Foreman

 
There are four men in this crew. Dwayne and Jackson were around last summer. Scottie started a few weeks ago. Tom is the foreman. Tom has been calling Scottie, “Jimmy” since day one. After Jimmy Connors, the old tennis player. Scottie has narrow eyes, a brown bowl of hair and never quits moving. He’s never played tennis. He’s in a band that’s fighting over money from gigs that haven’t paid. “If only rent could be paid in excuses,” Scottie says on his first day. “If only.”
 
Tom is a steel-toed block of a man. He whistles sharply to get the crew’s attention from the other side of the site. He wears reflector shades with a safety strap. His shoulders are a thick hedge of boxwoods. His arms make shovels look like mixing spoons. If he says Jimmy, then Jimmy it is.
 

*

 
The plans are spread across the hood. The site has a steep rise up to the house from the wall along the street. A line of holly trees delivered that morning are to be planted up and down the rise. A drainage trench across the slope needs to be finished before the afternoon thunderstorms. There are always afternoon thunderstorms. Jackson can feel the rain coming in his knees a good three hours before. He’s not been wrong all summer.
 
Tom paws a peanut butter sandwich into his mouth. He tells the crew that the trench is not drawn on the right line. “Water always finds its own way,” Tom says, with his mouth full. “All you can do is help it get there.” Tom thinks—Tom knows—that this trench line will pool runoff up against a front wall that was long-ago built without weep holes. Make a mess with every big rain. The wall will eventually buckle. Plans are plans, though. The landscape architect will pitch a fit if even an inch of his plans are changed.
 

*

 
The landscape architect has the habit of showing up for his daily walk-through whenever the crew takes their morning break. Today is no exception. He pulls up in his new Lexus and parks a few houses down, away from their trucks. He changes out of his spit-polished dress shoes for a pair of loafers that are fine for getting dirty on site.
 
Cathie, the homeowner and a big deal newspaper publisher, will be making time for a walk-through tomorrow morning “before heading out to a conference in Europe,” the architect tells the crew. And the architect will be out at his Rehoboth Beach house for all of July. He wants all of the hollies in by the end of the day. The steps tidied up like the job is finished. Tags off the new trees. Patio swept.
 
Tom lays it out plain: there’s the back lawn to build up behind the new pool and the truck just dropped a load of soil in the back alley. “We’ll be humping wheelbarrows all afternoon,” Tom says. ”It’s going to pour well before the day finishes.”
 
“Leave the lawn for next week,” the architect tells Tom. “Get the front into shape for the walk-through.” This job opens up a whole new clientele, he reminds the crew, who apparently need reminding. Cathie knows everybody who’s anybody in this city.
 
Tom’s been in a lousy mood all week and this sort of bullshit isn’t going to help. “Hard rain’s gonna wash half that soil all the way into Rock Creek if we don’t get it out of the alley,” he says.
 
“No one cares about the dirt, Thomas,” the architect snaps. “Go buy a tarp. I want those hollies in when my client and I walk the site. Unless you want me to find another crew to finish the job.”
 

*

 
Jimmy and Dwayne will joke all afternoon about burying the architect under the load of soil. His beloved hydrangeas will blossom baby blue with the fertilizer of his acid tongue. “Is Cathie married?” Dwayne asks out of nowhere. The architect doesn’t answer. He stares up at the slope of the hill. Dwayne asks again. “Come on, Fritz. Tell me if she’s married.”
 
No one has any clue why Dwayne calls the architect Fritz. Or why he cares if Cathie is married. No one’s seen a husband around, though. Dwayne has an ex-girlfriend who says the baby might be his. They might get back together. He needs to figure that shit out.
 
“That’s not any of our business,” the architect says. He speaks without taking his eyes off the holly trees that must, must be planted at perfect 90-degree attention, even on the slope. Especially on the slope.
 

*

 
The architect walks up the hill to speak with the Mexican stone masons, who are rebuilding the front stairway up to the house. They are all work, not much talk. They listen to a small, battery-powered radio that’s covered in a dozen job’s worth of stone dust. Trowels tapping out a steady beat alongside the rattle of accordions and trumpets. They shrug their shoulders as if they don’t understand English. The architect loudly reads a translation off his phone in a terrible accent.
 
“El jefe del periodico es muy importante. Por favor limpie el sito.”
 
The stone men nod like they care and smile at each other as he walks away. Their routine is the same every day: They pull up in their trucks before six. Work through the morning without missing a beat. For lunch they lay on the incline of the hill and nap in the shade. Then they tap-tap-tap their trowels until two thirty when they pile their unused stones neatly on the edge of the patio for the next morning. The architect’s shitty Google Spanish isn’t going to change anything.
 
Cathie must be a big deal, with a big house and a big job that keeps her at work at all hours. The crew have seen Cathie only once since the job started—getting picked up by a car service in the half-light of the morning as they pulled up early on the first day. None of them could tell you which of the four blonde sisters standing together in all those photos on the hallway wall outside the guest house bathroom is her. They all look like money.
 

*

 
The architect finds the crew standing by the truck, sucking down Gatorade and donuts from the roach coach that came by just before he showed up. “Let’s mark the tree holes and trench, Thomas,” he says.
 
Tom climbs the slope with a can of marking spray,his leg muscles straining against the seam of his shorts to hold his balance on the sliding soil. The architect stands on the sidewalk below and calls out instructions. They repeat the dance steps up and down the slope. Bright white paint drips off the nozzle and over Tom’s fingers.
 
The architect looks down at the plan and up again at Tom waiting to spray. “Stand up straight, Thomas, one more step up, there we go, just right,” the architect calls out, pleased with himself for laying out yet another array of oversized hollies, promising a thick hedge to hide the winding stone steps. He has hollies planted at every site. The crew’s arms are combed with scratches from their prickly leaves.
 
Dwayne and Jackson rock a burlap-wrapped root ball onto the ball cart. They shove and pull the cart up the hill and stand the tree above the first circle, looking down at the architect as he walks away to his car. The architect sits with the car door open, clapping the dirt off of his worksite loafers and tucking them into an oversized Ziplock. He talks on his phone as he drives away.
 

*

 
Tom looks at his watch and then up at the blue sky. The metal frame of the ball cart is hot to touch from sitting in the sun. “How your knees feeling?” he asks Jackson.
 
“Three o’clock. Maybe three thirty,” Jackson says.
 
“You sure?”
 
“Motherfucker not been wrong all summer,” Dwayne says, pumping Jackson’s shoulders like a cornerman. “You the real weatherman, champ.”
 
Tom smiles for the first time all day. All week. “You three get that soil up. I’ll get the trees in.”
 
Ten trees that size on a flat surface should take two men all afternoon. Slope and old roots will make it even harder. The architect doesn’t care about the soil, why should they? Tom won’t take no for an answer. “A tarp isn’t going to do shit with this rain. Come help me when you’re done,” Tom says as he peels off his reflector shades and wipes his forehead. The tan lines run around the bags under his eyes. “What are you all waiting for? The soil isn’t gonna shovel itself.”
 

*

 
Dwayne grunts along with each scrape of his shovel into the edge of the soil pile. He calls out as Jimmy wobbles his wheelbarrow on the narrow ramp. “Hit that ramp, boy. Shove that load.”
 
The sky is getting cloudy. Cathie’s nanny pulls up in the alley, parks her hatchback behind the pile, and gets out with Cathie’s young daughter in tow. The little girl carries her backpack and a bag of art projects. The nanny is young and pretty, with long blonde hair and fair skin just like the daughter. She smiles back at Dwayne as he leans on his shovel. Jimmy and Jackson lift the ramps for them to walk up the steps.
 
“Thank you,” the nanny says, in a British accent. “It’s quite hot. May I offer you some lemonade?”
 
They’d love some. The nanny walks the daughter into the house and comes out a minute later with a tray of tall glasses each filled with perfectly squared ice cubes arranged around a gleaming crystal pitcher of lemonade. The daughter stands behind the nanny, staring up at the faces of the three men coated in masks of soil dust and dripping sweat. The daughter has bright paint all over her hands and shirt.
 
“What did you make today, sweetie?” Jimmy asks.
 
The daughter stands behind the nanny.
 
“She’s a bit shy,” the nanny says.
 
Jimmy smiles. “I wouldn’t talk to me looking like this either.”
 
“I didn’t get much from her the first time we met,” the nanny says.
 
The daughter holds out her paint-covered hands. “I painted a bear.”
 
“I’m a bear come to life,” Jimmy says as he growls and holds his dirty paws in the air.
 
The daughter giggles. The nanny flips her hair as she laughs. Dwayne reaches for a second pour.
 
Tom walks around the corner, holding a sharpshooter and wiping his forehead with a rag. “We having a party back here?” he asks. “I didn’t get the invite.”
 
The shy daughter scampers back inside. The nanny holds up the tray of glasses toward Tom, who is a good foot taller than her. His arms are black with dirt. One of his kneecaps is trickling blood. “I’m sorry if they bothered you,” Tom says, shaking his head at the offer.
 

*

 
Dwayne scrapes the last shovel of the soil pile into Jimmy’s wheelbarrow as the first heavy rain drops fall onto the alley. The back bowl of the lawn is half full. Another load of soil will come on Monday. Jackson stacks the ramps and wheelbarrows behind the garage and stands beside the pool watching the surface of the water rattle with the rain.
 
“I’d give a week’s pay for a swim,” Jackson says, staring down into the deep end. The pool bottom is a dark stone. The cool black water may as well go down the earth’s core.
 
“My arms are too tired,” Jimmy says. “I’d drown like a rock.”
 
“I’ll save you, love,” Dwayne says, in a mock British accent. They all laugh.
 
From around front, they can hear the catch of Tom’s shovel as it slices into the wet earth.
 

*

 
Tom has six hollies in their holes and hacks away into the seventh hole with an axe. The thick canopy of a neighbor’s oak catches the rain over him. His legs are covered with the splatter of mud and dried blood. His shirt hangs with sweat and dirt. He looks up to see his crew standing in the rain at the top of the unfinished patio steps. The Mexicans closed up shop an hour ago, leaving their concrete-mixing tray upside down against the railing, cement bags wrapped tightly in plastic. Stones stacked like hiking trail markers on the path up the mountain.
 
“You boys enjoying the show,” Tom says, in between swings.
 
”Rain’s coming down pretty good.” Jackson says. “Should we shut it down?”
 
Jackson’s real name is Andrew. “Like the president on the twenty,” Tom told him when they first met. Jackson’s taking night classes at NOVA and would love to get home early to finish the assigned reading for once.
 
Tom doesn’t say anything. A root snaps with the swing of his axe.
 
Jackson and Dwayne walk back to grab their shovels. Jimmy grabs the ball cart. There are four hollies to go.
 

*

 
The rain has washed away most of the drainage trench markings. Jackson paces out the line. Tom  grabs the can and leans over to spray. The back of Tom’s shirt is covered in a line of splatter from swinging the axe in and out of the muddy hole.
 
“Annie is gonna have to hose you down before she lets you in the house,” Jackson says.
 
Tom stands up and shakes the can of spray paint. It’s nearly empty.
 
“Annie moved out last week.”
 
“Well, shit.”
 
Jackson is pretty sure Tom and Annie’s wedding was supposed to be this fall, at her parents’ farm down in Blacksburg where they all grew up and she went to Tech. He met Annie once, when they were on a site near her office in Silver Spring and she came by at lunch.
 
“She met some guy at a conference up in New York City,” Tom says.
 
Tom stands straight and regards the curve of the hill. Water is already pooling at the wall below. Jimmy and Dwayne are banging the mud off of their shovels against loose rocks.
 
“I guess it’s better to know now, right?” Jackson says. “Like before a wedding and all.”
 
Tom finishes the white line and tosses Jackson the empty can of marking paint. “Go get us two picks from the truck,” he says. “Shovels aren’t doing shit in this clay.”
 

*

 
They all jump in to shove the ball cart with one last holly up the hill—cart wheels spinning, boots slipping on the wet leaves and shredded grass and mud, sheets of rain laying down onto the slope, water pouring into the hole. In the distance, the dark sky rumbles with more. Jackson gets down on his knees to pull the burlap off the root ball after it slides into the hole. Dwayne sits on the slope with his legs around the trunk, pulling it upright. Jimmy shoves the big stones underneath to keep the tree from tipping. Tom stomps the backfill into place.
 
They stand above the row of planted hollies, boots braced into the slope, catching their breath. The rain washing the sweat and dirt and broken holly leaves down their arms and legs.
 

*

 
Dwayne, Jackson and Jimmy gather all the shovels and picks. They walk slowly up the wet, unfinished steps, handles heavy across their shoulders. They’ll hose off the blades stuck with mud out back by the garage.The nanny and the daughter look out from the warm and dry light of a second-floor window. Jimmy gives the daughter another bear growl. The little girl waves. The nanny pulls her away from the window and shuts off the light.
 
From the front patio, the three men look back down the slope, watching Tom wrap the plastic drainage pipe tightly in a black landscape fabric. Tom lays the wrapped pipe carefully into the line of carved out earth. He stands with his legs straddling the trench, pouring out heavy bags of small rock pebbles around the black piping with one hand as if they are sugar packets into coffee. The light colored rock and black fabric stitch a scar across the muddy slope.
 
Jimmy turns and knocks into the pile of stones that the Mexicans have left stacked neatly on the edge of the patio. Their daily monument to the work that will be waiting for them in the morning. Jimmy lays his shovels down and drops to his knees. Dwayne and Jackson lean theirs against the wall and bend down to help. The rain shrouds their hunched shoulders, water running down their arms and dripping off their faces as they carefully stack the stone pile back together.