Diary of a Sadman Installment 6: More True Construction Site Story

Perhaps not all that interesting, but if you like tales from the Foss Construction job site, you might enjoy it. Like the job itself, I think it needs a little work, but let me know if you like it.

Day Laborer

"Patrick!" I can hear Foss yelling to me from down below. Jesus Christ, what does he want now? I'm already so stacked with tasks I had to write them on a piece of two-by-six. The clouds that were gray a few hours ago have darkened, and this job is spinning into chaos. Everyone needs some small thing done before they can get their big thing done, and before we can get the trusses up and sheeting on before the rain hits. I don't want to wrestle with the goddamned tarp again.

"What?"

"I need your help."

"I'm doing the last eight things you told me to do!"

"I know, but I need your help now." His voice doesn't sound frantic like it did a few minutes ago. It sounds calm but serious; this is something different. Curious, I swing myself onto the long extension ladder and descend into the yard that we've now covered with scraps of wood, paper coffee cups, sandwich wrappers and beer cans. Foss is standing in the middle of it all next to Chris, our day laborer.

"I need you to take Chris to the hospital." Foss says this evenly without any discernable urgency. You can tell he's trying to stay cool, and he's succeeding.

"Why?" I look at Chris, who has the same peaceful, goofy smile — like he's about to laugh at something — he always does.

"He cut his leg." I look at him again and he keeps smiling back, then I look at his leg and realize that what looks like a coffee stain on his jeans, outlining the tear that runs from the top of his thigh down to about three inches above his knee, is blood.

"Oh," I say, instantly becoming very cool myself. It's unclear why, but it seems that whatever we do now, it is most important that we not panic. "Are you alright, Chris?" This question is exactly as dumb as it sounds, given that he has just run a circular saw down his leg, but it seems appropriate for someone who is not panicking.

"Yeah, I'm O.K., I put some tape on it." It's then that I notice the white plastic Tyvek tape visible beneath the tear in his jeans. I'm glad it's not bone. He says it like he's turned his ankle in a lunchtime basketball game.

"We have a first aid kit," I offer lamely.

"No, it's O.K., this is better. I used to be an army medic and we used tape all the time until we could get the guy to the docs. It's gonna take some stitches." This is new, this army medic stuff. I didn't know he was a medic or in the army. He's full of this kind of thing.

Still keeping my cool, I begin the frantic search for my keys and discuss with Foss which hospital I should take him to. I'm not really clear on where most of the hospitals nearby are, and we decide on Harborview because of traffic issues and the fact that they take all the uninsured patients in the city. I decide I better take my cell phone as well. I don't want to get stuck on the freeway and have Chris bleed to death in my car.

By now the rest of the guys have heard what's going on. Mike comments from the roof, that Tyvek tape is expensive. I laugh, then feel bad about it.

I help Chris get into the front seat and he thanks me for driving him. He was going to take the bus before we insisted that someone would give him a ride. He said it really wasn't necessary, but since none of us could tell him which bus to take, he appreciated the ride.

As I feared, the freeway is solid southbound. Both the drawbridges are up all day to let boats pass back and forth for the opening day of yachting season parade, which leaves only the freeway to get over the ship canal. "Thanks for giving me a ride," he says again, "it would have sucked to be stuck in this traffic on the bus."

"Don't' worry about it, man, it's no problem."

"Are you from Seattle, Chris?" I realize how little I know about the man bleeding in my passenger seat.

What I do know is that he sleeps under the Ballard Bridge. He says it's not bad, he hasn't been hassled and he hasn't been bitten. I'm not exactly sure what might bite him and I don't ask. This week has been especially good since the other guy who sleeps there is on vacation and let Chris use his mattress and easy chair while he's away. I guess I never really thought that guys who live under bridges took vacations. The guy works at Todd shipyard just down the road, and moved out of his apartment and under the bridge to get away from his girlfriend who he said was driving him crazy. I don't know where he went on vacation — I wish I'd asked, but it seems inappropriate now.

Last week Chris stayed in some seedy hotel on Aurora. With the money coming in from working with us, he decided to treat himself to a bed and sheets. He asked Foss if he could get an advance on his pay in order to get the weekly rate. Foss, being basically a kind soul, considered it, but since we'd only picked Chris up the day before and didn't know if we'd ever see him again, he told him he couldn't do it. Instead, he spent a couple of hours driving him up and down Aurora trying to help him find the best deal. He told Chris that if things worked out this week, he'd give him the advance for the next one. They found him a room at the place that used to be called the Geisha Inn. I can't remember what it's called now.

The morning of what was supposed to be his third day on the job Chris didn't show. Foss called the old Geisha Inn and asked for room 119. A woman answered and told him he had the wrong room, that this was room 117. The front desk assured him that he'd been connected to room 119 and put him through again. The same woman answered. Foss asked for Chris. She told him he wasn't there, that he was at work. Foss hung up shaking his head. Forty-five minutes later, around eleven o'clock, Chris walked on to the job site. "What's the deal, you were supposed to be here over two hours ago?" Foss asked.

Chris smiled, his good-natured, goofy smile and shook his head. "I know, I know, you see that's my problem — I'm unreliable. If I wasn't, I'd still have a regular job." It's good to know your limitations. Foss asked him about the woman who answered the phone in his room. "Oh Jesus, those goddamned hookers are taking over the place," Chris smiled continuing to shake his head. Apparently he'd had one stay and she'd called a friend, now he was thinking about going back under the bridge just to be rid of them. He asked Foss to only pay him $40.00 that day and to keep the rest for him until the end of the week. He was worried the hookers would steal it.

Chris tells me he's lived a lot of places, doesn't really feel he's from anywhere anymore. It's hard to tell how old he is, but I doubt he's much older than me. He's small — from a distance looks like he could be a junior high school kid.

"I used to have a houseboat on the slough up in La Connor." I nod like I know what he's talking about. "You know the Union Slough up there?"

"Yeah, I think I've seen it."

"Well, I had a houseboat up there. I had three classic cars too." Chris gives a detailed description of his cars. One was a Ford "stepside" truck, another was a Volvo and the third was another truck who's make I can't remember but which was apparently completely "hot-rodded out". He talks about these cars like someone who might have actually owned three classic cars — a level of detail that I can't understand or remember. The truck was from the '30s or '40's and the fact that it was a "stepside" seems important. The hot rod had a split windshield, headers, and "Edelbrock" something or other. There's something special about the Volvo too, but all I can think about is how weird it is that Chris had a classic Volvo. For maybe the first time in my life — not including breakdowns by the side of the road or in parking lots — I wish I knew more about cars.

"Yeah, I was installing traffic lights for the City of Everett. You know I'm an electrician by trade?"

"Yeah, Foss mentioned it."

"That was a pretty good life. That hot-rod, man it looked sweet going down the road."

"What happened to it?" I tell myself that it's good to keep him talking so he doesn't go into shock or something, but really I'm just curious about what had happened — how he ended up under the bridge.

"Oh, I sold it. I sold all of them." He stops talking and it seems like maybe that's it — sold his houseboat and his sweet cars and decided to become a day laborer out of Casa Latina and move under the bridge. After a minute or so he continues, "One day I got a call from my dad. My dad was a businessman, a very successful businessman. Anyway, he calls me up one day and says he's got a business venture and that he wants to make me vice president and cut me in on a percentage of the profits." We're at a dead stop on the freeway, and I wonder how long it takes for a guy to bleed to death — maybe we should have called an ambulance. "I said O.K., I mean what else am I going to say?"

I shrug.

"So, I sold my cars and my houseboat and took the money and went to Mexico and met him."

"Where?" I'm not sure why it matters, but I want to know.

"Acapulco. Yeah, we had a shark cartilage business down there. You know it's good for arthritis and all sorts of things?" I didn't know, but I nod, I seem to have heard that somewhere. "We put it into capsules and sold them in bottles — we had our own Mexican labels and everything." He explains how he stayed on the beach in a campground near a military base just outside of Acapulco. He says it was beautiful, and I imagine him in a hammock eating mangos and drinking margaritas. He says it like he misses it.

So they did that for a while. Chris is never really clear on dates or exact lengths of time; they don't seem to matter to him. I want to know, but I don't push him — it's not a deposition. He says they made some money, but he doesn't say how much. Things were going well. He liked living on the beach. Finally, he says, they smuggled the money back into the states. I ask him how, but he doesn't really want to talk about it. It's not interesting to him. They just carried it, he tells me. I wonder about suitcases or boxes and just how much cash we are talking about.

They went to Florida, which seems totally natural to me. Florida is so goddamned weird I don't even get it. He tells me they had a big house there, but he doesn't say where. I ask, but "South Florida" is all he gives up. These details are unimportant — not like the carburetors on the classic cars. They lived there, in Florida, in the big house, for a while until his dad left and moved to Arizona. "It was Phoenix," he says, "or was it Tuscon?" He says it like he truly doesn't quite remember. "I'm pretty sure it was Phoenix." It's not the first time that it crosses my mind that Chris is very possibly full of shit. It seems strange that he would struggle to remember the facts if he were lying though. "Yeah, it was Phoenix, because it was 'Phoenix Taxi'. My dad, he started a taxi company down there, 'Phoenix Taxi,' had a bunch of cabs." Chris smiles as he tells me about it.

"He would lease the cars from like Hertz and Avis, the big rental companies. But he didn't tell them he was using them as taxis." This apparently was the genius stroke. "So, he'd turn these cars back in and they would be ruined, because they had been driven to death as taxis. He burned through all of the rental companies in town — it worked real well for him." I don't really understand how this worked well, but before I can ask he continues, "then one day I got another call from him, in Florida. His health wasn't good anymore and he needed my help. I sold the house and broke up with my fiancé." This is the first I've heard of a fiance. "Then I went out to Phoenix. He was having problems by then." This is something that seems to run through Chris' story: dropping everything and moving.

"Did you help run the taxi company?"

"No there wasn't much of a taxi company by then, because there was nowhere to get new cars from. He died pretty soon after that, and I left Phoenix."

I nod. "Sorry to hear that."

"Yeah."

"Did you go back to Florida?"

"No, I went to California. That's where I'm from, that's where I was born — Southern California. So Cal." He looks at me like it's my turn to speak, and I feel somehow compelled.

"Ah, gotcha."

"But I didn't go back there, I went to Northern California. To the woods. I'd been living there off and on for much of my life." It seems to be my turn and again, and I nod to keep him going. "So I stayed there for a while, then I left there too."

"Where'd you go?"

"I hitched a ride in a truck with the clothes on my back and came up here. That was two weeks ago."

We weren't quite over the Ship Canal Bridge, but it seemed we had completed the circle of Chris's life. It struck me that he never mentioned how things fell apart; there was nothing about losing all the money, coke habits or drinking problems or of hitting rock bottom. Chris talked about moving from a big house in South Florida to underneath the Ballard Bridge as if they were simply representations of the peaks and valleys of the natural business cycle. As an individual, he was somehow macroeconomic.

"So why did you come back up here — are you going to try to get back on with the City of Everett?"

"No, I don't think that's going to happen. I want to get on a boat?"

"A boat?"

"Yeah, I want to get on a crab boat in Alaska."

"That's tough work — dangerous work."

"Yeah, I know, but I don't mind."

"I think it's the most dangerous job in the world." Actually, maybe it's just the most dangerous job in the U.S. — jobs for which OSHA keeps tabs — surely those guys who break up tankers on the beach in India have it worse, or land mine removers. I guess it's an important distinction, but not one I feel I need to point out to a guy who has just come close to sawing his own leg off.

It may not matter. He needs to pass a drug test before being hired for the Alaskan crab fleet. This surprises me. I thought all those guys were on speed, meth or something; you'd have to be to do that work. He tells me the problem is that he smoked pot on Sunday. I don't know if he knew about the drug test requirement before he smoked pot, but it seems entirely possible. Making good choices doesn't seem to be a pattern in Chris's life. Apparently there's a product you can buy that removes evidence of drug use from your urine. He's got it all figured out. He asks if I know of any supplement stores — that's where they sell it — in town. I can't say that I do.

The traffic is starting to break. We can see beautiful, white yachts below us entering Lake Union. The wash from their propellers spreads out behind them like plumes. From this distance I can't make out anyone on board, can't hear the slow, steady churn of their engines. They look perfect — perfect , white islands of happiness below us.

"That's what my dad wanted." Chris continues to gaze over the rail and down onto the lake. "He always wanted a boat. Said once he had enough money he was going to buy a boat and leave, and no one would be able to bother him."
"Sounds O.K.."

"Yeah, sounds good. He never managed to get one, though."

"What did he do — I mean before the shark cartilage pills and the taxi company?"

"He was a pilot." Apparently Chris's dad flew drugs and money across the Mexican border in small planes for many years.

"He got to where they trusted him. He'd go to their houses — big ranches and haciendas and shit."

"Wow." I'm trying to sound impressed, but the truth is I am. "So what happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"How'd he end up selling shark cartilage and running a taxi company?"

"Oh, he quit, got out. Said it was too risky and didn't want to do it anymore."

"Can you do that — can you walk away from that kind of job?"

"He thought you could." Chris pauses, but I can tell more is on its way — it's not my turn yet. "But all my brothers and sisters and my stepmother got killed in car crash."

"In a car crash?"

Chris nods, his eyes still following the wake of the yacht. It looks like a contrail from a jet.

"This was after he got out of the drug smuggling business?"

"Yeah."

"Was it — you think it had something to do with them, with his business?"

"I do, yeah." He looks up and at me pulling his lips back in a tight smile and arching his eyebrows like a shrug.

"Jesus, where did it happen?"

"Near Redding."

Traffic is stopped again. I don't know what the hell it is this time. I hope it's not an accident. "How's your leg?"

"It's OK, I'm trying not to think about it."

"OK, good. Let me know if you need me to stop." I don't know what he'd need me to stop for, especially since we're stopped now and that's the problem, but it seemed like I should offer.

"OK."

Traffic is still crawling so I bail off the freeway at Stewart Street and double back across on Denny. "The way this day is going, I think I better put my seat belt on." Chris smiles as he reaches for the latch.

"Probably not a bad idea," I agree. "Well, at least you don't have to dig anymore trenches today."

"No, no more work today. Today's a good day to go to the bar."

I pick my way up the hill on side streets getting steadily closer to where I think the hospital is. "You know where you're going?"

I nod as convincingly as I can. and keep my relief to myself when I finally spot the hospital sign. The entrance is a bit confusing but I follow the arrows pointing to "Emergency." We pass an ambulance bay that is empty except for a cop car. That's good I think, maybe he won't have to wait long. I pull into a load unload spot surprisingly close to the front door. Chris is out and hobbling on the pavement before I have chance get around the car to help him.

The whoosh of the automatic sliding doors instills confidence — bleeding will be stemmed, wounds will be healed within these halls. We seem to be nowhere near the emergency room. The map attached to the directory shows the hospital's various wings and pavilions splayed out like some southern congressional district. We walk down the wrong hall for a while before I figure out that we need to be one floor up in order to get into the correct wing. The place is deserted and I wonder to myself why hospitals are so goddamned confusing — it's bad enough to be in one, but why do they design them so you always feel lost? It takes a ridiculously long time to find an elevator, and then we walk what seems like a quarter mile before finally finding the emergency room. I worry Chris is going to die before we get there. Who do you call in an emergency if you're already in the hospital?

Our lap of iron finally complete, we emerge into the open space of the emergency room. It isn't at all like on "ER" — there is no central desk bustling with young, great looking doctors and amiably crazy patients. The place looks more like an abandoned airport gate. A small waiting area is appointed with uncomfortable looking chairs and a large fish tank thats importance as an agent of calm and distraction has been largely supplanted by the two television sets mounted on steel brackets hanging down from the ceiling. Across from the waiting area is an un-staffed desk. A yellow line cuts across the linoleum about fifteen feet in front of the desk just beyond a patch of scuffed yellow lettering that reads, "Please wait behind this line for the nurse." Beside the desk is a set of two large metal doors, which, if they weren't locked, look like they could swing open to expel a gurney at any moment.

I can tell they are locked by the woman, far beyond the yellow line, pounding on them. She appears to be in her early twenties, dressed in jeans and a brown v-neck shirt. She isn't wearing any shoes and looks like she rolled down a long grassy hill to get here — tufts of dead grass cling to her shirt and hair. On her left wrist, where a watch might be, is a yellow hospital identification bracelet. I wonder if it is from this or an unrelated visit and whether she is on the right side of the metal doors. Wherever she is supposed to be, she looks pissed. Alternating between pounding on the metal doors with her open palms and the electric switch that assumedly is meant to open them, she runs her fingers through her brown hair in a way that conveys that she simply does not have time for this bullshit. "Jesus Christ, I just need my goddamned purse!" she yells at no one and everyone. "I cannot believe this fucking place!" I watch her trying to avoid eye contact.

Eventually her entreaties are answered and the metal doors swing outward nearly hitting her. "About fucking time, goddamnit!" A police officer steps through doors.

"M'am, is there something we can help you with?"

"Look, I just need my goddamned purse." She runs her fingers through her hair again unable to believe that she has to explain this yet again.

The officer turns the volume down on his radio. "OK, I don't know anything about your purse."

My attention to how this is going to turn out is distracted by Chris who has also crossed the yellow line and deposited himself in the chair in front of the triage nurse's desk. A nurse emerges from somewhere and asks if she can help him. I move over to the desk feeling somehow responsible for making sure Chris is taken care of. "Can I help you?" she asks him.

"Uh, yeah I need my elbow x-rayed."

I nearly interrupt him to ask him what the hell he needs his elbow x-rayed for. I remember he'd complained about it being knocked earlier in the day by a piece of facia board, but I didn't think it was too serious.

"What's wrong with your elbow?"

"I hurt it and it's got a bump on it."

There does appear to be a small bump on the side of Chris's elbow, but I think it a little bizarre that he's chosen to focus on this instead of the bleeding gash in his leg. I am about to jump in when the nurse asks, "how did you hurt it?"

"Well, I hurt my leg too."

"What's wrong with your leg?"

"I cut it." Chris thrusts his thigh up above the edge of the desk so she can see his torn, blood stained jeans.

The nurse seems unimpressed by this injury; she has, no doubt, seen much worse. "How did you do that?"

"I fell off my bike." Suddenly, I no longer want to be involved.

"You fell off your bike?"

"Yeah." Somehow Chris expects the nurse to believe that he fell off his bike causing the flaying of his leg and a bump on his elbow without any other scratches or lacerations.

"Anything else?"

"Nope."

It makes a certain amount of sense — not the falling off his bike part — but the cover story. It is an unspoken rule on jobs like this that trips to the emergency room are not caused by work. If work were involved there would be questions, and L&I and OSHA and God knew what else. But this is the worst story I've ever heard.

"How did you get here today — did you drive, get a ride, walk . . .?" I instinctively move back behind the yellow line and become interested in the CNN story coming out of the TV.

"I took the bus."

"You took the bus after crashing your bike?"

"Yup."

"Were you going fast?"

"On my bike?"

"Yes."

"Pretty fast."

"Did you lose consciousness?"

"No."

"Are you allergic to any medications?"

"Sulfa drugs."

The nurse is momentarily called away and I flash Chris a thumbs up. He smiles at me and says, "it's gonna take forever to get x-rayed, you might as well just take off."

"You sure? Are you going to be OK?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine."

It occurs to me that Chris probably requested the x-ray because he knew it would guarantee him a significant amount of time lying in a clean, comfortable hospital bed, maybe even within sight of a TV. I wave goodbye and tell him I'll see him later. He thanks me again for the ride.

Traffic is still tied up northbound and I roll slowly back over the ship canal bridge. My phone rings, it's Foss. "So, what's the story, where are you?"

"He fell off his bike."

"He fell off his bike?"

"That's what he told them." I can hear them in the background setting trusses and generally doing their best to kill each other from the sound of it.

"Onto a circular saw?" I hear Mike shout in the background.

"Jesus, that is pathetic. Is he going to be O.K.?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"O.K., well get back here as soon as you can, we have to get these things up. And thanks for taking him."

"Yeah, sure, it's no problem. Traffic's bad still, I'll be there soon."

"O.K., later."

I look down over the rail of the bridge. Far below me the yachts have now all made their way from Lake Washington into Lake Union where they wait drifting, strung out like some distant, unchartable archipelago. Something in me wants to cry.