The Kerr Construction Company (6 page)

She looked back towards me momentarily with a shy smile before turning back around. “You deserve the corn coming out of me now,” she said with a grin. “You brought me here, and this is what it’s doing to me. So, there you go. The corn’s your fault.”

“That’s what I want out of life too,” I said to reassure her and share her mood. “When I first started questioning the Bible, I decided I didn’t believe all that about the Garden of Eden, or Jonah and the whale. But then, yeah, like you said, there’s just too much beauty. Too much meaning. I don’t care anymore if it’s literally true or not. It touches me. My favorite story in the Bible is when Jacob wrestled the angel. Maybe it was God he wrestled. It turns out the ancient Hebrews used a lot of puns. Adam means man, for instance, which is derived from Adamah, which means earth, like dirt, not the planet. Israel means one who wrestles with God.”

“Are you serious?” She looked up at me, once again showing disbelief. “It means that, it’s not just a name? What does Eve mean? Do you know?”

“Eve is more of a modern translation. In the origin of the name she was called Khava, which means life. I guess as in the giver of life.”

I felt her body turn rigid. “This blows my mind,” she huffed. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“I like knowing the origins of things,” I said. “It gives me more perspective. Not just learning a story or memorizing a text. Some depth. Some meaning to it. So, the ancient Hebrew did it for a reason. All the more reason to not take it as history as much as truth.”

“Now what the hell does that mean, Dalhart?”

“History isn’t the issue,” I answered. “The soul is the issue. It can be historically accurate or not. Who cares either way? The meaning is the issue. The meaning is the truth that’s laid out for us. But here’s Jacob, and he cheats his brother out of his birthright, he flees, he marries the wrong girl, he waits to get the girl he wants, then he wrestles with an angel and won’t let go even after his hip is dislocated. I adore that. The passion and the struggle. The determination. The spiritual truth behind it all. That’s the important stuff. That’s the meat to it.”

Carmen nodded her head approvingly. “I love that we met,” she said. “I want to believe it really is cosmic. Fate or something. Why aren’t you a priest?”

“I’d rather be a cowboy.”

I turned the music off for us to watch the sunset radiate on the glowing sandy redness. Soon the shadowy mesa structures lay under the stars.

“We’re going to make love tonight, aren’t we, Dalhart? We knew it even as we planned our excursion. Soul to soul and heartbeat to heartbeat stuff, though. That’s what you had in mind. It’s your style of laying claim to me. And it worked. I’m your woman. You’re what I want.”

****

“I got a feeling you’re one of those guys that meditates, McIlhenny,” Ira said as he lit up a cigar while driving down a dirt road. “You can roll down the window if the smoke gets to you, suck your ass.”

“I meditate at night,” I answered. “I have to put up with you and this job.”

“I knew you probably did something weird like that. I bet you do yoga, too.”

“No yoga.”

“Listen, numbnuts. So what the hell you doing here? You don’t fit. It’s not that you’re so damn stupid. You’re the smartest guy I ever met, at everything but construction. You on some quest? Looking for your head?”

“I grew up on a farm. Later I worked computers in Houston, and it was the worst experience of my life. It was the fastest growing city in America, a thousand new families moving in every week. They all came for one reason. Money.”

“So what the hell’s wrong with that?” Ira defied. “That’s why the unskilled come here and why the skilled go to Houston. You a back-to-nature freak? You like living in your van?”

“America’s lost its soul,” I complained.

“I knew it,” he gruffed, blowing cigar smoke my direction. “What else they teach you in college?”

“My daddy was a war hero,” I explained. “I got uncles that are preachers. I don’t go to church much, but I got a lot on me. I joined the Marines to go to Vietnam. I need a cause, I guess. Now America’s just one big party. So many in Houston were on drugs. New cars.”

“A Texan needing an Alamo to defend.” He laughed as he again blew smoke my direction.

“I don’t like America anymore. Nothing for me here.”

“And so you’re digging ditches in Gallup, New Mexico?” Ira smiled wickedly. “That makes sense. And you meditate to find your head? Smart people got too much time. Nothing else to do.”

He pulled up to a big water pump. We looked to be in the exact center of nowhere. Nothing except miles of dirt.

“We’re going to strip mine here pretty soon,” he said as he pulled a shovel out of the back of the pickup. “I need you to dig a trough from this pump to those boxes over there.” He pointed behind me at a stack of tomato boxes about fifty yards away. “You can meditate while you’re doing it, doesn’t bother me. Just dig straight. I’ll be placing blasting caps in dynamite, so you might not want to get too close.”

I was almost surprised he wasn’t smoking on his cigar as he did so.

“This job sucks,” I mumbled after a while, as I dug.

He looked up. “What did you say?”

“I hate this,” I said sarcastically, straightening up and leaning on my shovel. “It’s putting my chi at an imbalance. My harmony at a dysfunction.”

“McIlhenny, shut up. People get fired for that. Whatever it is you said.”

“Okay,” I mumbled as I returned to my digging, “but this still sucks.”

Ira went back to squeezing blasting caps with his pliers, then placed the sticks of dynamite in a box. He moseyed to the pickup, got a rope, made a loop, and began to twirl it. While I dug I suddenly felt the rope wrap around me, felt it jerk and tighten until it pulled me to the ground. Like some cowboy with a calf, Ira bent over me and tied up my hands and feet. He then got out a gasoline can from the pickup and, without blinking an eye, doused the bottom of my jeans and lit them with his cigarette lighter.

I felt the fire’s warmth and pretended it hurt so he would get his stunt over with. It seemed to satisfy him, and he bent down, rolling me in the dirt until it was out.

“Now get back to work, McIlhenny,” he grunted as he untied me. “Leave me to my danged blasting caps. Any other questions, queerbait?”

I kept a serious look on my face the rest of the afternoon, but found it hard to do so. This was fun. Maybe I brought all this on myself to break up the day.

“Quitting time, McIlhenny,” I heard Ira shout.

“Another five minutes,” I shouted back.

“I’ll load up,” he answered. “Oh yeah, another thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked when he didn’t follow through.

“Didn’t you say you used to play football?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“You’re a fast runner, right?”

What does that mean?
“Yeah,” I answered again.

“You better be. This is a stick of dynamite here in my hand.”

He lit it and threw it my direction. I didn’t look back until I heard the explosion. There was a hole ten yards from where I used to be.

“Come on,” he shouted again, not bothering to laugh. “Let’s go home. Go get your shovel if it’s still there.”

Later I thought of Ira’s shenanigans, sitting in the restaurant, savoring the rich garlic aroma. He would have made a good Marine, I decided. I never made it to Vietnam, but I get to tell my grandkids about when I worked for the Kerr Construction Company.

I heard Carmen’s voice come from beside me. “You got a look about you,
hombre
,” she said as she walked over to me and planted a small kiss on my lips. “Is that a smirk? What wickedness are you contriving? Better not leave me out of it.”

“Nearly got blown up by dynamite today,” I said as my smirk turned into laughter.

“Good Lord, man. How did that happen?”

“Aw, not really,” I said. “It’s a long story anyway.”

“Don’t eat here tonight, Sweets,” she said with a wink. “Mother has supper ready for us. She’s going to bring up Monument Valley. She knows what the hell we did there. And I ain’t talking the scenery or our intimate little conversations. I’m talking she put two and two together and she knows we’re not virgins.”

“She would’ve suspected what was going to happen even before we left.”

“Yes,” Carmen said with a grin, “but we’ve been so honorable that she felt she had to give us benefit of the doubt. But she was blunt when I got in last night. You coward, you knew it was coming, the way you dropped me off and hightailed it. So, I thought the best defense is a good offense and let her know how glorious it was. I added about classical music and our talks, for effect. I knew it wouldn’t work, but it kept her busy for awhile.”

“You admitted to her we made love?”

“You’re telling me that an ex-Marine and a divorcee in their twenties don’t know what they want when the stars align? She knew it was going to happen. She just wants us to respect each other and not make it the centerfold of our relationship. Wait, centerfold, that’s a pun, isn’t it?” She laughed and gave another wink. “The centerpiece of our relationship. She adores you. You come over and exude virtue around her and she’ll let it slide. She’ll settle for just letting you know that she knows.”

Carmen leaned over and planted a long, juicy kiss on me. I grabbed her as she readied to break away, pulled her back to me, and gave her one in return.

“Behave yourself,” she said, feigning shyness. “The customers are looking. I hope so, anyway. Have a beer on me,
mi amour
,” she said with a smile that sparkled. “Read your book and wait on me.”

As she turned to walk away, she stopped, turned back, and embraced me. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I’m one hundred percent your woman. I feel like brand new.”

****

The crew was later than usual in leaving for the reservation the next day, as we gathered impatiently around the pickup. Finally the straggler we waited on appeared.

“Doug fired me,” the Navajo worker said with contempt. “I gave my two weeks’ notice, and he fired me on the spot. He said I wouldn’t work hard now. Can you believe that son-of-a-bitch? I need the money. I’m going to Flagstaff.”

“I could have told you,” Jose said sympathetically. “I wish I knew you were quitting, and I would have warned you. That’s his style.”

“You wouldn’t have told me nothing, Jose. You’re his boy. His lackey.”

“I would have warned you,” Jose replied sharply. “It’s nothing to me to warn you. Can I help it if he likes me so much? Have I ever not helped anyone just because the boss man likes me?”

“Sorry, Jose. I’m just angry.”

“I would be too,” Jose sympathized. “I don’t like Doug for this, and for other things, too. But he’s good to me. I’m sorry,
amigo
.”

This put a damper on our ride to the work site. But mostly I thought of Carmen and wore a thousand-mile stare as we rode.

“Hey,
gringo
,” Jose said jokingly as he waved his hand in front of my face. “Come back to earth, man. Hey, we have a baptismal for my son at church on Sunday. I want you to come. Can you bring your camera?”

“Sure, Jose. I’d love to. It’s only a Polaroid. My camera, I mean.”

“Polaroid’s great. Do you have any Sunday clothes? It’s okay if you don’t.”

“I don’t. I do have a shirt with a collar. A blue-jean shirt, though.”

“I wanted you to be part of it,” Jose said, “but you would need Sunday clothes. Just come. I would be honored.”

I stared at Jose for a moment to see if he was finished about the baptism. He studied me. He could tell something was up.

“I met a girl, Jose,” I blurted out finally.

“I knew it. To see your head in a cloud like this, I knew something happened.”

“But she’s Mexican.”

“So’s my wife,
gringo
.”

I laughed. “I know. But I’ve got a problem.”

“She’s already pregnant?”

“I can’t quit thinking about her.”

Jose laughed and spoke Spanish to the others. “My thunderstruck
amigo
here,” he said turning back to me. “Don’t worry about it. You may be white, but you’re a man. Men are disgusting. We’ll go after anything.”

“That’s not it. She knocked my socks off. What am I going to do? If my mother found out, she would kill me. If my sister found out, she’d slit my throat. And the judge back home would consider it justifiable homicide.”

More laughter throughout the pickup. “Oh, these
gringos
are son-of-a-bitches,” Jose howled. “See, my mother is so much more open minded. She welcomed my wife even though she’s Mexican. She even gave her blessing.”

“I never liked a Mexican girl before,” I said, hoping I sounded like a philosopher. “Anyone that wasn’t white. And she’s not even light-skinned like you. She’s dark. I mean, let’s go all the way. She was married to a white, though. At least that. I don’t know how that matters, actually. I’m just clutching for straws.”

I paid no mind to the laughter.

“My sister married a Yankee Catholic,” I continued in my self-pity, “and my father almost disowned her. He apologized later, but…”