Godspeed

by Nickolas Butler

  But the bullshitting! Harassing one another constantly: about their sex lives or lack thereof, about money, about Britney wanting another baby, about Cole rejoining the dating scene, about Bart neverever finding anyone to marry him, and when no subs were on the site, daydreaming about their bonuses, imagining how they’d spend the money. It was just like when they were teenagers, on some backpacking trip, imagining that they’d won the lottery and how they’d spend their imaginary fortune.

  For Cole, with no children and a soon-to-be ex-wife, there was nothing much he wanted, just this work, this time with his friends, this pinprick vision of a goal on the far horizon. He could focus on that, and it gave him meaning, something to pull him out of bed in the morning, some place to aim his truck toward, like a compass bearing.

  There was just one thing that held his curiosity, one imagined possession that he thought of as a reward, or rather, as a manifestation of his reward, his bonus: a wristwatch; a beautiful wristwatch. In bed at night, peering at his phone, he researched Rolexes and Breitlings, Cartiers and Philippes . . . After this job, he’d be in a position to rent any townhouse or apartment he wanted, wear whatever clothes he wanted, travel wherever; but somehow, what he really fixated on was the idea of this watch. He pictured himself sitting at a bar, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his forearms tanned and well-muscled, and a woman touching his wrist, his hand, and noticing this watch, seeing him as someone more worldly, more refined. This watch, she would see, was no accident; but rather, a cultivated statement by a man whose time was valuable, who recognized the import of every hour, every minute, every second. He thought of that wristwatch as the perfect symbol for the completion of this house. Thought of himself in bed with a woman, not a stitch of clothing on either of them, as he almost hovered over her, his arms straining, her legs wrapped around his lower back, and clasped about his thickly competent wrist, the watch, the watch, the watch marking all that sweet, sweet time.

  But first, with the roof complete, they could seal up the house, framing in the walls, making way for windows. Already, the structure was taking shape; no longer a flashy steel skeleton against the mountain, it was shelter, and soon it would be a house. They stapled Tyvek to the exterior, preparing the house for fiber-cement siding. A subcontractor arrived and hung the copper gutters, all of which led to rain barrels, one of them stationed immediately adjacent to the hot springs, so that a person could leave those steaming waters and plunge their beet-red head into a barrel of clear, cold water. The house was a sharply angular three-layer cake slightly askew, each floor an L, a fold of a fan unfolded, so that against the mountain the house looked native, echoing the bands of rock that were striated and set apart, even as they conformed to the whole. The house was gorgeous, from every angle, in every moment of the day or night, and with the hot springs steaming beside it, and the deep softness of the afternoon shadows . . . Christ, it was sexy. And satisfying. No two ways about it.

  The windows were commercial-grade glass and their transportation to the site a real production. The trucks entrusted with safely carrying the windows drove no faster than five miles per hour along the gravel road, the drivers careful to study the way forward for any potholes, dips, or washouts. Cole, Bart, and Teddy held their collective breath as each window was set into place. One mistake here could cost them weeks; these windows were all custom-made and shipped from halfway across the continent. Were only one of them to be cracked, scratched, or otherwise compromised, there would be no choice but to send it back to the factory and insist on a replacement; and of course, there was no guarantee that replacement would arrive before the heavy snow. When all the windows were finally and properly installed, there was a collective sigh of relief. The package was finally more or less sealed. The siding would soon be installed, and after that, insulation could be blown into the walls and attic, drywall could be hung inside, then taped and mudded, but from that point on, the house was at the very least watertight. The plumbers, HVAC guys, and electricians would be back sporadically, and as needed. But now, the house was nearly ready for winter.

  7

  Gretchen stood in the kitchen where the wide farmhouse sink would sit and stared out the window. Steam often condensed on that bank of windows; beads of water running down the glass in serpentine paths. She was aware of the three partners of True Triangle standing off to the side, their arms nervously crossed while they silently watched her. Today, the air was incredibly still, with low clouds socked in tight against the mountains, and the steam roiling off the springs seemed stymied close to the house, rather than wisping off toward the valley.

  She nodded to the south, out past the river, to the far ridge east of the huge cliffs.

  “You’ve been on the site for several weeks now,” she began. “About how many days has the view been like this? Totally obscured, such as it is.”

  They glanced at each other like three schoolchildren called on for the answer to a complex mathematical problem.

  “I don’t know,” Cole said, shrugging. “To be honest, we’re so damn busy, we don’t pay much attention to the weather as long as we can get our work done.”

  Gretchen gave the men an appreciative smile and chuckle. “Not the information I was seeking, Mr. McCourt,” she said, wagging a finger in his direction, “but you couldn’t have possibly produced a better answer.”

  He blushed as she walked past the men, to that landing, where the view again opened wide. She peered intently to the south again.

  “This frame,” she said, pointing at that huge window, “is much wider than I imagined. Doesn’t it seem wide to you?”

  “Well, those are enormous windows,” Bart offered. “They need a pretty stout frame to hold all that weight, all that glass. And in these elements—”

  “But the view,” she interrupted. “I mean, looking south, standing right here . . .” She shook her head and then waved a hand toward the window. “The view is obstructed with that frame right there. The frame is all I can see.”

  The men stood looking at her, wide-eyed and their mouths agape.

  “Well, you could always just take a step to the left,” Bart offered, “or to the right. There ain’t any shortages of views in this house—”

  “I fucking know that, Bart,” she said, cutting him off. “But this isn’t Fenway Park. There shouldn’t be any obstructed views, now, should there? This is a new house. How does this happen?”

  She could see on their faces that they were frighteningly confused.

  “Get me a chair,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Teddy said quietly. “You want a—”

  “A fucking chair,” she repeated. “Please.”

  She stood, her back turned to them, staring down into the valley below, the brume obscuring the world beyond. Behind her, she could hear the men quickly disperse, and moments later, Teddy settled a grungy collapsible camping chair on the floor.

  “Here you go,” he said.

  “There’s no chance of getting a window with a smaller frame, is there?” she asked him.

  He cleared his throat. “Honestly, ma’am, I don’t think so. Not under the time constraints we’re under. A window like that would have to be specially fabricated and then transported. We’d have to take this window out, which might require taking the neighboring windows out. . . .”

  She turned her head just slightly without ever looking at Teddy.

  “Any mistake along the way and there’d be no guarantees we’d finish on time.”

  “And that’s not even accounting for costs,” Cole put in. “For one thing, this window is custom. You ain’t getting your money back on it. And for two, a window with a less conspicuous frame than this one would . . . let’s just say, it’ll cost you.”

  “Cole,” Gretchen began, “do I seem like a client deterred by cost?”

  He shook his head in the negative.

  She sighed loudly.

 
“But, ma’am,” Teddy continued, “there ain’t a bad view in this house. Hell, where I live, our condo, there’s six windows in the whole place. And one of ’em looks out on our garbage cans.”

  “You can go now,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Long after the men retreated downstairs to the garage, she allowed herself to sit in the flimsy chair, the frame of the window directly in her line of sight. Outside, the fog intensified, and yet she remained that way until dusk, when she heard tentative footsteps behind her.

  “I was, uh, gonna head into town for some chow,” Cole said. “Can I get you anything?”

  “Do you have any masking tape, Mr. McCourt? Something colorful?”

  “I could probably find you something,” he replied. “How much do you need?”

  “Not much,” she replied.

  She heard his footsteps drift away and a moment later, the sound of his return. He held a roll of blue painter’s tape out for her.

  “Will this do the trick?” he asked quizzically.

  “Yes,” she said. “I hope I can live with these windows, Mr. McCourt. I don’t understand how such a critical detail could be so overlooked.”

  “I’ll leave you be,” he said quietly.

  She waited several minutes before briskly standing from the chair, ripping off two twelve-inch-long strips of tape, and then placing them on the floor, where the chair once sat.

  8

  The next morning, just before sunrise, they watched as she parked her Range Rover and walked across the bridge, a white paper cup in her hands. The fog was gone, and the morning was crisp and cool, a small assembly of stars in the steadily brightening sky.

  “I think I like it better when she ain’t around,” Bart said as she neared the garage.

  She moved wordlessly past them, past some of their subs, up the stairs from the mudroom, and back to that landing area near the kitchen, where she had spent so much time the day prior.

  It was Teddy who saw her place the chair over the two strips of blue tape that formed an X on the floor.

  Just as the sun crested the mountains in the east, she stood from the chair and looked down into the valley. She stepped to either side of the window’s frame. She moved around that entire floor, looking down into the valley at something. . . . Was it the river? A specific peak or cliff-face? A particular cottonwood, its last remaining leaves like golden spangles in the early-morning light?

  A half hour later, she walked out onto the driveway, pulling a pair of gloves on her hands.

  “The window and that fat frame will have to do, gentlemen. We’ll be in touch.”

  They watched her retreat to her Range Rover and drive off before they marched up those stairs to the landing. The chair was nowhere in sight, and the blue tape that once made an X on the floor was gone, but Bart could feel some adhesive on the wood. He walked downstairs to the table saw and, reaching below the tool, picked up a handful of fine sawdust and carried it back up the stairs. He knelt again and sprinkled the sawdust on the floor. The fine pale dust settled into place, and he gently blew on it, scattering most of it across the floor but revealing a crude X.

  “Get me that tape again,” he growled, and before long, there was a new X on the floor, and for the next several days, the men stood there, looking down into the valley for what, they did not know. They sat in the camp-chair and looked. They sat cross-legged on the floor and looked. They stood, they glassed with binoculars, and yet there was nothing of note in all that wild; beauty everywhere, but nothing of particular interest.

  One day, Teddy thought he spied something.

  “That ridge,” he said, pointing at a meadow for Cole. “You see that highest point, at about your one o’ clock? Come down to maybe your eight o’ clock. Just above the tree line. Sometimes I think I see . . . sort of a light out there.”

  “A light?” Cole pressed.

  “Or, I don’t know,” Teddy continued. “A flash, a . . . glint.”

  Cole pressed the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the meadow intently.

  “All I see are some shiny rocks,” he said dismissively. “Who the hell knows what she’s looking at. Anyway, we ain’t got time. I need your hand with some siding. C’mon.”

  9

  On a Friday in late October they held a barbecue, the kind of gesture they’d always hoped a general contractor might extend to them as subs but never did. Cole pointed out that the barbecue might also help sustain any goodwill they had managed to engender with their subs heading into the first throes of winter. They bought cases and cases of beer, and at five in the evening, they fired up a gas grill to cook up countless hot dogs and cheeseburgers as they stood around with the other men and discussed the house taking shape, and though they were used to second-guessing a homeowner’s design decisions, they all agreed this was the finest house any of them had ever worked on: not too big, no, but also not some dinky tiny-house singing of liberal guilt. No, this was a smart house, well thought out, well designed, built of timeless and durable materials so as to disappear into its surroundings.

  The cold beer went down easily, and soon Bart was building a bonfire of the scrap lumber lying about the site, and a few of the men were rolling joints, and that was okay, because this was the mountains and they were alone with one another, and their work, at least for today, was complete.

  One of the older contractors hauled out a guitar and some other fellows had fiddles and a banjo, and everyone gathered around the campfire, sharing their smoke as the musicians strummed and sang, and deep inside that canyon the music echoed off those faraway cliff walls, and through the last remaining cottonwood and aspen leaves, so citron and gold, clinging to the branches, and dear god, what a beautiful night in America! To have worked so hard alongside your brothers. To have carried great weight without complaint, to have solved problems, to have helped build such a sound and elegant dwelling. Inside Teddy’s chest, his heart felt ten feet tall. And though Cole was prone to worrying and did not often relax, he allowed the beer to loosen him up, and he sang along with the subs and drummed his palms against his thighs and tapped his toes, and everything was all right. They’d damn well finish this house before Christmas, and with any luck over the next couple of years, he might just make himself a newly minted millionaire.

  When one of the many circulating joints found Bart’s fingers, he took a deep, long draw, felt that pungent cloud good and warm in his lungs, felt his muscles relax, and that was when he realized that not only was he feeling mellow, he was exhausted. They’d been working fourteen-hour days or more every day since they’d agreed to terms with Gretchen, and he hadn’t had a break in over seven weeks.

  “Fuck,” he said now, and to no one in particular. “I am beyond beat.”

  “Need a bump, man?”

  It was Reuben, one of their drywalling subs. He was a dirty sumbitch. Drywall dust in his hair, arms all adorned with fading tattoos of the unprofessional variety, wiry as hell, standing there beside Bart in his bare feet and a Phish T-shirt, gas-station sunglasses hiding his eyes from anything so bright as the campfire crackling before them. He could often be seen around the worksite, bouncing a Hacky Sack on his breaks like he was lounging on a Malibu beach.

  “Yeah, I think maybe I do,” said Bart. “Let’s take a walk.”

  They strolled along, easy as you please, passing the joint between them as they made their way down to the river.

  “Fuckin’ beautiful spot here, brah,” Reuben said. “No idea how you assholes landed this gig, but shit, brah, I’m happy for you.”

  “You holding?”

  “Always, man. Whatcha need?”

  “Just a little coke, maybe. Like a ball.”

  “You boys been workin’ long days, ain’t you? Workin’ like dogs.”

  Reuben handed Bart the coke, from which Bart then poured a bit on the back of his hand and snort
ed it right up.

  The rush hit quick, and he was right back where he wanted to be, felt the old power in his muscles, in his hands. Wwwhhhoooooooo—that was nice. He took another small bump, and then bounced a bit on the balls of his feet, on his toes, like a prizefighter about to enter the fray. Cocked his neck side to side, squinted up at the stars, and somehow they looked sharper, like bits of broken, beautiful glass.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Fuck yeah. What do I owe you?”

  “You got a hundred?”

  “Right here,” Bart said. “Hey, buddy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m going to be in the market, I guess. Least ’til we wind this project down.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m trying to get out of dealin’,” Reuben said. “But you know Jerry in town? He’d help you out.”

  “I know Jerry,” Bart said, nodding. “Sleazeball.”

  “True, true. But he’s got the shit,” Reuben said, winking.

  The two men turned; Teddy was walking toward them, a can of Bud Light in his hands, a big smile slung across his face. He wasn’t much of a drinker. A damn cheap date, Bart always joked.

  “This looks like trouble,” Teddy joked, and then, looking up at the stars, “You believe it out here?”

  “Hey, fellas,” Reuben said, giving them both fist bumps, “I gotta split, or my old lady’ll be on my ass.”

  “Right on,” said Bart, his tone suddenly professional. “We’ll see you Monday. Hey, how’s the drywall coming?”