this<\/em> job make you want to?\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cNo, man, it was nightmare.\u00a0 It\u2019s a bad way to make a living.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, but how much coin were you making?\u201d\u00a0 We\u2019ve been through this before, too, but he can\u2019t get over it.\u00a0 I can\u2019t really get over it, either.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOne hundred and fifty G\u2019s, or some shit, right?\u201d\u00a0 He smiles and shakes his head as he says it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, at the end.\u00a0 That only lasted about six months, though.\u201d\u00a0 I say this almost as an apology, an attempt to downplay the money somehow.<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus Christ, Pat, that is one hell of a lot of money.\u201d\u00a0 He laughs, and I can\u2019t help laughing with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I know.\u00a0 Trust me, it was more than I was worth.\u00a0 It\u2019s more than anyone\u2019s worth, really.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJeezus.\u201d\u00a0 Louie shakes his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was hell, Louie. I couldn\u2019t stand it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, I believe it.\u00a0 Trust me, man, I\u2019ve never had a job I didn\u2019t hate.\u201d<\/p>\n
I shrug, nod. Good point.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to convince someone who\u2019s literally breaking his back in the mud and rain just how bad it was making $150,000 a year in a warm, dry office.\u00a0 It\u2019s getting harder to convince myself now that I\u2019m slogging in it for a tax-free twelve bucks an hour.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t exactly walk away, but I ask myself if I couldn\u2019t have tried a little harder, held on a little longer.<\/p>\n
April first \u2013 a nice touch \u2013 of the year before last, my boss, the managing partner, came in and gave me an almost teary speech about how things weren\u2019t working out and that it wasn\u2019t all my fault and it wasn\u2019t all theirs, that he really wanted to work with me to find a place that would be a good fit, where I would thrive.\u00a0 He said that it wasn\u2019t goodbye, or the end of our relationship, but the start of a new process.\u00a0 It was all very heartfelt and touching \u2013 and, in a way, I was touched \u2013 and that was the last time I ever spoke to him.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t walk out and never look back; I hung around the office for weeks wringing out every last second of paid employment.\u00a0 He never came back to my side of the building.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t really a shock.\u00a0 People had been disappearing from the office for months; it was like a disease stalking the halls.\u00a0 A colleague got the same speech about twenty minutes after I did.\u00a0 We went out and got bombed that afternoon after work.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t tell my girlfriend right away.\u00a0 First, it was because I was bombed, then, much later that night, she had to go to the emergency room because of what turned out to be a minor, but painful, kidney infection.\u00a0 I drove her to the hospital and sat beside her bed while we waited for tests to come back.\u00a0 We watched some funny stuff that I don\u2019t remember on a rebroadcast of Conan on the lousy hospital TV, and I played with medical gadgets in the room.\u00a0 Once we knew it wasn\u2019t serious, it was sort of fun; it felt sort of dramatic to be there, but not dangerous.\u00a0 She said she was sorry to keep me up so late, and that I should go home and get some sleep, because I had to work in the morning.\u00a0 She would take a cab home.\u00a0 I told her not to worry about it, I had worked plenty of days with almost no sleep and maybe I would just go in late.\u00a0 What were they going to do, fire me?\u00a0 She agreed, they wouldn\u2019t fire me for having to take her to the hospital in the middle of the night.\u00a0 They might be complete jackasses, but they liked to put on a good face, and that would not be a good face.<\/p>\n
Sitting there in the hospital, I felt freer than I had in a long time, like my life was mine again.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell her.\u00a0 I mean I couldn\u2019t tell her I lost my job as she was lying in the hospital, could I?<\/p>\n
The next morning I didn\u2019t go in late.\u00a0 I wanted to sleep in \u2013 what were they going to do, fire me again? \u2013 but I remembered there was a meeting.\u00a0 From the tone of the e-mail memo, it sounded as if something big was going down.\u00a0 I\u2019d read the message just after I\u2019d been fired, and wondered if I was what was going down.\u00a0 I\u2019d missed meetings before, and it didn\u2019t matter now, but I wanted to show up at this one, partly to show them I could, but mostly I was curious.<\/p>\n
I drove to the office after a couple hours of sleep.\u00a0 Driving violated my first new rule \u2013 take the bus to save money on parking \u2013 but I didn\u2019t have time.\u00a0 So, the parking lot guy, Abbibi, got a final twelve bucks out of me, but that\u2019s O.K., I liked him, and all the times he gave me the \u201cearly bird special\u201d when I came in late I hope he was pocketing the cash.<\/p>\n
The meeting ended up being an ass-chewing of the senior associates by the managing partner.\u00a0 Then he left, and the senior associates turned on the juniors.\u00a0 Something about needing to show commitment to the firm by canceling vacations at the last minute.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t really understand.\u00a0 Business was so slow we were all surfing the net pretty much full time, but I decided not to ask.<\/p>\n
One of the senior associates came to my office after the meeting and told me that I showed \u201ca lot of class\u201d by being there.\u00a0 Apparently he knew I\u2019d been sacked the day before.\u00a0 He told me it said a lot about my character, and that I was going to be fine.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t tell him that I had shown up more or less out of curiosity.\u00a0 He said that he wanted to sit down with me and have a long discussion about my future soon, but that he had a lot on his plate that day.\u00a0 I told him not to worry about it, I was pretty tired, had a rough night.\u00a0 He shot me a look and said that he understood.\u00a0 Of course, he didn\u2019t understand; it wasn\u2019t about losing my job \u2013 I was just short of ecstatic about losing my job.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d had to take my girlfriend to the hospital.\u00a0 His look adjusted from plain-serious to concerned-serious.\u00a0 Was she O.K.?\u00a0 I really, really wanted to tell him she was dying and had been for a while now \u2013 that would certainly make them feel like a bunch of assholes \u2013 but I couldn\u2019t do it.\u00a0 She was fine, I assured him, just a minor kidney thing.\u00a0 I went from unleashing a tide of sympathy and guilt, to him thinking I was having a lot of sex.\u00a0 He promised that we would talk soon, that he considered me part of his family and that he would not forget me.\u00a0 I never saw him again, either.<\/p>\n
After that, I went down to the parking garage and took a nap in my car.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how much class that showed, but it felt good.\u00a0 When I got back upstairs there were two voicemails and three e-mails from a particularly annoying associate.\u00a0 I had been working for her over the past month on a merger that had once kept me awake and in the office for three straight days and nights.\u00a0 She always wanted four different things done at once, and they all had to be done before lunch or the sun would explode.\u00a0 Her messages usually ended with a remark about how if I didn\u2019t think I could handle it, to let her know, and that she would find someone who could.\u00a0 She sounded frantic in the messages, but that was normal.<\/p>\n
I e-mailed her back saying that I couldn\u2019t help her because I was swamped with some other urgent stuff that had just come up, and that she better find someone else who could handle it, because I couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 Then I headed down the street to a caf\u00e9, picking up a newspaper on the way.\u00a0 It was a beautiful spring day, and I sat outside among a bunch of other paper-reading, coffee-sipping, nothing-to-do-at-ten-thirty-in-the-morning types.\u00a0 The sun felt good on my face and my life seemed full of possibility again.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t a corporate lawyer anymore \u2013 I could do anything.<\/p>\n
I remember it like it\u2019s the last real thing that happened in my life.\u00a0 Of course that\u2019s not true. Plenty has happened. My dad had emergency quintuple bypass surgery; I became an uncle; and my girlfriend became my wife.\u00a0 Still, I feel like I\u2019m sort of pretending, like time passing doesn\u2019t count because I\u2019m standing still.\u00a0 Things will start up again when I get my life figured out.\u00a0 It occurs to me periodically, sneaks up when I\u2019m standing on the top rung of a ladder or cutting something over my knee with the circular saw the way I\u2019m not supposed to: this is my life, and it\u2019s real, and there probably isn\u2019t as much of it as I think.<\/p>\n
The days since that morning I walked out of my office and into the spring sunshine turned into weeks, then months and a year. As the time slipped away, so did the feeling of possibility.\u00a0 Gradually, it was replaced with an impossible busyness \u2013 tasks unrecognized by others that I could neither fully explain nor complete \u2013 until finally I couldn\u2019t imagine how anyone had time for anything, let alone a job.\u00a0 Eventually my old friend, Foss, asked if I could do some work for him.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t that I wanted to, so much as I couldn\u2019t explain why I was too busy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just don\u2019t know why you want to do this, Pat.\u201d\u00a0 Louie\u2019s words bring me back.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know why I want to do this, either.\u00a0 I get paid, but it\u2019s not much, and I need money, but I don\u2019t need it quite yet.\u00a0 I squirreled away enough as a lawyer to live modestly for the rest of my life, as long as I die in the next three years.\u00a0 But here I am.<\/p>\n
We finally pull into the job site, a bluff overlooking the Puget Sound, and I climb stiffly down from the cab of the truck.\u00a0 It\u2019s cold and I reach my arms up over my head in an attempt to stretch without letting the chill seep under my jacket.\u00a0 Inside the house we have now mostly built, Foss is already scratching his head about something.\u00a0 He bit off a big chunk on this job and has somehow held it together despite a less than optimal crew, cost constraints, and all the screw-ups that come on a big construction project.\u00a0 At least it actually looks like a house now \u2013 a house of plywood and two-by-sixes, the kind eleven year old boys would be happy to live in if they could.\u00a0 Two months ago, it was a hole in the ground.\u00a0 I\u2019m amazed at how much goes into building a house, now that I\u2019ve been mostly through it.<\/p>\n
Foss greets us with a quick look up from the plans and, \u201cYou\u2019re late. You\u2019re fired, everybody\u2019s fired.\u00a0 I need a real crew instead of you losers!\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019s not really mad, but he is a bit annoyed.\u00a0 This is typical and we shrug it off.\u00a0 Sometimes I have to remind myself that, whatever I\u2019m doing here, Foss is trying to make a living and provide for his family.\u00a0 It\u2019s serious work for him even if we can joke around a lot, and I respect him for doing it and running his own business.\u00a0 He\u2019s not getting rich. I think he\u2019s barely getting by, but he is getting by, and that\u2019s admirable.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat should I do, boss?\u201d\u00a0 I enjoy calling my old friend \u201cboss.\u201d\u00a0 In fact we all do it now \u2013 an homage to Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke<\/em>.<\/p>\n\u201cSet up.\u201d\u00a0 He goes back to staring down at the plans.<\/p>\n
The fact that the compressor isn\u2019t humming or the air hoses attached, and the power cords aren\u2019t run means that Larry, the other member of our crew, hasn\u2019t been here long either.\u00a0 All that is up and running is the beat radio blaring from the top of the lumber stack outside.\u00a0 This is the first piece of equipment to be plugged in each morning.\u00a0 The person who plugs it in gets to set the station.\u00a0 Larry has it on some classic butt-rock station, which, to be honest, isn\u2019t that different from the classic alterna-rock station anymore.\u00a0 The butt-rockers just take a few more years to adopt things.<\/p>\n
Larry is a guy from Foss\u2019s soccer team.\u00a0 He lives north of the city, in Lynwood with his sister in their mother\u2019s old house.\u00a0 From what I gather, she died a few years ago.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know exactly what Larry was doing before this, but it doesn\u2019t sound like he\u2019s been doing much for years, though he is a nationally ranked darts player.\u00a0 We don\u2019t really talk too much about anything outside of work.\u00a0 I\u2019m not crazy about the guy, and I don\u2019t think he likes me much either.<\/p>\n
From the moment he started on this job, he\u2019s worked to climb up what hierarchy there is to a position somewhere above me.\u00a0 I was really the only person he could rise above, and he\u2019s succeeded, so now he\u2019s my boss too, which I guess is fair.\u00a0 He works hard (when he\u2019s not in jail), and he seems to know a bit more about this stuff than I do, but I don\u2019t really need a supervisor when I\u2019m moving lumber or stapling tar paper.\u00a0 Questions like, \u201cLarry, do you have anymore quarter inch staples?\u201d are answered with, \u201cYou should always have more staples in your bags, Pat.\u201d\u00a0 The problem is I know he\u2019s not trying to be a wise ass \u2013 just show that he knows more than me.\u00a0 No shit, Larry.<\/p>\n
I run the power cords to the temporary service box and lug the air hoses over to the compressor in a semi-somnambulistic state.\u00a0 There is really no need to wake up before I absolutely have to, and even walking around like a zombie seems to go just a little way in satisfying my desire to be asleep.<\/p>\n
The set-up complete, I head back inside for further instructions.\u00a0 Whatever was bothering Foss ten minutes ago has passed, and he looks at me and yells, \u201cGo, go, go, Pat!\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s a job site joke from a month ago when we rented a sixty pound jackhammer to chip out a forgotten door in the foundation wall.\u00a0 It was a dirty, loud, muscle-cramping job that no one wanted to do, so it fell to me.\u00a0 I sort of enjoyed it.<\/p>\n
\u201cO.K., boss, what do you want me to do?\u201d I ask, presenting myself at the table made of two sawhorses and a sheet of quarter inch plywood piled high with plans, tools, chalk boxes, water bottles and coffee cups.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s see . . . you can work in here with Larry putting in blocking, the facia boards need to be put up on the garage, or, if you want, I can come up with some framing for you guys to do in the loft.\u201d\u00a0 These aren\u2019t bad jobs; they involve some hammering, which is fun, and also measuring and cutting, which can be entertaining, but I just don\u2019t feel like it this morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pretty beat, boss, I\u2019d kind of rather just dig.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looks at me for a second and then says, \u201cO.K.\u00a0 Some days I wish I could just dig.\u201d\u00a0 He looks away over his shoulder and yells, \u201cLarry, you do the blocking in here, Pat\u2019s going to dig.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSweet!\u201d Larry whoops like he\u2019s won some kind of award.<\/p>\n
\u201cO.K., just continue the ditch to where the gas comes into the house, and then dig out the holes where the deck pilings are going.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow deep?\u201d I ask.\u00a0 He hates it when I ask a lot of questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil you hit hard pan.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s hard pan?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard.\u00a0 You\u2019ll know when you hit it.\u201d\u00a0 He adds the last part before I can ask.<\/p>\n
I decide not to antagonize him and leave it at that, walking outside and choosing a shovel.\u00a0 The ditch is about twenty-five feet long and three feet deep.\u00a0 It is pretty tough digging, but I nearly finished it yesterday.\u00a0 The nice thing about digging is that you can think about whatever you want while you are doing it, because you don\u2019t have to think much about digging.\u00a0 I work on finishing off the last few feet of the ditch.\u00a0 I am actually connecting two ditches, because I decided to start at each end and meet in the middle like the transcontinental railroad.\u00a0 It made yesterday a little more fun.<\/p>\n
I think about mobster movies where they drive out into the country, pull spades from the trunks of Cadillacs and dig a grave to dump a body.\u00a0 The more I dig the more preposterous it seems.\u00a0 Digging is hard work.\u00a0 It would take a couple of fat guys all night to dig a decent hole with those little shovels, and they wouldn\u2019t be able to go out for breakfast afterwards, because their wiseguy suits would be filthy.\u00a0 I think about old time miners and the guys who built the trail I hiked down the Grand Canyon last year with my dad.\u00a0 That must have been some work.<\/p>\n
Soon, the ditch complete and, the Pacific and Atlantic railroads meeting with fanfare, I move on to the holes for the deck pilings.\u00a0 This is easy digging, because the earth was disturbed and then back-filled after the house’s foundation was poured.\u00a0 This, I hypothesize, is why we have to go down to hardpan.\u00a0 It is exactly the type of question I would normally go annoy Foss with, but I don\u2019t feel like it right now, so I just dig.<\/p>\n
I think about what I\u2019m doing with my life. It seems a suitable topic while digging a hole.\u00a0 I\u2019ve applied for some fairly uninteresting-sounding jobs, but none have come through.\u00a0 Disappointment at not getting them is coupled with \u2013 and ever so slightly overcome by \u2013 relief, all in the same deflating thought.\u00a0 My wife is understandably unimpressed.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t tell me, but I can tell.\u00a0 Most people in her position would have given up on me by now, and I wouldn\u2019t blame her really.<\/p>\n
The hole was started by a backhoe at the time the back-filling was done.\u00a0 Why it wasn\u2019t completed by the backhoe, I have no idea, and I\u2019ll have to get to the bottom of that at lunchtime.\u00a0 Presently, it is about two and a half feet deep and four or five feet square.\u00a0 I put my foot on the back edge of the shovel and push the blade into the soft earth.\u00a0 It gives way easily without my having to put much weight on it.\u00a0 Taking my foot off, I turn up the blade and lift a heaping pile of dirt up out of the hole.\u00a0 Now this is the kind of digging the wiseguys could handle.\u00a0 I think about being a gravedigger \u2013 steady work, not too stressful, clean, calm environment.\u00a0 In little time I am down another foot and a half.\u00a0 Off the bluff, an eagle holds what seems like a stationary position high above the gray water of the sound, riding the wind like a river eddy.\u00a0 He must be fishing.\u00a0 I would like to see one actually take a fish, but so far no luck.\u00a0 The radio is droning from the lumber pile about fifteen feet away.\u00a0 As a tribute to Kurt Cobain on the tenth anniversary of his solving all his problems with a shotgun, they are playing a lot of Nirvana today, though it\u2019s not like they don\u2019t everyday, and, despite what everyone says, I\u2019m not sure how well it holds up.<\/p>\n
I lose track of time and thoughts.\u00a0 The digging continues as if someone else is doing it, and I\u2019m just watching dreamily \u2013 it\u2019s kind of nice.\u00a0 Another thing about digging is that it can be the hardest single day of work you ever put in in your life, but when you get home you\u2019re still an unemployed loser.\u00a0 I mean, are you going to brag to your friends, parents or wife about a hole you dug?\u00a0 I\u2019ve tried, no one cares.\u00a0 I return to my body after a while and check my progress.\u00a0 It\u2019s very good.<\/p>\n
As I go deeper, it is getting harder to maneuver the shovel to throw the dirt out.\u00a0 The soil is still soft, and I keep going.\u00a0 I can no longer see the radio, but I can hear it, and I keep throwing dirt up over my shoulder in that direction.\u00a0 Judging by my own height, the hole is now six feet, two inches deep and my shovel is still cutting through the bottom like butter.\u00a0 I have to continually scrape out the sides in order to give myself room to work.\u00a0 Dirt streams back into the hole as Larry walks by the rim in search of something.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving fun yet, Pat?\u201d he calls.\u00a0 \u201cYou diggin\u2019 to China?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShut up, Larry, you tool,” I say knowing he can\u2019t hear me.\u00a0 Who the hell still says that?\u00a0 Channeling my irritation into the digging, my head is soon a good couple of feet below ground level.\u00a0 Now I really have to heave the dirt up to get it out of the hole.\u00a0 Some of it inevitably rolls back in, but I\u2019m still gaining on it.<\/p>\n
Another thirty minutes of solid digging just to see how hard I can go, and I can no longer really throw the dirt out.\u00a0 I can\u2019t even reach the surface.\u00a0 Everything above sounds muffled, and when I look up I see the sky framed in the hole as if from the bottom of a well.\u00a0 The walls tower up above me as I sit down in the bottom on the cool, damp earth and rest.\u00a0 It must be nine feet deep by now.\u00a0 I\u2019m not even sure I can get out.<\/p>\n
The compressor motor stops as the nail guns inside the house fall silent.\u00a0 I can hear the radio softly; the ads repeat even more often than the songs.\u00a0 This is the depression ad for \u201cWellbutrin,\u201d or \u201cPaxol,\u201d or something:<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you having trouble sleeping?\u00a0 Are you sleeping too much?\u00a0 Are you not eating?\u00a0 Are you eating too much?\u201d\u00a0 The symptoms cast a fairly wide net.<\/p>\n
I remember an article in the New York Times<\/em> last year about a construction worker in Ohio who was buried when the trench he was working in collapsed.\u00a0 The company\u2019s owner expressed profound grief, but he was the third guy lost that way in five years, and they continued to ignore the OSHA regulations about trench boxes and safety equipment.\u00a0 With the radio going and everyone inside, it wouldn\u2019t matter how loud I yelled, they wouldn\u2019t realize I was gone until lunchtime if this thing caved in.\u00a0 I decide to sit there a little longer.<\/p>\nFinally, using the shovel to stand on and get me started, I begin climbing out, putting my feet on one wall and my back on the other like I was going up a chimney.<\/p>\n
The radio continues:\u00a0 \u201cDoes it seem like you are living your life in black and white?\u201d<\/p>\n
The dirt is soft and it sloughs off the sides sliding down into the bottom as I climb.\u00a0 The process is surprisingly difficult. At the surface, the world seems new \u2013 sounds louder, the gray light brighter.\u00a0 I look out over the lead-colored water of the sound to the Olympic Mountains on the horizon for a color check. \u00a0The stark white snow band is all that differentiates the gray of the sky from the water.\u00a0 The eagle continues to hang in the foreground.<\/p>\n
Looking down into the pit I\u2019ve dug, I feel strangely good.\u00a0 There is no real reason for it.\u00a0 Nothing has changed. I\u2019m still not making any money. I\u2019m wasting thousands and thousands of dollars worth of education and my life.\u00a0 My mom can\u2019t tell the friends she runs into at the grocery store about the hole I dug.\u00a0 But it doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 Climbing out of that hole, I feel more satisfied than I ever did catching a cab home from the firm at three in the morning after the final turn of a document.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think about doing what I love, or following my dreams, or even money.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t about money \u2013 well, it\u2019s sort of about money.\u00a0 I think about when I\u2019ll be able to stop and get a beer.<\/p>\n
Foss comes up behind me and peers into the hole.\u00a0 I have to admit, it\u2019s pretty impressive.\u00a0 \u201cJesus Christ, Pat, how deep are you going to go?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil I hit hardpan.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou still haven\u2019t hit it?\u201d<\/p>\n
I shake my head.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, forget it, we can\u2019t go any deeper than that.\u00a0 We\u2019ll just make the footings wider.\u00a0 How the hell deep is that, how did you get out?\u201d\u00a0 These are questions he doesn\u2019t really want answers to.<\/p>\n
Louie calls from where he\u2019s sitting on the roof, \u201cDon\u2019t fuck with Pat!\u00a0 Ain\u2019t no president of Georgia \u2013 he\u2019s a new kind of ditchdigger.\u201d<\/p>\n
I smile.\u00a0 I\u2019m starving, it\u2019ll be lunch soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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