Two Time

SEVENTEEN

I WAS ABLE TO EXAMINE Burton’s theories on the inexorability of aggression a few days later at the big lumberyard. Frank had sent over a set of plans for me to build an elaborate architectural detail for Melinda McCarthy’s backyard. A pair of custom benches, merged into a freestanding fence and gate affair that would anchor a future flower garden. My favorite kind of job, where I could prefab most of the pieces at the cottage, then have a gang of Frank’s guys haul the stuff to the site for me to install. Best of all I got to work with clear cedar and mahogany, nice smelling, straight grain stuff you can easily shape and join.

Wood like this is a specialty item, but I could usually buy what I needed from a regular yard if I had the time to pick through the stacks. They kept it out of the weather in a large shed at the far end, away from the main traffic area. It was open on one side where you could back up your truck, or in my case, your ’67 Grand Prix with a set of rusty roof racks temporarily bolted on the top.

It was early but the sun was already heating up the air. In a few hours the lumberyard would be a cruelly hot and dusty place, filled with runners from the big construction sites sent over to resupply the crews. The yard guys knew these often weren’t skilled people, more often simple haulers, Spanish speakers or somebody’s drunken or nitwit nephew who knew enough to stand in line, put an order on account and drive a truck that somebody else helped load. They didn’t get a lot of respect from the yard guys, whose status was only marginally greater than the runners. Which was why the yard guys were generally disrespected by the skilled tradesmen and contractors. And by their own counter guys, whose craft was plied indoors, and who therefore disrespected everybody, though most earnestly their customers.

I usually got there at opening time while it was still fairly cool and all the employees were too groggy to engage in hierarchical power plays. I’d just finished selecting and stacking a load of clear cedar on the roof and was about to tie it all down when a noisy diesel pickup backed in hard against the right side of the Grand Prix. I didn’t have to look up to know who it was, so I kept uncoiling and untangling a length of clothesline I’d just pulled out of the trunk, smoothing out the twists and kinks.

“Hey lookee here,” said Ivor Fleming’s skinny guy, now in a baseball cap, chewing something like tobacco or a big wad of bubble gum. “The crazy dude.”

He walked around the Grand Prix and stood a few paces away from me. Without looking up I turned slightly and leaned up against the rear fender of the car, seeing in my peripheral vision to my left, as expected, the shape of the fat one, Connie. I looked over at the skinny guy.

“‘Lookee here?’ You from Arkansas?”

“Bed-Stuy man.”

“That explains it.”

The skinny guy moved out a few more paces, filling the space between the back of my car and a stack of decking lumber.

“Interesting,” he said. “Financial fucker and carpenter. You’re a busy boy.”

“Diversification. Ask any financial fucker.”

He pointed at the lumber on my car.

“Talk about Arkansas. That looks like the Beverly Hillbillies.”

“Maybe you boys could haul it for me.”

That made the skinny guy smile, which was unfortunate since it partially exposed whatever it was he had in his mouth.

“So what are you here for?” I asked him. “Ivor building a new doghouse?”

“Just passing through,” he said.

“Passing through? You know this is a lumberyard. You can tell from all the wood.”

“I told you he’s got a mouth, Ike,” said Connie.

“Ike?” I laughed. “That’s your name? Ike and Connie? Is that like Ike and Tina? Must be why you guys are always together. Good thing Connie’s the fat one. Be tough with him on top.”

“A mouth with a death wish,” said Ike.

I thought about that. Conceptually anyway, he’d raised an important issue. After losing my job, my wife, most of my money and the affection of my daughter, my only child, I might not have wished for death, but I had little interest in living. Of all the loss the worst was the loss of time. I’d used up all those irreplaceable decades formulating an existence that turned out to be largely illusory. A mental construct within which I accomplished things of substance, but when the artifice became impossible to sustain, it all collapsed, every achievement and satisfaction taking its place amongst the rubble.

“Not true. Maybe at one time, but I’m over that. Death’s way too permanent. Ruins any chance of catching an upswing in circumstances. Guarantees you’ll miss out on things like the World Series and the Little Peconic Bay. And then there are other human beings.”

Though that was always the hard part for me, the human beings. The division I ran for my company was called Technical Services and Support, which better described its heritage than its eventual raison d’etre, which was essentially research and development. The original TS&S was a maintenance and repair operation that mounted expeditions into the company’s sprawling industrial infrastructure to optimize processes, troubleshoot failures and invent new systems. I liked that part of the job. They paid me to solve puzzles and crack codes. I thought at the time my skill in this derived from solid, clearheaded engineering, though in retrospect I ran almost entirely on intuition. I could see the resolution almost as a thing, an image in my brain, and then I’d reverse-engineer the steps needed to accomplish it. It was a game of physics, and chemistry and mechanical engineering, in which nobody scored more points than me. So they rewarded me by stirring people into the mix, thereby complicating the task a thousandfold with every unit of humanity introduced into the intricate, but far more predictable universe of fluid dynamics, energy and mass, cause and effect.

“Jesus, what a head job,” said Ike, spitting whatever he’d been chewing on the ground.

“Come on, think about it,” I said. “Once you decide you’re not gonna be dead, at least for the foreseeable future, you start facing the fact that you have to live among other human beings. Some, if you aren’t careful, you get to know. Get used to them hanging around. Not everybody, just certain ones. You can even start liking them. Take you guys. I feel like I’m really getting to know you.”

I was still leaning against the car, but I shifted forward enough to spread my weight more evenly to the balls of my feet.

“I think he’s a philosopher,” said Connie. “That’s what he is.”

“It’s rude to talk about people in the third person when they’re standing right next to you,” I told Connie, while keeping eye contact with Ike.

“Yeah fuck the third person, and the fourth,” said Connie, settling the etiquette question, if not the grammatical.

He inched a little closer, but I stayed focused on Ike.

“Speaking of human beings, after a fashion, how’s Ivor? Still concerned?”

“I can’t speak for the man, but I’d say he’s feeling okay” said Ike. “I’d be interested in telling him there’s nothing about you that oughta be concerning. Not that he’s thinkin’ that much about it, but you know, it’d be nice for me to tell him that you’re off the list of potential concerns.”

“Like Joe Sullivan.”

Ike frowned and glanced over at Connie.

“Don’t know the man. You know him?”

“Joe Sullivan? Don’t know him,” said Connie.

“Really. Big blond guy. Southampton Town cop. Recently irrigated with a three-inch blade.”

“Another friend of yours? Like me and Connie?”

“Yeah. He’s not a concern for Ivor, and neither am I. Tell that to Ivor. I’m committed full time to building Melinda McCarthy’s garden furniture. I’m retired from the financial business.”

Ike actually seemed to relax a little at that. Connie took his cue and stepped back a pace, crossing his arms. I went back to messing with my clothesline.

“That’s interesting information,” said Ike. “I’d pass it along to Mr. Fleming if I thought he actually gave half a shit.”

“You gotta make yourself useful somehow. He’s got a Doberman, could probably use a pair of bird dogs.”

That had less of a calming effect. Connie uncrossed his arms and moved almost all the way in. Ike looked really disappointed. He scanned the lumberyard and saw we were well away from general activity and blocked from view by the high stacks of decking timber and the side walls of the cedar shed. Which was a little disappointing to me.

“Maybe I tell him you’re a crazy old fuck who’s nothing but trouble,” said Ike.

“That’d be unconstructive.”

“Unconstructive. What the hell does that mean,” said Connie.

“Unhelpful. Detrimental to achieving a positive outcome. Counterproductive. These are all English words. Not very good words, but useful in big corporations. Maybe not in your line of work. Whatever that is. We covered watch dog and bird dog. How about lap dog?”

“How’d you get to be such an old man with that kind of attitude?” Ike asked me.

“Regular exercise?”

I noticed Ike edge closer with a little shuffle of his feet. Connie had been pretending to look around the lumberyard while we talked as if to cover his own obvious intrusion into my immediate space.

“How bout de-structive. You know that word?” asked Ike.

“Oh, of course, deconstructionists. That’s what you guys are. Why didn’t you tell me? I gotta tell you, I hate that shit. Sorry, but it’s all such nihilistic, anti-intellectual prattle parading as cultural sensitivity. Or let’s just say it’s stupid and ugly. Like the two of you.”

I don’t think Connie took that commentary in the spirit with which it was expressed, though he did take another step toward me, which is when I stuck a left jab into his Adam’s apple. This is harder to do in the ring because the glove usually won’t fit under the guy’s chin, but a bare knuckle will. It’s a real shock to the system, especially when you have no idea it’s coming. You tend to grab your throat with both hands, which Connie did, leaving me plenty of time to swivel and plant a full-out right hook on the end of his nose, the other vulnerable part of the anatomy above the shoulders. It was a good right, especially for a finesse fighter like me. It took him off his feet and into the reject pile of clear cedar I was planning to lay back on the stacks.

For a wiry guy, Ike didn’t have much in the way of reflexes. Before Connie had settled into the cedar I had him by the throat. By instinct he used both hands to grab my wrist, which allowed me to get my right leg behind his calf and shove him over on his back. A little whoof of air shot out his mouth, choked off when I planted my knee in his solar plexus. I moved my hand from his throat to the collar of his shirt, pulling his head up off the dirt so I could punch it back down again with another quick jab. Blood shot out his nose. He looked terrified.

“Sorry about the temper. I’m not proud of it,” I told him, cinching up my grip on his shirtfront and giving him one more shot in the face. He managed to get a forearm up over his mouth into which he gurgled something that sounded like okay okay, okay.

“Back to Ivor,” I said to him. “When you see him, tell him I have nothing to offer, nothing to sell. Tell him I’m sorry I bothered him at his house. I really am. If I learn he had anything to do with Joe Sullivan, that’s a different story. But for now, let’s just leave each other alone. And that includes all the tough talk. I don’t like it. Never did. If you agree, nod your head.”

He nodded.

“Good. That’s settled.”

I looked over at Connie. He wasn’t moving, but I could see him breathing wetly through his freshly broken nose. I patted around Ike’s pockets and waistband before letting go of his shirt and getting up. He rolled over and pulled himself up onto his hands and knees, watching the blood from his nose drip on the dusty gravel.

Connie had his eyes open by the time I had him frisked, but wasn’t ready to try standing up. While I tied off my load I kept a steady eye on both. Connie lay there gingerly touching his nose and throat and wiping blood and tears off his cheeks. Ike by now was just sitting on the ground, propped up by one arm. Neither said anything or tried to move until I was in my car driving away. I watched Ike in my rearview stand up and help Connie to his feet. I gave the checkout guy at the gate his copy of the receipt and left the yard like all I’d done was load up on a bunch of expensive semi-hardwoods. He might have been tempted to make a wisecrack about my car, like they usually did, but I busied myself lighting a cigarette so I didn’t have to work out a comeback.

I had the rest of the day to set up my outdoor shop using a pair of folding sawhorses and some old luan hollow-core doors. I had a flimsy shed my father built for lawnmowers, rakes and outboard motors, where I could break down and store everything at night. It made for extra steps, but I didn’t mind. It was nice to be out in the sun where the breeze off the Peconic could keep the air clear of sawdust. I had a moment when the aftereffects of excess adrenaline caused a little nausea, but it passed quickly as I applied myself to ripping and cutting a bundle of cedar to the proper dimensions, pre-drilling and coding for assembly according to Frank’s plans.

The work was interesting but simple enough to give me a chance to brood on the preordained nature of cycles, manifest in personal habits, good and bad, forever recurring like the waves and troughs of the sea. And my discussion with Ike and Connie on the interplay between awareness of mortality and the thirst for human connectedness. Is it that one leads to the other, or are they inextricably bound together, each reinforcing the other until you surprise yourself by wanting to stay alive, and wanting to believe in the myths of kinship and love?

I didn’t know, but I was new to the whole concept. Might take some getting used to.