘ou!”

His eyes flash with anger, spit flying from mouth.

“I awready took ever’ gobeshite I could find standin’ on de street corners a Dorch…hester an’ ‘em pertendin’ ta be bricklayers.”

He grits his teeth and twist nods his head.

“Haf a dem fockers couldn’t lay a shite down inta a toylet bowl an’ it benate their arsehole.”

Sensing he’s done blowing off his anger, I change my tone.

“Forget about them, cum onta fuck inta the trailer with me, an’ we’ll call them serious lads that wuz here Monday.  We’ll have them send down a fucken hopper full a bricklayers.”

“I aint jynin’ no union,” he gives a half-hearted twist of his head of thick grey-black hair, “couldn’t cover me costs I couldn’t.”

“If I hafta find another mason, you’ll be covering our costs … an’ then some.  That’s what ya shud be worr….”

Thinking I’m going to far I halt.

He grits his teeth, his lips flaring up, eyes staring beyond me down at the ground.

“Lookit, cum on inta the trailer, an’ we’ll at least find out what it costs.”

Two hours later, in the chill of the over AC’ed trailer, Dony tear-angrily becomes a union contractor.  But after we go over the numbers, he realizes that the cost per hour for a Boston bricklayer, with the motel costs and food allowance factored in, is more expensive than the local union rate. 

“Poor oul Tommy-Joe,” he says grinning wildly, twist-nodding his grey-black head of hair. “He’ll never see Tessie-big-Tits agin!  D’oul Injun’ll be in de back room starin’ at dem big nippley tings ever’ night ‘til dey focken fall offa her!”

The Union Business Agent and his scowling, muscular assistant stare from Dony to me to Caleb – who just shakes his head. 

With firm handshakes and no smiles, they depart silently with their win.

The day grinds on, the sun slowly etches its path across the sky, scorching the planet.

At 3:30 everyone on site who sweats-for-a living packs up and leaves.  Job boxes clang closed; truck doors slam shut; engines purr to life.

Around four-ish, Bill ambles into the trailer, his face reddened and sheened with sweat.

“I wuz a buildin’ safety railings at t’loadin’ dock, but I done run outta lumber,” he huffs out the words making straight for the water cooler.  

The five-gallon water jug bubbles and gurgles as he fills one tiny cone shaped paper cup after another.

“I reckon I’ll head on down ta the lumber yard.  It’s late but if Bernie’s on the gate, he’ll let me in.”

He whips down another cone of cold water. 

 “Ya know Bernie wuz with the 26th Infantry back in doubleya-doubleya two, he’s still got a Kraut slug in his right shoulder.”

He smushes his lips together, nods with pride.

Not knowing what’s the right thing to say, I too nod, but with someone else’s pride.

“I tol’ him he’s a drinkin’ too much, ya kin smell it off him when he’s checkin’ yer slip.  But Bernie says, ‘no, no, I ain’t drinkin’ too much, I’m drinkin’ jus’ the right amount!’”

Bill laughs too loud and too fast; then suddenly stops, pursing his lips.

“Ok, I figure I’ll hit the lumberyard, then head on back ta that durn hot box of an apartment,” he winces as he stands fully upright, pulling his shoulders back. “I’m a cookin’ tonight, ‘member we got them good steak-tips.  I still can’t figure what was gonna on fer that woman in the parkin’ lot.  Ya know I wuz thinking out back taday that maybe she’s got too much money an’ wuz havin’ one a them nervous breakdown things?”

He flicks his eyes at mine, then looks away fast.

“Eh, my car’s not here, ‘member I came with you this morning,” I shrug, regretting the decision, born out of a lack of air conditioning in my car, to come to work in Bill’s truck.  Now I won’t have the usual alone time on the hour drive back to the apartment that our company accountant Janet rented way too far from the jobsite.

In the silence of Bill’s planned escape melting, I turn to look at Caleb.

“Oh yeah, my motor wouldn’t start this morning so I hadta call a cab, I wuz yellin’ across the parking lot at you guys but I guess ya didn’t …,” he lets his lie trail off.

Dony, stomping across the broken ground from his truck to the trailer, had spat out in temper that Caleb was done for drunk driving last week.  Since then, he’d been having one of the bricklayers, a red-faced Cavan-man, a martyr for whiskey himself, swing by to pick him up in the morning.  But last night the Cavan-man drove east in the darkness to Boston with nothing but an empty wallet and his dusty work clothes: The rest of his clothes and belongings locked up in the storage room of the Empire State Motel.

“Oh, okay, I … eh … eh,” Bill starts tentatively. “I’ll load up down with Bernie an’ then stop by for you boys, awright?”

 Caleb pours himself a cold cup of this morning’s coffee, frowning, glaring down at the floor.

 “Sure Bill,” I say, nodding a lot, “just honk like you mean it when you’re outside.”

 I take a roll of fax paper spewed out by the machine and start cutting it into strips.

 “That goddam thing broken again?” Caleb says passing by, grabbing his hardhat and  measuring tape.  “I gotta go measure the main entry opening.”

He sigh-groans and slaps his hardhat onto his head. 

“We’re gonna hafta guarantee a dimension to that storefront guy.  He’s been crawlin’ up my ass fer dimensions fer two weeks now but yer new union buddy there wouldn’t lock one in.  Now, he’s gonna hafta live with whatever numbers I fax over ta that douchebag.”

 I grit my teeth and look away.

 “’Re we gonna have bricklayers out there tomorrow?” he digs in a little deeper.

 “I dunno!” I retort, sitting back, throwing up my hands, the unruly roll of creamy-white fax paper jostling in the air.  “You were there, you heard the Business Agent say that if we sign a slip every day for their hours, he’ll send us enough masons ‘ta build a fucken pyramid!’”

 “Yeah, but we need good brickla….”

 I wave him off and turn back to disassembling the unruly fax paper such that I can reassemble it into a stack of dispiriting-to-the-owner Change Orders.

 An hour later, I hear Bill honking outside and start tidying everything into piles, stapling them so I don’t have to recreate everything again tomorrow.  The trailer door flies open and Caleb stomps in, hardhat under one arm, using the other to wipe his flushed brow.

“Man, it’s hotter out there than divorce court.”

He hangs up his hard hat, wobbles a little getting to his desk, then flops down into the chair.

“I could sure use a beer on the way home,” he lounges back, throws his hands up behind his head.

“Bill’s outside,” I studiously don’t answer his suggestion.  “You comin’?”

“Oh yeah, sure-sure,”

We don’t stop for a beer. 

Bill’s not a drinking man, he doesn’t need to, the stories buried in piles of memories inside his brain keep him going.

“I ben in every country known ta civilized man chasin’ AWOL soldiers, course not includin’ ahind t’Iron Curtain,” he sighs and taps the steering wheel.  “They ain’t civilized behind that thing.  There’s Africans down Africa way as is more civilized than them Ruskies.  I never cud unnerstan’ how big fellers like ‘em let themselves git duped by t’reds.  Why in doubleya-doubleya two Russians cudn’t do nuthin but soak up German bullets.  You know how many of ‘em died?  Huh?  Huh?”

He turns in the cramped, stinking of booze-breath, cab of his truck and, paying little attention to the road, nudges my chest with the back of his hand.

“Sumptin like five or six millions of e’m died in the big war, … six … mill…eeons of ‘em.  Ya know how many people that is?”

He presses his knuckles further into my chest.

A Toyota Tercel full of teenagers scurries around us, finger-flipping-honking, cutting us off.

Bill’s eyes are still staring at me looking for an impossible answer.

I shrug.

“It’s a lot, a very lot.  Ok, it mighta even ben more, ‘cause them reds cudn’t tell ya the truth, not even if their miserable lives depended on it.”

We finally arrive back at the apartment building and pull to a stop in our space at the far end of the parking lot.  The hot air above the asphalt wobbles, refracting the image of the dreary yellow brick building.

“Can someone ax…plain ta me why we hafta park over here haf a mile from our durned apartment?” Bill, loving the sound of his own voice, can’t stop himself.  “Heck, I’m almost done fer the day by the time I git ta the truck in the morning.”

“Talk ta Janet,” Caleb snaps, the sweet stink of booze hard on his breath.

“No, she fer sure won’t have no answer fer me, not taday,” Bill replies, opening the truck door.  “Her kitty’s not doing too gud, least an’ all when I talked ta her this morning it tweren’t, the air conditioning makes it scratch itself all day.  Its durn fur starts a cumin’ off after a few hours a scratchin!”

Not too much longer than Bill’s specified “thurty minutes” of corn shucking and boiling, steak sizzle-blackening on the pan – toying with the chirp-happy smoke detector – dinner’s close enough to ready for me to drag the white plastic patio chairs from in front of the rented television up to the rented table. 

I sit down and wait staring around the white-walled, entirely bare apartment.  Sweat beads up on my temples.  My underarms slide together in uncomfortable greasiness. 

A few months back Caleb came up here a week before the rest of us to get the job going.  In between setting up the trailer, fencing the jobsite and directing the bulldozers where to scrap back the planet, he rented an apartment’s worth of the objects that make empty apartments look like humans live there: Beds and mattresses, a TV on a stand and a table for meals.  He checked the wrong box on the form and rented tall kitchen stools.  Janet wouldn’t cover the extra charge to return the stools, so Caleb stacked them in the closet and bought four $3 white plastic patio chairs and charged them to the jobsite.  But the thing he’s most proud of getting past Janet is the two rented plastic palm trees.

“Maybe they’ll fool some chick inta thinkin’ Magnum lives here,” Caleb says, seeing me stare at the trees pushed up against the only window in the living room. 

He waves his very full plastic cup of Wild Turkey and ice at the too-shiny green palms.

“Ol’ mind-yer-pennies Janet wuz like a cat as stepped in bricklayer’s acid when she finally read the third month’s Furnirent invoice … MEEEOOOW!”

He claws the air slowly, chuckling viciously.

“I tol’ her these is like for real; I mean they evens got plastic durt.”

He walks over to the plants and picks up a few brown pellets of plastic.

“Pretty soon we won’t need no more real trees,” he says, rolling the plastic soil around on his palm. “We can jest have these ‘uns, they’re much better behaved, they don’t be blowin’ down on people’s trucks ‘r makin’ piles a leefs fer burnin’ every fall.”

He waves his cup of bourbon at the palm trees, the ice swirling against the plastic.

“But that stoopid broad, she on’y thinks about numbers addin’ up.  She don’t give a shit about ‘portant stuff like this.”
The little beige speaker by the apartment door trills loudly. 

Caleb and I turn to one another in shock; first at a sound we’d never heard before; then at the fact that someone knows we’re here.

“Who the fuck could that be?” I ask.

“Yeah!” Caleb says, worry on his voice.  “Aint no one never stops by here, probly a mistake.  Don’t pay it no heed.”

Bill turns to us from the stove, his eyes darting over and back from Caleb to me.

I frown, squeeze my eyebrows together.

“I mighta tol’ yer countryman, ta stop by, … haf a little dinner.  He wuz awful down earlier, all by heself in some motel room over here in Newburg.”

He stops and looks at the beige speaker. 

“Wouldn’t none a the motels in Poh…keepsie let ‘im rent a room.  Guess them motel fellers meets up fer coffee or sumptin tells stories like a bunch a housewives.”

“Well …,” I purse my lips, raise and lower my eyebrows.  “He’s here, we cannit turn him away.  Go find him at the door willya, this shithole is a maze a corridors.  I don’t think I ever cum out the same door twice.”

Five minutes later, Dony’s squat frame is crowding the apartment’s open doorway, Bill visible behind him in the corridor.

“Jaysys, d’ye have de hate on in here?”

“No, no, no,” Bill says, slapping Dony’s broad shoulders as he forces his way in past him.

“Joe’s jus’ storin’ all a July’s heat in this here ‘partment, so’s he don’t hafta pay ya ta heat the scaffoldin’ next winter.”

We all laugh too much.

“Sit yerself down over there,” Bill waves Dony toward the rented table. “Take the weight offa the floor.”

Dony takes a tentative step into the apartment’s pretend-kitchen.  He looks sheepishly over at Caleb, then at me.

“Howaye lads, nice …,” he trails off.

“Come on in,” I wave him toward the table.  “Here Caleb, offer Dony a drink.”

Caleb effects a fake scowl but immediately flips it into a wide smile.

“Grab yerself some Wild Turkey or a Bud from the fridge, but don’t be letting none a that coolness out, we don’t want no one back at the office ta think we’re living high on the hog out here in hell!”

Dony nods a lot but doesn’t move.

“Come in, come in,” I wave him in.

He takes a few steps in.

“I won’t have no beer, dat stuff is on’y a cod,” he fast twist-nods his head of thick grey-black hair.   “Payin’ fer houses down de Cape fer bar owners, an’ dem on’y laffin’ at us.”

 Bill’s back at the stove and all business.  The huge pot of water, with sunshine-yellow corn cobs jutting over its brim, boils over; the mini-flood whooshing to steam on the red-glowing stovetop.  The pan of steak-tips hisses and sizzles viciously.  Bill stabs at the still red inside steak-tips with a fork, liberating them from the scorching pan, dropping them one by each onto a white Styrofoam plate, that immediately runs red with blood.

“Awright fellers,” Bill says standing upright from the stove, wiping his brow with the back of his hand.

“I’d say we’re just about done here, this steak is anyhoo, not fer sure about the corn.  We’re gonna need a pliers or sumptin ta lift the corn out.  Janet wouldn’t pay fer nuthin but that one sharp knife that ken’t hardly cut butter.  Ya know a channel lock’d be best thing ta git t’corn outta that boiling mess.”

“Whare the fuck d’ya think we are?  A fucken jobsite!” Caleb snarls, his eyes tightening as he raises his already almost empty plastic cup towards his mouth. 

“A pliers in a classy apartment like this?”

He laughs too loud at his attempt at a coverup joke. 

Then he’s out of his seat so fast his chair topples to the floor.

“Ya know what, we ken use a couple a branches offa them trees, Furnirent ain’t gonna miss two branches, and fucket if they do, Janet ken pay!”

A minute later he’s at the stove with two large plastic palm branches trying fish the corn from the scalding water.

“Hol’ on, hol’ on, lemme git outta t’way,” Bill says fast, backing up to avoid the splashing water.  “I never seen corn cum outta a pot like that afore.”

Caleb plunges the thick end of the branches into the pot; one by one retrieving the flashing yellow corn cobs; the boiling water wilting the lustrous green leaves; a steaming pile of corn mounting on the white plate, warping the Styrofoam.

“Hell, that beat walkin’ ta Bill’s truck ‘cross that fucken millun degree parkin’ lot, huh?” Caleb says with an emphatic nod, looking around for his bottle of Wild Turkey.

We all serve ourselves.  Dony makes a show of needing to get shooed into the line, Bill demonstrably handing him a Styrofoam plate.  We all sit down, sighing, grunting, dragging the patio chairs tight to the table.

“Eh, … grace … we gonna say…,” Bill trails off, looking up his eyes darting from Dony to mine.

I deadpan him back, giving nothing away.

Dony blesses himself rapidly.

“Bliss us oh Lord fur dese dy gifts wu’re about ta rah…ceive …,” he mumbles loudly.

Bill nods along, his eyes dancing to the words. 

As soon as Dony’s lips stop moving, Bill grabs his plastic knife and fork.

“Don’t be foolin’ yerselves that ye’re gonna cut steak with them goddam knives!”

Caleb snaps from behind his refilled plastic cup.

“We’re gonna hafta eat likes we do when we’re huntin’.”

He forks a steak-tip and holds it up to his mouth, tearing at it with his teeth.

“God durnit but this heat’s sumptin else!” Bill says, flapping his hand in front of his face.  “I’m a gonna hafta take mah shirt off.  Let me know if y’all has any ladies stoppin’ by.”

He hmmphs out a laugh as he stands and whips off his sweat-soaked white undershirt. 

Cutting diagonally across his chest from his left shoulder towards his right hip is an enormous scare.

Bill sees me staring at the thick red scar.

“Heart surgeon done that, little Jewish guy in Boston, saved mah life, he did!” he wipes the back of his hand across his brow.  “Harder ‘an anything I cum across in Koh…rea, lyin’ in that ‘ospital bed seein’ all them nurses in tight-white dresses an’ me not fit ta chase ‘em!”

I look away from his scar, shamed at getting caught staring.

“Come on,” Bill says loudly, flopping back loudly onto his white patio chair.  “Let’s eat this food afore it gits … too hot.”

He laughs for real now, surprised by his own joke.

We all eat; the food is surprisingly welcome despite the apartment’s suffocating heat.

Dony takes the salt cellar, peels of the plastic fill cap on the bottom and empties a pile of salt onto his plate.

“See dat now Bill,” Dony points at the little pile of salt on his plate, almost indistinguishable from the Styrofoam.

“Now ain’t that sumptin!” Bill exclaims. “Give that on over here.”

“Cut out de middleman, dats what I says.  Sure, if I coulda bot dem bricks direct from dat factry above in All…bane, than I’d made a few quid on this focken job.  But ya see dey makes me buys ‘em from de yard in Pow…keepsie.  An’ de yard does marks ‘em up another twenny percents.  Dem focken middleman is killin’ dis country.”

Bill stares back at him, but I can tell that behind his eyes he’s a million miles away.

“Oh durn it, I fergot the pertato salad,” Bill says out of nowhere, waving the steak-tip speared on his fork in the direction of the pretend kitchen. 

“Someone go git it wouldya, I’m plum tuckert out from ever’thin’ taday.”

I stand up fast to avoid all of us slipping into stupid glowering.

“Jaysys it ‘twas some focken day awright,” Dony says with a loud sigh.  “I never taut I’d see de day I becum a union contractor.  Sure, ‘tis on’y de big bhoys as does dat.  Country lads like me, jus’ tryin’ ta make an honest livin’, wud niver a tink a jynin’ d’union.”

From the pretend kitchen, extracting expired potato-salad from the fridge, I pretend I’m not listening until I hear my own voice saying:

“Well, sure at least we’ll finally get them fucken walls up, get everyone paid up, an’ we can start getting’ the fuck outta he….”

“‘TIS ME AS NEEDS GITTIN’ PAID!” Dony yells, his chair jerking loudly.

I spin around, his eyes flash at me in anger. 

I stare back flatly, suppressing a vicious urge to smirk and further stoke his anger.

We stare at each other for too long.

“Brin’ over that pertato salad an’ share it with us ‘Mericans, ya pertato-greedy Mick!” Bill says loudly, but without any of the usual mirth in his voice.

Dony scrapes his chair back to the table and props his elbows up on the tabletop.

“Me gud Ireland suitcase, full a de finest a Missus Bradlees shurts an’ socks an’ jeans, aven me skivvies!  De lot of it stuck below in dat Injun’s storeroom.”

He twist-nods his head and coughs out a forced laugh. 

“An’ me in de same pair a skivvies dis past focken wake!”

Caleb, holding his nose, pointedly drags his plastic patio chair sideways from Dony.

Everyone laughs, but Dony’s eyes are still full of anger when he catches mine. 

This time I give him the bring-it-on smirk.

Bill’s eyes dart between the two of us.

“Cum on over here with that pertato salad; a meal aint a meal without pertatoes.”

I bring over the pint container of creamy-carbs and sit back down.

Bill nods at me, then scrunches his eyebrows and focuses on pushing the stick of butter hard against the steaming corn, melting a slather of animal fats against the cob.

“D’ya knows why we put butter on corn Joe?” he asks, looking up from the butter and corn, his face relaxing.

The enormous red scar slashing across Bill’s chest glistens.

“I don’t know,” I answer, smiling, “but I get the definite sense that I soon will.”

“So’s ya git more salt on there!”

He dabs the corn cob, dripping yellowish butter, into the pile of salt on his white plate.

“Now, … this here’s a real ‘Merican meal.”

“Yer bleddy right dere,” Dony says, twist-nodding, his arm reaching out.  “God Bless Ah…merica an’ all dat, give me some a dat oul’ buther.”

Caleb raises his cup of Wild Turkey toward the fluorescent light above us and says:

“Amen!”