Dark Carpentry - Chapter 1 - A Summer Job

Chapter 1

A Summer Job

It was the summer of 1998 and I finally decided to go home for the summer. I enjoyed my last few years at Central Forest but that year was different, I gave my heart to Lucia. Her blond hair was like gold hay to me and I almost drowned a few times in her blue eyes. She was my drug of choice, my hit, and I needed another one.

She made working through the winter semester tolerable. I remember when I finally got the guts to ask her out and got shot down. She was back with her boyfriend again.

Hey, at least she called me back to let me know.

It’s been hard for me to talk to beautiful girls my whole life. When I worked with her, she made it easy and I never felt intimidated by her beauty, not at first but as the winter stretch on into late March students left Mt.Keen and work at the restaurant slowed down. There was constant snow, it never let up. I felt like Jack Torrance, snowed in and driven mad by some misplaced sense of purpose, losing my mind at the Overlook Hotel. There weren’t many bussers or waiters around except a few of the older ones. My attraction to Lucia slowly crept over me day by day and glance by glance. I felt powerless to resist.

I wanted to draw her portrait for my art class. Drawing a portrait of someone you knew was the assignment. At first she said yes, but changed her mind later and I got called down to the office, down into the bowels of The Sweet Potato, down to what my fellow co-workers would affectionately come to call ‘The Sweet Dungeon’. I guess Lucia felt weird about the whole thing, so I told my boss that I wouldn’t go ahead with it. I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable.

I was devastated and felt like a kind of monster after that. I confronted her one day while she was eating with her friend.

“I’m sorry you feel that way.” She said. In other words, too bad. Even though all of this tension, heartbreak and awkwardness occurred I still had feelings for her.

She graduated only a month after that. I still remember her smile on the last day, the day we hugged. She walked down the hallway and forever left me alone, muse-less. I got depressed, she was all I could think about. I had to get her out of my mind. There was nothing I could do, I lost…for all time.

I quit The Potato after three years and drove back home to Mt. Blu. I needed to be with my friends and family for support, lick my wounds you could say. Maybe they could cure me of this love sickness I had contracted.

Danny, my friend from high school offered to help by offering me a job.

* * *

Chris and Danny walked down the parking lot towards the lumber supply store. Danny Chris were to high school buddies. Chris sported black hair, was thin and slightly muscular, mid-twenties. Danny was a taller paunchy man in his twenties as well.

“It’s a tough job but it pays pretty good. Seven-fifty an hour.” Said his high school friend Danny.

“Well, that’s better then average,” replied Chris.

“We’d probably have you work under Will. He’s a pretty good guy.” Said Danny as they walked side-by-side to the lumber depot store

“I’ll take it, I need anything right now.” Said Chris.

“You sure? It’s hard work and you’re gonna sweat a lot.” Said Danny.

“That’s okay, I need it, trust me it’ll do me some good.” Chris replied in a blunt tone.

* * *

It was a hot, blazing, sunny day in June. Will had just finished raising a wall inside of a two-story colonial home. His brother Ted, had a bit of a red tan and blond hair also, to his immediate left. In the crane was Pete Osgood, a big, slightly overweight tanned man with spiky long brown hair that ran down past his shoulders. Steve was to Ted’s left and on his dark blue flip phone, he also had dirty blond hair with a slight golden brown mustache.

The wall was just about to sit straight up, Steve’s cell phone rang and he quickly answered it walking away from the wall, it fell backwards. Ted propped his body underneath it while Will grabbed the wall by its top. His face and arms were red as his teeth clenched together, his bulging arm veins pumped adrenaline and with some strength Will hoisted the wall straight up again. The nails were immediately pounded in the sides and corners to hold it in place.

Ted and Will finally let go. Will exhaled a deep breath and turned around to face, Steve who was talking and chuckling on his phone. He grabbed Steve’s phone threw out of the window portal.

“Hey!” yipped Steve.

“Next time you leave us during a wall raise you’re fired! Someone could’ve got hurt real bad and it’s not gonna be me and my brotha, brotha!”

“It was a business call!” Steve replied.

“When you’re here, make this your business.” Said Will pointing to the wooden deck they stood on.

Pete was moving the long steel crane carrying the triangle shaped truss to left just above them. Will quickly switched gears as he waved the truss in. He waved at Pete down below in the operator’s seat. Already the huge triangular lumber was coming on too fast. It waved in the air as the wind swayed it left and right.

Will quickly held out his open hand to signal for Pete to stop. Will and Ted got on top of their ladders as well trying to stop and grab the wavering truss holding it into place.

The wind picked up with a final gust rocking it backwards once more but Will and Ted’s immense hand and arm strength managed to hold the huge piece into place.

They hammered both ends locking it into place. Afterward, Ted shook his head in relief and smiled at his brother, “Ain’t that new guy supposed to be coming in today?”

Will looked down at his watch. “He’s got twenty minutes.”

* * *

Chris pulled up in his burgundy Pontiac 6000 and hoped that the third wooden skeleton of a house was where he needed to be.

He could see a couple of carpenters already. Pete was wearing his big black sunglasses as he laid out some plywood on a bench and picked up his saw to cut it in half.

To Chris’s amazement a semi-naked tan man with seemingly only a toolbelt on, ran around the corner of the house waving at him. As the beefy man turned the corner, Chris exhaled noticing that he was wearing small khaki shorts under the belt.

This must’ve been it, he though. It was the only work-site with workers actually tending to it. The sun was still rising in the east as Chris approached a huge stack of 2x4’s.

A stocky figure walked upon the top of the stack of wood to his right. He was mostly covered in shadow.

“Hello?” Chris asked.

“Good Morning, brotha. How you doin?” Asked Will.

“Good! Is this The Deirsing Brother’s worksite?” Asked Chris.

“Why, yeth it is,” Will said with a slight smile. “You the collage kid?”

“Yep.” Chris replied. Right away, he couldn’t help but notice the slight lisp in the man’s pronunciation.

His yes sounded like ‘yeth’. He also noticed that somehow the tone of his heavy voice sounded slightly feminine. Some would quickly throw him in a gay category right way for the trait, Chris thought.

Will crouched down on the stack of 2x4’s and shook his hand. It was like shaking shredded leather with a hint of sandpaper in the palm. “Glad you could make it,” he leaped off the stack of lumber, like a gymnast planting his feet into the ground after a body twisting leap. He quickly faced Chris, “Welcome to Deirsing Brothers Carpentry, we’re gonna put ya to work today,” he said with a grin showing his white but slightly crooked front teeth. “Hope ya don’t mind too much.”

He also couldn’t help but notice the deep lines on Will’s face, deep canyons ran from both sides of his nose to his mouth. The lines were also deep across his forehead and crossed each other several times under his eyes. These lines broke up the tan complexion. His blue eyes shot out from under his thick eyebrows and his dirty blond hair had a military-esque sensibility as it was short on the sides and back but stood up on top with a few hairs jetting wildly left and right in rebellion. Indeed, this was a man who had spent many days, perhaps one day too many, under the blistering sun heaving heavy wooden boards and hammering many, many, nails.

Chris walked side by side with him as they walked towards the house in progress.

“Let’s do it! I’m hungry for the work.” Said Chris.

“You took the words right out of my mouth, I like ya already. What’s you’re name again?” Said Will, stopping to turn and look at Chris for a moment.

“Chris.” He said.

“Kiss?” Replied Will.

“Chrr-isss.” He exaggerated for clarity.

“Right, Kiss. Speaking of hungry, can you make a food run for the crew? It’s juss right up the street. Here’s a lisp, I mean list.” Said Will.

The lisp sure sounded right to Chris.

A piece of paper about a foot long unfolded out of his tool belt pouch. To Chris, the list might as well have been as long as Santa’s naughty and nice list.