Published in Four Quarters
Vol. 27, No. 4, Summer, 1978
THAT MORNING the key to the padlock on the tool cabinet was missing again. Rich Lomax looked all over the workshop for it while McFee, kneeling on the concrete floor, made a tripod out of three ten-foot two-by-eights joined with a nut, bolt, and clamp. When Lomax came back empty handed and saw George Dumo, wearing those stupid cutoffs and talking with that long face to McFee, he knew that Dumo had locked the key inside the cabinet again.
The tractor shovel had broken down again. Even if they knew what was wrong they could not repair it before the burial that afternoon because the wrench and the ratchet set were locked in the cabinet and this time they could not burn off the lock with the acetylene torch because the flints for the torch were also locked in the cabinet. And McFee would not let anybody use a burning rolled newspaper to light the torch. Dumo did it that way until the time he lit the torch and stomped out the burning newspaper next to an open can of naphtha and almost blew up the workshop.
Without the tractor shovel, or any means to repair it, McFee and Lomax decided the only way to move the concrete vault from the work yard to the gravesite was by lifting it with a hoist attached to the make-shift tripod, backing a pickup truck under the vault, driving out to the gravesite and unloading it the same way. Rich liked McFee at times like this. Ever since McFee was promoted from grounds worker to supervisor after the mechanic quit, McFee always gave Lomax the chance to think about problems that mattered.
Bill Dole came in and they were all talking. Dole’s tee-shirt was spotted grey with concrete poured two days ago when they made the vault. Around the middle of his head he wore a red bandana which gave his unruly hair and untrimmed beard the appearance of a mass of frayed electrical wires bound in the middle.
“I didn’t; I couldn’t of,” Dumo said.
“But you were the last one to leave last night,” McFee said. “If he sabotaged the cabinet then I crippled the tractor,” Dole said; “I drained off all the oil yesterday when nobody was looking.”
“Now you shut up,” McFee said. “You guys are just fuckin’ off while Rich and I are trying to work with what we have.”
Now that they had finished thinking about the problem, Lomax did not like McFee so much. McFee was throwing his weight around again as if he owned the place, and Lomax wanted no part of it. He would take the first chance he got today to side again with Dumo and Dole.
McFee said, “This morning: Rich, you get on the rest of that mowing and you two guys get onto that sod-laying. If we got a funeral today this place has to look nice. We move the vault after break.”
Lomax regretted that McFee gave him the better job; it would be that much more difficult to get back on good terms with Dumo and Dole. Cutting grass made you forget you were alive, but laying sod forced you to work harder to forget what you were doing.
Lomax gassed the tractor and connected the mowing attachment. Within minutes the pleasant rhythm of the tractor and the soothing moisture on his body and in the air settled him into the routine of long mindless straightaways interrupted at either end by the turns, which required his attention. It was getting hot early and since there was no heavy work today he knew he would be enjoying it by mid-afternoon—that gentle film of wetness that accompanied you everywhere and comforted you as long as you cooperated by not working too hard.
On one of his return trips Lomax stopped at the junk heap out back behind the picket fence, where Dumo in the dump truck took loads of scrap from the workshop.
Lomax wondered what Dumo was up to now. Dumo had been working there since he dropped out of high school. He knew the place so well that he could take charge suddenly by summoning up his vast knowledge of the place and announcing that this or that, which had occurred to no one, had to be done immediately. Lomax resented George and his projects because he pursued them whether or not they were needed at the time and whether or not he was permitted to do so. McFee would do nothing about Dumo because he was valuable, the only one willing to work more than a single summer.
“I’m clearin’ out that back room of the workshop,” Dumo said. “That place been a mess for a long time.”
Out of the dump truck he carefully removed pieces of broken brick, beams with exposed nails, and parts of machinery long ago discarded.
“Why do you sort the stuff so carefully?” Lomax asked. “We have to know what we have case we every have to use it.”
Wood goes here, bricks and stones over there, and parts there. Cover the parts with plastic tarp later,”
“What are you doing after that?“
“Wanna get high?”
“Sure,” Lomax was hoping Dumo would say that. It was the chance he was waiting for.
“Bill says to meet him by the drainage ditch. I’ll be there when I’m done with this,” Dumo said.
Lomax drove to the drainage ditch, at the far end of the cemetery, where Dole was laying a brick retaining wall on either side of the steep part of the ditch, to arrest the process of erosion along the banks. He had thought of the project so he could be independent of McFee and he had asked Lomax to help. They had used a pile of concrete bricks that Dumo had stacked up out back the year before. For the purpose of staying clear of McFee, the project was so much work that it hardly seemed worthwhile. But they enjoyed themselves until Lomax decided to strengthen the bricks with more iron reinforcement bar than it turned out the place could afford, and, when McFee found out, he was pissed at Dole for wasting a lot of materials on one project. When Lomax found out that McFee was pissed at Dole and therefore Dole was pissed at Lomax, he left the project to Dole.
Lomax said, “The wall looks good. How did you learn to lay bricks that well?”
“I didn’t. Taught myself as I went along.”
“Does McFee really believe we need it?”
“Of course we need a wall here,” Dole said. “See all this clay? Topsoil’s been washed away. Unless we stop that the whole area won’t have anything but weeds growing on it. We have to make this place look nice. Yep, what this place needs is this wall right here.”
Lomax looked at Dole’s smile and told himself he should have known the wall would have been better off weaker, so that it might soon provide Dole with more of his own kind of work.
THEY SAW DUMO coming out, rumbling over the potholed service road in the dump truck which had no shocks, Dumo’s figure tossing behind the wheel, nearly launching through the roof as he accelerated, the truck growling in low gear, with deafening crashes of metal on metal.
“If it wasn’t for Dumo I’d be bored all the time around here,” Dole said to Lomax.
“Time to get stoned!” Dumo said, leaping from the truck. “You’re already stoned,” Lomax said. “Get out of here and go do some work.”
“Hold on; this guy’s been working hard,” Dole said. He looked at Dumo and cracked a smile, then produced his pipe and his pot. Dumo said, “Yeah, I been moving bricks.”
“See, he’s been moving bricks,” Dole said to Lomax.
“You like moving stuff, don’t you?” Lomax asked Dumo. “It’s a job that had to be done,” Dumo said.
“In a couple of hours this guy moved a roomful of stuff from one place to another,” Dole said to Lomax, “while you spent the whole morning sitting on a tractor and driving it maybe ten miles but haven’t moved a damn thing further than where you were when you started.”
There was more to smoking with Dole than simply having fun, and Lomax hated it, but on the job he made it work to his advantage. Dumo would act like an imbecile and Dole might say something regrettable. Lomax would carry on as usual, though silently, as if in secret.
Dole inhaled at length on his pipe and passed it to Dumo. He said, “Rich, you’re getting a little too serious around here. You’re becoming more and more like McFee every day. I mean this tripod bullshit.”
“Got any other ideas?” Lomax asked.
“Yeah,” Dole said, “I got this idea that instead of raising the vault you’ll end up driving the legs of the tripod into the ground.”
“That hoist will lift a couple tons,” Lomax said.
“But the two-by-eights won’t,” Dumo said.
“Those boards will hold up a house,” Lomax said.
“But a tripod’s never been tried before,” Dumo said. “Long as I been here, nobody’s ever thought up anything like that.”
“If you can waste time doing projects,” Lomax said to Dumo, “there’s no reason I can’t try to save time by thinking them up.”
“Yeah, but you have to look like you’re doing something,” Dole said. “Instead you’re just standing around acting pompous. Like McFee.”
Lomax drew on the pipe Dumo handed him. The pleasant morning veil of wetness lifted; what was once moist and limp was now dry and brittle. He had wanted to patch up things but everything was going wrong. He felt renewed contempt for Dole with his cuts and Dumo with his petty wisdom, “What’s wrong with McFee?” Lomax asked.
“He’s an all right guy,” Dumo said.
“No, he’s not,” Dole said. “Since he became supervisor he gets paid more than we do and he does less. He works on his own car all the time but lets all the equipment around here go to hell.”
“The dump truck works fine,” Dumo said.
“But you do the same thing,” Lomax said to Dole. “You go your own way and never do what has to be done.”
“Yeah, but I do something,” Dole said. “McFee doesn’t know anything and he doesn’t do anything. So he ends up letting you design stupid tripods.”
“It wasn’t all my idea,” Lomax said.
“Don’t gimme that,” Dole said to Lomax.
“It’s not McFee or me or anybody,” Lomax said. “It’s this place. The only reason McFee is supervisor is because nobody else wants to be.”
“But he’s still the supervisor,” Dole said. “He’s the one to get pissed at.”
“This looks pretty stupid,” Dumo said. “Two trucks and a tractor parked in the same spot. Three guys sittin’ in a ditch doing nothing.”
The pipe came around to Lomax again. He inhaled and exhaled more than he inhaled. Leaning his head against the bank of the ditch, he fixed his eyes on the horizon, where the heat shimmers soothed the throbbing in his temples and behind his eyes. The combined effect of the conversation and the pot made him care little whether he went back to work or remained sitting; the two choices seemed equally worthwhile. It distressed him that he should ever take the work seriously, as if he were the supervisor. Though McFee had the authority, he could do nothing because he did not know what to do, which made him no different from the others. At what point did this work matter? To whom? Why?
WHEN IT WAS TIME for break they drove the vehicles to the workshop. Lomax was slowest with the tractor. From a distance he watched McFee, hands on hips, probably asking Dumo and Dole what they had done about the sod so far. Dumo stood with his weight on one leg and Dole took off his bandana and wiped his face with it, his hair maintaining the imprint around the middle of his head.
When Lomax pulled up McFee told him, “An undertaker is here for a surprise visit and these guys are too squeamish so you’re elected. While you’re doing that we’ll move the vault with the tripod.”
“Wait a minute; it’s break time,” Dole said.
“You guys look like you already had your break,” McFee said. “It’s hot out here,” Dumo said. “We have to cool off.”
“Do you think we look cool?” Dole asked. “Rich is cool. He can stomach anything.”
“All in a day’s work,” Lomax said.
“Maybe you could work for him,” Dole said to Lomax. “There’s more in it for you and it’s even easier than sweating on a tractor. And you’d work where it’s air conditioned.”
“Yeah,” Lomax said, “but all that lifting. And the chemicals are bad for your health.”
Though they were still talking about him Lomax walked into the crematory room. He had made his remark and had timed it well enough; he was not too stoned. The undertaker was waiting in the crematory room.
“Hi. I brought you some business straight from intensive care. There’s no service but I said they could have him by tomorrow morning. Is that too soon?”
“No, that’ll be fine. Let’s put him right in.”
Lomax opened the heavy metal doors and raised the concrete block and the undertaker wheeled his cart parallel with the cart that was always in the crematory room and he unzipped the oblong vinyl bag. He offered Lomax a pair of plastic gloves. “I think he’s clean, but you never know,” the undertaker said.
“I never use them,” Lomax said. He put a piece of plywood on the cart, which had rollers on its surface. Lomax took the legs at the calves and the undertaker took the shoulders and they moved him from one cart to the other. Lomax wheeled the cart in front of the opening to the crematory. Sliding the plywood along the rollers of the cart, they pushed the body into the crematory. Lomax lowered the concrete block and shut the metal doors and latched them.
“Thanks,” the undertaker said. “Be seein’ ya.”
Lomax turned on the lower burners and waited until they warmed up then switched on the gas jets. He checked through a small porthole to be sure there was no smoke. The first flames, which completely obstructed his view through the window, died down, and the blackened form expanded, the chest bloating, then separating lengthwise, the viscera emerging, sizzling and magnificently rising, culminating in a mound of ash, and suddenly falling.
There would be no smoke for now; Lomax was glad for that. He did not want anybody for miles around to know that a cremation was going on. A man, having lost his life, was now losing his familiar form. This event had an importance for Lomax which he could not describe. He could only compare cremation to burial, in which it was important that the body decompose in the solitude of its own grave. It was not important to the body, but to those who buried the body—and to everyone who believed in burying the dead, on whose behalf Lomax believed he acted. Cremation was one of the few things this place was properly equipped to do, and Lomax was determined to do it well.
LOMAX PUT THE CART back where it belonged and swept the floor and emptied the waste can into the large bin outside.
He saw Dumo waiting in position with the pickup truck, ready to back up under the vault which McFee had secured with heavy cables connected to the hook on the hoist at the top of the tripod. Dole waited to steady the vault. McFee heaved on the chain from the hoist. The vault lifted a foot off the ground. Dole steadying it. McFee heaved a few more times and the vault continued to rise until one of the beams of the tripod snapped and the vault fell to one side and broke into several pieces on the ground, Dole running back to get out of the way and McFee standing among the pieces with his hands at his sides and still holding the length of chain.
Dumo hopped out of the truck and said, “What happened? What are we gonna do now?”
“We have plenty of vaults out back but no way to move them,” McFee said.
Lomax came up and asked, “Where’s that goddamn acetylene torch?”
“Hanging on the hook by the workbench,” Dump said, “but there’s no flints and hardly any fuel left in the tank.”
“Fuck the flints,” Lomax said.
Lomax went into the workshop and took the torch off the hook and put on a pair of plastic goggles. If he could open the cabinet where the tools were kept, maybe they could use the tools to get the tractor running before the funeral. But no one knew how to repair the tractor. He imagined himself and McFee crawling under it, one with the owner’s manual, the other with the tools, both hoping for the best. No matter whose fault it was, or if no one was at fault, not to be able to have a burial at a cemetery would be embarrassing to everyone.
He opened the valve on the torch and produced a match. He knew that what he was about to do was not a good idea, but in his anger he lacked the patience to find anything more suitable than what he had at the moment. And he had helped build the tripod, which turned out to be a far worse idea than lighting a torch with a paper match could ever be. Everybody else had stupid projects to work on and it pained Lomax to know that his projects were not only stupid but dangerous. If they ever got through the afternoon, maybe they could start doing things right when it mattered. When he put the lit match to the gas he felt the rush of the flame against his knuckles. He went to work on the tool cabinet.
