God's Pocket - Pete Dexter Read Online Free PDF Page A

Friday.
He saw where he'd left off and the work was as level as you could
draw it. Things was what they looked like, good work looked like good
work. There were a dozen empty beer bottles on the ground near the
wall, and he'd picked them up by the time Peets climbed out of his
pickup.
    The ground was softer where he parked, and the old
man heard Peets' boots sinking into the mud and then sucking up what
was underneath. He was naturally messy.
    "Mornin', Lucy," Peets said.
    "Peets." He didn't move, and Peets squatted
down beside him. The old man could feel the heat from his body and
hear his hinges creak. A couple of minutes passed and Peets looked at
his watch. "Damn, it's nobody wants to work today," he
said. There were nine men on the crew, and as of eight o'clock, seven
of them were late. "It ain't turned to daylight savings time
again, has it?”
    Lucien looked at him and smiled. Minnie Devine called
it Daylights Scaring Time, and thought it was something a white man
had invented to keep city Negroes lazy. She said they had no such
thing in the country.
    Peets said, "Could be it's just us today."
    Lucien said, "Could be we get somethin' done."
They stood up together and walked over to pull the plastic cover off
the cement. The sacks were eighty pounds, and the old man handled
them like nothing. Peets primed the Wisconsin that ran the mixer, and
it caught on the third try. It was whisperized, according to the law.
Peets missed the old noise, but times changed, and being the job was
next to a hospital, it was probably to the best.
    The old man tore open a cement bag and poured it into
a wheelbarrow. Peets shoveled. Lucien had worked for bosses who
cheated, even on little jobs, or were lazy, which came to the same
thing. Some of them mixed it two to one. He'd also worked for bosses
that didn't use half the steel they was supposed to. Peets kept it
honest. Three sand, two cement, one lime. He wouldn't be coming past
in no Mark VI in five years, but he wouldn't have to wonder if his
wall was still there either. Lucien didn't believe in leaving things
unsettled. If you did, they never let you rest.
    Lucien got the hose and watered the mix. He added by
eye, but it was never soupy and it was never hard. When his cement
came out the mixer, it would stand up three inches on a trowel.
    The sun was up, and Peets
and the old man worked fifteen minutes before a caved-in station
wagon with five men from the crew stopped on the sidewalk and emptied
but Peets didn't say so, but he was sorry to see them come. The job
was twenty days behind now, and there'd be more wet weather next
month, but working alone with the old shine, he was happy. He would
of been glad to haul blocks and mix cement for him all day. With just
him and Old Lucy, he didn't have to tell nobody to leave the damn
nurses alone, or argue over some damn union rule he never heard of.
He didn't have to think any way but practical. He gave his shovel to
the boy Gary Sample and put Old Lucy back on the wall where he was
laying block Friday.
    * * *
    Mickey was two blocks from Holy Redeemer when the kid
said he had to go back. He told him, "Leon, I got to be
somewhere. You got me ten minutes late already."
    "Listen," he said, "I forgot my
medicine."
    "What medicine?”
    "The medicine the doctor gave me. I can't go to
work without that shit, Mickey. If you can't go back, let me out here
and I'll walk." He looked over and the kid was sweating.
    "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
    "Nothin'," he said. “I just can't go to
work without my medicine. Jeanie didn't tell you about that?"
    Jeanie. Mickey pulled the truck into an alley, found
a cross street and took the kid home. Then at the house the kid said,
"Not here, drive up half a block."
    He stopped half a block from the house. Leon dropped
out of the truck. He hit the sidewalk crouched, looking all around a
him, and then ran to the house, zigzagging in and out of garbage
cans. Monday was garbage day on Twenty-fifth Street. Mickey