Day 9

Day 9

Gloves.

Scotty took the thick leather gloves off and shook the dirt from them, then wiped the red dust from his forehead with the back of his sweaty hand and leaned on his shovel. His brown eyes peered up at the sun, and he sighed a little as he saw how high it was in the sky. The scent of concrete, wet and earthy, was heavy on the construction site, and the rattle of trucks, cars, and the raucous jackhammer were all a blur of noise. Scotty breathed deeply through his nose, the musty smell of his dust mask both annoying and comforting.

“Hey, Longfellow, get back to work!” shouted the foreman from the second floor of the house frame. He said it with a grin, though. Foreman Frank had been a longtime family friend of the Longfellows, and Scotty owed this job to him.

“Yessir, Mister Foreman!” Scotty cried jovially, with far too much gusto, and began attacking the dirt frantically where he was digging the trench line. Foreman Frank barked a laugh, shook his head, and went back to talking on his cell.

Scotty continued digging, though at a much steadier pace, all the way from the side of the house, where the kitchen would eventually be, down to the street, where they would connect the plumbing lines with the city water lines. It was not a hard trench to dig, only 2 feet wide by 2 feet deep, but it took Scotty the better part of an hour to complete it. Afterward, he stuck the shovel back into its slot on the truck, smacked his gloves free of dust again, and joined the crew moving 2x4s from the delivery trailer to the house. It was slow work, and none of the other workers were in any particular rush. They were, after all, paid by the hour.

“Hey, Scotty,” said Oscar, a burly man in his 30’s with long, lank hair and shoulders like hubcaps, “You wanna take it a little slower.” He looked slightly annoyed that Scotty was on his third trip with the wood, while the rest of them were coming back from their first,

“The faster you go, the faster it goes!” said Scotty, cheerfully, repeating the old adage his dad had told him since he was young. Scotty didn’t love the work, but there were worse jobs, and at the age of 17 he had had a few of them already. Just last month he had been cleaning sewage trucks at the end of the day. Not something he would be keen to get back to, and now that he worked here he probably wouldn’t need to be frying burgers and asking snotty people in SUVs if they wanted extra Fry Sauce at Freddy’s either. As he went back for his fourth and final load of wood, because there was no more on the trailer, he felt a sudden burst of energy.

Tonight, he thought.

The work went slowly. He helped move the 2x4s and some of the bigger beams into place as more experienced men measured, cut, planed and finally hammered them into place. The dull yellowish frame of the house had been standing for days, and they were finally beginning the inside rooms. Scotty helped mostly with the ground floor, though Foreman Frank called him up to the second floor several times to carry heavy bags of tools and hardware down from the second and third floors. The house, when it was finished, would be a monster. 7 bedrooms, 3 full baths and 2 powder rooms, with living rooms on every floor, and kitchenettes on both second and third. It had already been bought by a cattle rancher, who had apparently got a big contract with Wally-World.

Then, as Scotty was holding the last board for the doorway to the 4 car garage in place for Gilbert to nail into place, he heard Frank yell, “Wrap it up, guys!”

Scotty’s pulse quickened. Once the beam was in place, he jogged around, making sure he had everything he had left at the site, including the empty Gatorade bottle and the snack wrappers he had stuffed in one of the work buckets. With a spring in his step, he hopped into the back of Oscar’s truck, and within minutes the wind was whipping his long red hair around, blowing the dust off his bright yellow shirt.

He watched the Oklahoma highway blow past as Oscar hurtled down I-44, then onto I-40, out west toward the edges of Oklahoma City. Scotty gazed fixedly at the clouds, shimmering with different colors, not a thought or worry in his mind as he got closer to home.

“Allright, kid,” said Oscar gruffly. He had already lit a cigarette and looked ready for a cold brew and a shower. “You take care, ya hear?” He eyed Scotty doubtfully, as though assuming the Longfellow kid did nothing but cause trouble in his off hours.

“Will do, Oscar,” said Scotty, slapped the side of the truck. He quickly ran down the long gravel drive toward the small, cheaply built stilt house. The front screen door was tattered from the recent storms. He would have to remember to fix that this weekend.

“Mom!” shouted Scotty, blasting through the door and towards his small room, “I’m going out!”

“You just got home!” she yelled back at him, coming out of the kitchen and wiping her hands on her gray, stained apron. “I made lasagna, you stay for dinner, then you can go out.”

Scotty groaned loudly, but knew there was no arguing. Maddie Longfellow worked long hours as a nurse at Integris Baptist Hospital, and she rarely had time to cook. When she did, her sons did not leave leftovers.

Scotty leapt into the shower, rinsed himself while humming along to the sound of Ozzy Osbourne on his shower radio. With a rush of excitement, knowing he was an hour or so until freedom, he toweled and dressed. His leather gloves, worn in the palms from handling so many different types of tools, lay forgotten on the floor, at least until tomorrow. Scotty slid on his nicest pair of jeans, drew a clean t-shirt down his chest, and, after lacing up his comfortable Vans, stuck a pair of black mesh athletic gloves into his back pocket.

The lasagna was delicious, but Jerry and Bill both talked his ear off about their days at school. Jerry, the youngest, had just started middle school, while Bill was finishing up high school. Bill asked longingly about Scotty’s job. Scotty had worked hard and graduated early, and he was saving up every cent over the next year to go to an out of state trade school, where he would learn to work with mechanical lathes and, hopefully, be able to transfer to a full time university with a mechanical engineering program with the credits. Bill wanted to follow suit, and hung on Scotty’s every word about what to do.

Finally, after pecking his mom on the cheek and yelling that he would be back later, Scotty ran to the garage.

He threw the door open and stared.

There she was.

His very own 1968 Road Runner. This was a real car, not like the fiberglass crap on the road these days. 425 horsepower, with a 426-cubic-inch Hemi V8, she gleamed in the dying sunlight, gloss cherry red with black racing stripes. Since the age of 10 he had been restoring this car with his dad, and it was only in the last few months that he had been able to drive it, as he finally had his license. He remembered with clarity the day they had stumbled across the chassis in a junkyard. It was his 9th birthday, and he had told his dad he wanted a truck. Stanley Longfellow, an engineer with an oil firm out of Oklahoma City, told his son that no boy should have a truck. They didn’t have anything to haul.

“Pick a car instead, son,” he had said, and it was at that moment Scotty had seen the rusted but intact blocky front of the Road Runner. It had cost them $1300, which Stan had said was a steal.

Scotty let out a war-whoop, and ran toward the car, sliding across the hood Dukes of Hazzard style. He shot through the window and slammed the ignition forward, revving the powerful engine. Before he shifted into gear, he slowly and carefully pulled on his gloves with glee. He was going to race tonight, and nothing could stop him.

Hours later, when the fiery wreckage was being sorted through by Oklahoma Highway Patrol and Maddie Longfellow, having buried her husband from stage 4 liver cancer only months before, was sobbing on the side of I-40, the fingers in the gloves, which had not quite burned through, still held the leather steering wheel.