Best We Can Do – Part 1

Ricky Riley and Frank L’Heureux left first in the Malibu and the others got into the truck and headed for the job, the wipers thumping as the weather got heavier. The truck slid sideways as they turned into the site. They climbed slowly out of the truck and looked up the five stories.

Frank L’Heureux held his hand out to the weather. “You sure, Ricky?” he asked. Frank L’Hereux had ten years in the trades on Rick, but in ’65 Frank was caught with his hand in the till and never got to run a job again.

“Let’s go,” Rick said. “Will, go up and work the barrel and pails and keep them coming. Stanley, you got the truck and Ray, get the wheelbarrow.”

The bucket truck was already a little iced over, but Stanley got in and got the machine started.  Frank L’Heureux got the cement mixer going — he was expert at the right mix of sand, powder and water. Will climbed the scaffolding and Frank L’Heureux worked the cement mixer and then poured it into the wheelbarrow.

Ray took the barrow and dumped it into the big barrel that was already two inches full of rain. He signaled to Stanley, and Stanley worked the levers in the cab of the bucket truck to get the barrel up to Will, who was on the top deck with the pails that were crusted at the edges with cement.

He was shivering and clutching the neck of his jean jacket, the other hand in his pocket. When the barrel got up there, he filled the pails fast then shouted, “Comin’ down!” and poured the pails into the wooden chute set up next to the staging. When the cement came down the chute and into a pile, Ray shoveled it and worked it smooth while Rick watched everyone.

They repeated this half a dozen times and Will’s fingers were getting stiff, which slowed him down.

“Gimme some more!” Rick shouted up to him and Will kept them coming. The cement was moving slower down the chute, too, as ice crystals fell into everything.  

“Gimme some more!” Rick shouted again, and Will grunted as he lifted up another pail and dumped it down the chute. It stopped before it got to the third-floor deck.

“What the hell?” shouted Rick.

Will looked over the edge at the chute. “Froze!” he shouted back.

“Well, break it up, let’s go,” said Ricky.

Will picked up a pounder and started down the slippery staging. He was remarkably sure-footed and the crew watched him move the pounder from hand-to-hand as he climbed down fast before the cement in the chute set. He got to the spot, heaved the pounder up, and brought it down hard.

The cement had set; the wooden chute broke, and Will tried to grab an edge just as the bottom of it swung out with the heavy lump of frozen cement at the top. He reached out, but Will’s weight pulled the staging away from the wall and he knew in that second he was going down. He jumped away from the staging, his arms spinning like helicopter blades, while everyone on the ground stood motionless.

He was down first, then the staging on top of him as Stanley and Ray covered their heads with their arms and Rick Riley ran backwards three steps. Frank L’Heureux moved to break Will’s fall, but he wasn’t fast enough. He threw the staging pipes off of Will and stood back. 

For a minute, everyone froze as they stared at Will and waited for a movement, a word. He was sprawled on the thin coating of ice, his legs and arms bent and his head turned, like he was sprinting in a fifty yard dash. Very slowly he pushed himself to roll over, and as he did a sound came from him then went from soft to very loud.

“Fuuuuuck!”

The others moved towards him then, talking at once. “You okay man?” — “You bleeding?” — “Anything broken?” — “Wanna go to the hospital?”

Will was now up on his elbows, his hands clasped around his bent left leg.

“Shit. I think something’s broken,” he said.  

Rick moved in and got Will under the armpits to stand him up. “Stanley, Ray, help me get him in the car. I’m taking him to Our Lady’s. You guys knock off, just leave it and go home. Take the truck.”

The brothers got Will into the car, and Frank tried to position him so the foot had the least weight on it. Ray hit Frank with the back of his hand and cocked his head toward the truck, and the three of them got in with Stanley behind the wheel. Rick got behind the wheel of the Malibu and they all took off slowly.

Rick followed the truck out of the site and turned the other way to head for Our Lady of the Pines Hospital, saying all the way there: “Shit. Goddam.” Will had his hands clasped around his shin again, keeping his foot off the floorboard.

“My fuckin’ leg,” he said. “I think it’s broken.”

Rick was hunched over the top of the wheel, leaning toward the foggy windshield. When they got to the hospital he parked at the emergency entrance and went around to the passenger door. He pulled Will’s right arm around his shoulders and Will hopped out.

As soon as the automatic doors opened and they were inside the bright room, a nurse came from behind the desk and shouted, “Alice! Tell Bets to get the doctor and come help me!”

The two nurses took Will off of Rick’s hands and got him to a chair. Bets brushed the mud off the front of her crisp white uniform and then turned around and shouted, “Alice!”

Rick stood for a minute as they situated Will then said, “You all set, man?”

Will gave him a crooked smile. “Yea, yea sure, Ricky, you go ahead. These pretty girls will take care of me. Thanks for getting me here, man.”

***

The next morning, Rick, Frank, Stanley, and Ray left Bea’s for the site, and Horsearound’s Cadillac was already there. They pulled in and saw him looking up, hands on hips, shaking his head slowly back and forth.  

The morning was brightening up. There was a clear sky that signaled a beautiful November day. Rick got out of the truck and went over to Horsearound; he knew what was coming.

“Look at this shit,” said Horsearound. He kicked at the broken wooden chute. The other three stood to one side in a little huddle, pretending not to watch.  

“Someone gonna get up there and get some work done today? Ray, you. Now I’m short a man and behind a week. Frank, you take over for Ricky. Rick, get shoveling. You’re done as boss.” He walked towards the Caddie saying, “Sleet and ice. Jesus.”

Will was out of the hospital in a few days, a huge plaster cast on his broken ankle and a crutch under his arm. His mother said “no” to letting him sleep on the couch; she was still putting food on the table for the four youngest and couldn’t be a nursemaid, she said. His sister Joannie had an apartment, and she agreed to let him stay with her.

Will made an effort to help her out, but he couldn’t do much more than the dishes, leaning against the counter and balancing on the good foot. She’d come home from her work waitressing at the Lakeside too tired to cook a meal, so Will would pour them each a bowl of cereal and sit on the couch to eat it.

He was dying for a beer. When Joannie got groceries, he’d volunteer to put them away, always hoping she’d stopped at the packie and he’d find something at the bottom of the bag, but he never did.

Joannie drank beer but not a lot, just one or two at a cookout or something, and Will wondered to himself how a person could do that. Will finally came right out and asked her to get him something, and she blew up.

“You kidding me, Will? You’re not missing any meals around here already, and you haven’t given me a penny.  I take your stuff to the laundromat, I pay the rent — Chrissakes I’d like to lay down on my couch when I get home from work and I can’t even do that. I’m gonna come up short for the electric bill and you want me to buy you beer? Forget it,” she said.

The next day when Joannie went off to work, Will took the jackknife from his pocket and sawed at the plaster cast until he could crack it, then he eased his foot out. He tried to flex his ankle and howled. He practiced walking back and forth in the living room with the crutch, then dropped the crutch to try without it.

Two steps and he was down on the floor, pulling his knee up with both hands, his face squeezed, trying not to holler. He held onto the couch arm and got himself upright and picked up the crutch. 

A little more practice and Will was outside pulling the door shut behind him. Joannie’s place was just a couple of blocks from St. Jean’s Social Club, which was set up years ago for the French-Canadian mill workers, but it was open to any working men now. It was open for breakfast and lunch and Will was pretty sure he could get a couple of beers on the cuff.

When he got there, he balanced on the crutch and his good foot and turned the handle, then pushed the door open with his shoulder and stumbled as he got inside.

“Jesus, Will,” said Manny, who worked days behind the bar. “What the hell? I was wondering where you been.”

“On the job,” said Will. “Can you let me have one, Manny? Horsearound hasn’t paid my last week yet.” 

“That no good sonofabitch,” said Manny.

In fact, Joannie had seen Horsearound at the Lakeside when he came in for lunch one day and she told him Will was staying with her. She asked Horsearound if Will had anything coming.  Horsearound peeled two twenties from a roll and extended them toward her, then pulled his hand back before she could take them. “Tell him something for me,” Horsearound said.

“Sure. What?” Joannie said as she grabbed the two twenties from his hand.

“Tell him I can’t use him anymore.”

“Jesus, Horsearound, what’s he supposed to do?” 

“Sorry, honey, but he’s no good to me now. He’ll get something. Hey, at least he came back alive from Nam, my Roy never did.” He left Joannie a good tip, and she tucked the forty dollars away in her apron, with no intention of telling Will what Horsearound had said, or about the money. She needed to pay that electric bill.

At St. Jean’s, Manny drew a draft and set it in front of Will, then came around the bar to take breakfast orders from a couple at a table. There were half a dozen tables in the club, the chairs were haphazard and every one of them was sticky, but it was always busy anyway.

The ornate oak bar had carved corners and a high polish that the light bounced off of as it filtered through the red-glass windows. There was a stairway in the back of the room next to the Men’s, that led up to a function room where Will had once slept after sneaking up there on a busy night near last call, when no one noticed him.

Will finished his beer and looked around for a friendly face. He saw his Uncle Ernie sitting by himself, wolfing down scrambled eggs and toast. Will made his way over to the table and sat down hard on the chair.

“What happened, boy?” asked Ernie.  

“Working for Horsearound. Staging collapsed.”

“That old goat. Anything to get the job done. It’s too bad, Will,” he said. “Cup of coffee?” 

“Just had a beer.”

“Manny, another beer,” Ernie hollered. Manny came and took Will’s mug from the bar and filled it from the tap.

Ernie finished his eggs and Will took a piece of toast from his plate and ate that.

Then Ernie said, “I can let you have my F250, Will. It works. Needs a front end. Got a camper on the back. Come over the yard later and take a look. Can’t miss it – it’s orange.”

Will didn’t have to take a look, he just had to make his way over to his Uncle Ernie’s office, which was in the little building in front of the chain link fence that went around the junk yard. Ernie gave him the keys, and he didn’t have to say it but he knew he was giving Will a place to sleep, too.

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