by Colin McAdam
LOVE is a burning thing,
And it makes a fiery ring.
Bound by wild desire,
I fell into a ring of fire.
I didn’t know what to say to her when she told us her name, but Johnny Cooper did.
“So?”
“So I was just drivin by and I saw yiz weldin.” In those days her voice touched your ears like a petal. “I was in my truck, so that’s why I came over.” And she was shy. Not shy looking at your feet sort of shy, but shy like she respected you and knew that if she showed her true self right away she would blind you.
She pointed to a little yellow truck with some letters on the side that we couldn’t read.
“It’s a new truck I got,” she said, “and it’s my business.”
“Your business. And why’s that our business?” Johnny said.
“It’s your business,” she said, “when your stomach says it is,” she said, and she impressed me as smart because I had no idea what she meant.
“What the fuck do you mean?” Johnny said, tired of flirting.
“I’m a caterer,” she said.
“A caterer?” Johnny said.
“A caterer. Meals on wheels,” she said. “But better.” And she smiled, my friend, a smile that moved through a hundred different seasons and turned them all to spring. It made us all quiet.
“Better,” she said, “because of pork.”
And again I thought she was a genius.
“Pork?”
“Lard,” she said, and said no more.
She handed us each a card, and we took off our gloves and I read it for Johnny. “‘Herlihy’s Meals on Wheels.’”
“That’s me,” she said. “Kathleen Herlihy.”
And language came to me finally, smooth and warm as plaster. “My name is Jerry McGuinty.”
“Hi, Jerry,” she said, and she actually held out her hand.
I took her hand and let me say that I will never tell you what that felt like.
“It’s nice to meet you.” And she looked at Johnny and offered her hand, but he said, “We’ve got work to do.”
“And I,” she said, “am sorry to bother you. I just wanted to come over to let you know that I’ll be driving round these sites for the next little while, and I hope that yooz’ll try me out instead of some of them other wagons. And that’s all I want to say. I hope yiz have a good day”
And she turned around like a ribbon in the wind and left me saying “Wow.”
Johnny put his gloves and visor back on and told me he’d like to fuck her in the face.
THAT WHOLE SECTION around Honeywood and Glyde was built by the Rossi brothers, and the Rossi brothers were the kings of split-level foolishness. Those two brothers never got along, and I figure that whole trend, one floor two feet higher than the other, was a result of them never seeing eye to eye.
The house where we were welding was the last of an era. Giovanni Rossi died, his brother was an idiot, the suburbs were growing, you wanted a new style of house, and Jerry McGuinty had money in the bank. “Two thousand, four hundred and fifty-three dollars,” my bank book said to me, and in 1968 that was nice to hear. While Johnny Cooper and I were working on that house I was putting the last stages of a plan together in my mind, and it does seem, when I look back now and think of meeting Kathleen, that my whole life was determined in a day.
After Johnny finished welding that pipe we sat with our backs against the house and I asked him if he’d like to do some work for me. He told me to shut my fuckin hole for a minute and give him some peace so I was quiet for a minute and then I just went. I told Johnny that I’d saved some money and that things had to change and that these houses we were building were going to blow away in ten years and that the ones still standing would make people sick. Who wants to live in a split-goddamn-level I asked him, knowing he would agree because he’d asked me the same a couple of days before. That’s what I want to know he said and I said that’s right and I’ve got an idea I said to change things I told Johnny Cooper with the voice of purest truth that what people want is a house standing proudly on its own two feet you can listen to me or not I said but I’m going to build some solid fuckin houses. I remember the passion was in me. I’m going to cover a neighborhood in plaster I said and I’m going to make it into a solid white fist you watch me I said and you watch the wind and rain go running think less and fuck more that’s my motto Johnny said and so I had to repeat the whole goddamn thing to him because he had stopped listening which I did and I said watch the fuckin wind and rain go running. God I remember it now and my shoulders strong. And I said to him standing now and less scared than I had ever been around him Johnny I said I am going to make a fortune I’m going to buy some land Johnny out there by the airport and I’m going to build some smart fuckin houses and I am going to be proud my friend and if you don’t want to come with me that’s fine but if you promise not to hit me I’ll tell you you’re a fool I need a good crew Johnny and I know I can’t do better than with you because the truth was I couldn’t afford anyone better and besides he was a genius with his torch. And Johnny, I said.
I can’t remember. I was still living in Mrs. Brookner’s basement with ugliness everywhere, but I had been walking around with my idea like a flower in my heart. That talk with Johnny was the first time I let anybody know about it, and I think I knew even then that if I hadn’t just met the beautiful Kathleen my idea might have died inside me. I was so excited. I had been thinking of her. She had turned and left and walked to her cute little truck, I went Wow, we went back to welding, I watched Johnny’s back, and in my mind was a new Godmade face. For an hour I thought of her, and it was no surprise that there I was with all that beauty in my mind talking to Johnny Cooper about hope.
I wasn’t thinking. Telling Johnny Cooper about dreams and hope was like telling Johnny Cooper he looked pretty, and I started realizing that before I finished gushing my idea. I remember Johnny stood up and looked at me and I thought I should brace myself.
But the fact is, or I like to think of it as a fact, that Kathleen Herlihy had loosened more than Jerry McGuinty’s tongue. Cooper’s fingers were limp when he stood up and I knew he wasn’t going to hit me. I feel now that he had been thinking of the same pretty face when he went back to his flame, and for a few important seconds he didn’t think of swinging. That’s my theory, and you can smirk at me for as long as it makes you feel smart.
Johnny stood up and he said, “When do I start?”
And I do remember. I remember smiling behind my mouth, and I remember a face behind my eyes.
KATHLEEN HERLIHY was what colors tried to be. I have some pictures here, but they don’t do her justice. This one here of her on our steps—that was our second house—comes close, but that’s ten years after we met.
She wasn’t just beautiful because I had no experience. I knew women. I know what you’ve been thinking. “Here goes Jerry the wet-eared virgin falling in love with his sister who’s his mother and he’ll be frightened of vaginas.” The fact is, when I was fifteen years old I lost my virginity and it took me only several seconds to learn a thing or two about women. And I had girlfriends after that.
I WORKED LATE after that day and I wandered over to other building sites, hoping I might find her truck. I went home and I swallowed something awful that Mrs. Brookner left by my door, and I lay in my bed and my sleep never came. I went to work the next day before the moon even thought of disappearing and I had my eye on every road and my ear on every truck. Johnny Cooper turned up at seven as usual, and got to work without talking and I was glad of it.
I was starving. Other trucks came by with their horns more irritating than ever. Johnny bought from the first that came along and poured as much grease on his hangover as he could afford. I was glad again, because it meant he wouldn’t want to buy from Herlihy’s Meals on Wheels.
At 8:31 she came driving by—I noted the time for the future. She was later than all the other trucks, which I would have thought w
as a mistake if she hadn’t been so pretty. Her horn was like this: JigaJigaJiga, like a laughing little animal. I probably smiled. JigaJigaJiga. I was sick by then. No hunger at all.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
“Jerry, isn’t it?”
Fantastic.
“Kathleen, right?”
“Cold one today,” she said.
“It is cold,” I said.
“What can I get for yiz?”
“What’ve ya got?” I said, cool, sick.
“What do ya feel like?” she said, tricky.
She pointed to a blackboard by the window that was decorated with chalk drawings—hammers and saws—that she thought the builders would like. Cute and realistic. I can’t remember all the choices because all I wanted was honey from her eyes. I chose what I would never be able to eat.
“I’ll have an egg sandwich.”
“Egg sandwich. That’s my favorite, too,” she said.
She disappeared for a minute and came back with a sandwich the size of a farm.
“Wow,” I said, meaning it. “How much?”
“Fifty cents,” she said.
“Fifty cents! For all that?”
“Yep.”
“Sheesh,” I said, or something absolutely fuckin stupid.
“You tell your friends,” she said.
And I said nothing.
It wasn’t fear and it wasn’t shyness, really, it was just the thought that this woman handing me a sandwich is what the world will always yearn for as it grows. I should just look at her for a few seconds, if that’s all right with her.
“Anything else for yiz?”
“I’ll have a Coke,” I said, and she said, “Sure.”
I got my few seconds and her truck drove away, with the promise of tomorrow and the mornings after that. Johnny Cooper looked uglier than ever when I came floating back. I watched Kathleen’s truck through the wall-less house. I watched it drive around the block and Gone. I think I had some thoughts, but I cannot remember them, and then my hunger woke up like a frightened dog.
Let me tell you about that sandwich.
I TOLD JOHNNY that it was going to be a couple of months before I could get any work going for him. I had no idea how long it would take really. We had lots of work to do on the Rossi site and everywhere else—enough to let me wait for a long time. But I didn’t want to wait, and if I did want Johnny working for me I had to get things going quickly because he would soon forget the whole idea and then I’d have to explain it again. My problem was that I didn’t know how to approach the banks and all that.
IT ONLY TOOK one more meeting with Kathleen to confirm that she was a genius.
8:31 came around the next day but Kathleen came at 8:47.
JigaJigaJiga.
We talked like a pair of idiots.
“How are ya today Jerry?”
“Good, thanks. You?”
“Good. Ya hungry today, Jerry?”
“Starving. You?” What?
She smiled that question away and I loved her.
“Did you enjoy the egg sandwich yesterday?”
We talked about sandwiches for a long time. I tried complimenting her on that egg sandwich and I had no idea what I was saying. She was confident, that Kathleen Herlihy I thought to myself, and I was a whiskerless boy.
She showed me the menu on the blackboard again and told me she was going to change it every day, because you can put anything in a sandwich as long as it’s clean. It was a joke but it was true. She looked in my eyes like Beauty and said there was “no greater good than giving the body a sweet new flavor to live for,” I think. She said the only thing better than making a new sandwich every day would be wrapping the earth in two pieces of bread, so you could eat the world and die.
We talked for seventeen minutes, and they were the roundest minutes I could remember. Her confidence tied me up, and I’ll tell you she was funny. I won’t repeat her jokes, but they were funny because it took me just that extra second to realize she was joking. And she started talking in a way you don’t find on a site.
“I like,” she said, “drivin around here and seeing how hard all you guys work. It makes me feel safe.”
That was something she said.
And also, “You can see, like, the work that goes into living.”
It was the truth. It is the truth. A building site shows you the work that goes into living. And a finished building is a life—the end of a life when you can do nothing with what you’ve built but die in it. And she was beautiful when she was saying it, and what a warm sun after my lonely cold mornings.
I tried to talk like her and I talked like I hadn’t spoken for days. My words were too heavy to come completely out of my mouth. So she did most of the talking and tied me up some more. She was leaning out of the hole in her truck and I was looking up to her, and I never felt anything like that. I was minutes into knowing her and I wanted to hold her and press her against the ache.
THE ONE THING I said to her that day that I really made a point of saying was, “I’ve got an idea.”
“About what?”
“About the future.”
And I told her about my idea to build. I didn’t tell her all about it, because I couldn’t, but I hinted.
“I need a bit more capital,” is what I said, being proud at the time of that word “capital.” I learned that she was a genius because the word didn’t impress her at all. In fact, she had advice to give.
“I know all about that,” she said. “I know all about raising money,” and her truck was there all around her as proof. I could have been suspicious, because I myself already had enough money to buy that truck of hers and her business was never going to be as big as mine. But she didn’t let me.
“I know you’ve got bigger dreams than this, Jerry, but I can tell you what to do about banks.”
She told me to come and see her again tomorrow morning and she’d tell me what to do.
TO START A CONSTRUCTION business in those days a man needed a few important tools: a crew of eight; thirty thousand dollars; skin like brick. I couldn’t have told you that so easily then, but I had some idea. I thought I knew how much money I would need and how many men, but I didn’t learn about the skin thing until I realized I needed a lot more money and I couldn’t trust the men. That took a while. The one thing I knew I needed before anything else was the money. It was going to be a long time before I bought any heavy machinery, but renting a backhoe alone cost a pocketful of blood. The people who rented them out in those days were the other construction companies, and they didn’t make it easy for little boys who wanted to compete. A lot of the money I needed was to buy the trust of the guys who owned machines.
What I didn’t count on was that the banks would know that too. It was something Kathleen warned me about.
“Don’t go in there thinking all you gotta do is look clean and pretty and show them you can save. Those men are lookin for savvy. That fella who’ll interview you will know everything that can go wrong in a construction company and you shouldn’t be fooled by his suit. Confidence is what ya gotta have, Jer.”
I record this also as the first time she called me Jer. She gave me confidence and she told me what to do, and you can think what you want, but there is nothing unmanly about getting advice from a woman that beautiful. And she was exactly right.
She told me about getting a plan in writing and told me to be honest and proud.
Weeks later I got an interview at a bank. I walked in there with my chin set so and I butted chests with a bull of a banker who smiled like a boxer. And sure enough when I shook his hand I felt concrete, wood, and nails.
“I was in the construction business for twelve years, Mr. McGuinty, and I rarely encountered men as young and stupid as you. I don’t know what it is that makes you think you can own your own company but whatever it is, it’s not represented in this proposal.”
And he went at me with the sharpest spears of honest
y that were ever flung at me, and if I had been more reasonable I would have crawled out of that office and contracted my life to the Rossis to live in health and safety. But Kathleen had given me weeks of advice, and I told him that that piece of paper was bullshit for the bank and if he wanted the truth I’d tell him. I told him exactly how much I needed to bribe the machine renters, the councillors and him if he wished. I told him how I could fudge my insurance, and a hundred other things that won’t make me look like an honorable man, but up yours.
I walked out of his office completely broke and rich, with more money than I ever thought I’d have and no way of paying it back.
FROM THE THIRD morning, my visits to the truck were about financial advice, preparing me for that interview. Kathleen drove by at a different time every morning, and I would put down my tools when I heard her and do my best to look serious and avoid the eyes of Cooper. Men like Johnny Cooper didn’t tease you about women, they went to the women and made you look like a fool.
Her coming at a different time was the difficult part. Even these days, if a catering truck comes later than usual you’ll find some angry-bellied workers. She made the best sandwiches that ever drove by men, and they were hard to wait for.
But it wasn’t that. When you’re cold and the sun’s not coming when it should, it’s harder to control the shivers. I would leave Mrs. Brookner’s thinking of nothing but Kathleen, and whenever she was late she made me lonelier than before I had met her.
Advice. She could have told me that the best way to make money was to give it to the Pope and I would have believed her.
But she gave me good advice.
The sun. Never did I think you could press it to your chest and enjoy getting burned.
She came later and more confident each day. I was sick and shy.
But I started learning how to handle her.
“How are ya today Jer?”
