Flying Shingles, Wood and Scattered Nails

The guys who are working on my shed were recommended to me by a City Code Enforcement Officer as we stood in the courthouse hallway. It wasn't that he took pity on me, he was concerned that he'd have to hang around the courthouse all day long waiting for the judge to hear my appeal. The conversation went something like this:

Code Enforcement Officer (CEO): "Let's work something out. I'll give you an extension to fix your shed and clean up the brush pile and you will pay a partial fine. How about September 1st?"

Me: "How about you give me an extension and no fine?"

CEO: "Hey, I'm just a peon. I don't decide the amount of the fines. You have to get some kind of fine."

Me: Wanting to say "why?", but nodding in defeat.

CEO: "I know a guy who will do the work for you. He's honest as the day is long and a hard worker."

Fast forward a few days and the building crew is in my yard and in a flurry of flying shingles, wood, and scattered nails. The boss, Clyde, seems to know what he is doing, but who am I to judge? As usual I am distracted by insignificant details, like how very few teeth he seems to have, or Royce's (his future son-in-law's) homemade skull tattoos, or the other worker he introduced as "I guess we're cousins, ain't we?"

I have put my faith (and revolving home improvement loan) in their hands and I've decided not to panic when I see old shingles ripped from the roof and dropped onto plants in the herb garden. What the hell. I'll plant some more damn herbs.

Clyde seems to require that several family members accompany him while he works. His pregnant teenage daughter appeared one day and he introduced her by saying, "Yea, she's pregnant. What can you do? I guess he (Royce) is gonna marry her some day pretty soon." She was sweet. Exactly like a girl I might have taught at the alternative school. Immediately I see that her teeth need attention. She loves her man and has no self-esteem. I had asked Clyde if he would like one of the organs stored in the shed, and he brought her to see it. Later I stood leaning on their car with her and said, "Your dad says you sing!" "I sang kareoke a couple of times," she said softly. "And he told me you play the piano?" I said encouragingly. "Yea, I got a piano. It's been at my dad's flea market for two years. He wants to get the floor done first before he brings it into the house."

The day after I returned from NYC, Clyde, Royce and "the cousin" brought their chainsaw and cut up the fallen tree. They knew a guy (they called him Pudge) who heated with wood and would probably like to have it. Clyde described Pudge as a guy who "loves to work". "He works on the line at a factory during the week, but he likes to work on the weekends, too."

Soon after the crew began work the next day I called 911 after Clyde appeared at the door, telling me Royce got shot with a nail. He was crouched on the roof and the 4" nail had gone into his kneecap, apparently. He couldn't move, was in pain and after several attempts to get him down, Clyde had given up. Ten minutes later the ambulance and fire truck came blasting down the street, sirens blaring. It took some doing, but they stabilized Royce's knee and lowered him backwards off the roof and into the arms of several EMT's who gently placed him on the stretcher. I sensed Royce felt a little better when he heard the word "morphene".

The ambulance drove away and immediately my "Buddhist" neighbor came over to get the low-down. Changing the subject, I asked her if she knew who reported me to the code enforcement officer, but she had no idea. 'Everyone is a suspect," I declared! She, I'm sure, caught my negative vibe with her attuned Buddhist nature and hightailed it out of there to meditate and regain balance.

I noticed that Pudge, who showed up unannounced to haul away the tree at 7:30am the next morning, also had several missing teeth, one of which was a front tooth. Clyde's description of Pudge as a hard worker became obvious when, after he had finished loading the wood into his pickup truck about three hours later, I happened to look out the window and was arrested by the sight of Pudge, beer-belly covered tightly with a dirty torn t-shirt and thin hair clinging to the back of his neck, raking up fragments of leaves and branches with a stick! Actually I guess it would be better described as "flicking". It was slow going, I can tell you that. I quickly opened the door and demanded the obvious. "Are you raking with a stick?!" Unembarrassed, he looked at me and answered earnestly, "Yes."

Well. I quickly found him a rake, he finished the job in a very thorough manner (the yard looked better than it had in ages), and shining with grimy sweat he finally came to the door to tell me he was leaving. "I wanted your yard to look nice for you," he grinned.