by Crash Barry

Walls come tumblin’

I told the fellas we needed to tarp-in the building because it always snows in Eastport during the winter. But they didn’t listen to me, because I was third-in-command on a three-man crew. That meant I was assigned the worst tasks, like working in the basement while they pounded on the floor above, unleashing showers of spiders that bit my scalp, neck and arms, leaving wounds that hurt and filled with pus.

The south wall had collapsed in October. Like most of downtown Eastport, the brick building was crumbling due to a century of neglect, salt air and despair. Eastport, the birthplace and graveyard of the American sardine industry, was falling apart. For me, that meant work. I’m a demolition man. Always have been. No interest in construction. Let me rip stuff down, clean it up and let someone else rebuild.

I was hired in mid-November by Dale, who claimed to be a carpenter. That was an exaggeration. He was a roofer, at best, and a homophobic, racist, sexist knucklehead. A 55-year-old white dude from away, who, despite natty dreadlocks hanging past his ass, was vehemently anti-drug, and especially anti-marijuana. His vices: cheap cigarillos, blackberry brandy and bad coffee by the gallon.

Dale’s sidekick, Sammy, a wisecracking Bostonian, was one of the sweetest people I’d ever met. A ’60s blue-collar-hippie-turned-dad, he lovingly raised his daughter plus a couple of his brother’s kids. He hid his kindness beneath a layer of jokes and vulgarity, but time and time again I witnessed evidence of his compassion. How could he put up with Dale? “He’s not so bad,” Sammy insisted. He’d known bigger idiots.

The building’s two owners made my colleagues look like engineers and architects. He was a nebbish, chubby gnome and she was a plump nag. Neither had a clue how to rebuild a building. Luckily, for them, the insurance company hadn’t noticed the brick bulge during an inspection earlier that fall. So they were due a big settlement when the wall collapsed, but the check hadn’t been issued by the time winter arrived.

In order to save money, the Gnome decided to replace the brick with lumber. Our first task was to shore up the roof and reframe the exterior walls with 2×8’s. And the Gnome’s 19-year-old man-boy of a son was gonna help.

Jimmy was short like dad, pudgy like mom, and creepy. Jimmy lived in a fantasy world. He hung out with prepubescent boys, teaching the young lads the ins and outs of Dungeons & Dragons.

While we labored, he stood, broom in hand, unmoving, retelling movie plots, claiming they were incidents from his life story.

Two weeks before Christmas, the first real storm hit. A combination of heavy wind and wet snow meant the interior of the building was coated in a foot of the sticky white stuff. I spent an entire day shoveling. The snow near the missing wall was easy to fling into the alley. But the snow farther inside, upstairs and down, needed to be shoveled into a wheelbarrow, then dumped outside. Every horizontal surface was covered. Piles of building materials needed sweeping and re-stacking in order to remove all vestiges of snow. Not a fun time.

And yet we still didn’t tarp the building. The fellas insisted we’d have it sheathed in no time. Rigging tarps in such a windy environment was a real task, they complained. So we continued to plod along, open to the elements.

Then the Gnome stopped paying us. Wasn’t his fault, he insisted. Still waiting for the insurance check, he was paying us out of pocket and had run out of cash. Dale agreed to keep us working, believing that the alleged check would soon arrive.

Christmas Eve morn, the Gnome showed up and told us he’d dropped off money with Dale’s wife. At lunch, we got the envelopes. At this point, he owed me almost a grand and my wife and I were completely broke. My check was for 50 bucks. Stunned, I wanted to throttle the Gnome.

Dale called him and said we couldn’t work any more until we got paid in full. The Gnome promised we’d get cash the minute the check arrived. Another week passed — a week of unpaid vacation — and still no money.

Then came another storm. I made 50 bucks shoveling around the neighborhood, then landed a new demolition gig for a struggling art museum housed in another crumbling brick edifice. But I needed my tools, which were still at the other job site.

I trudged through the snow-covered sidewalks, hoping to reclaim my tools without incident. But when I arrived, the Gnome, the Nag and Jimmy were all fired up. The inside of the building was again filled with snow. More than last time, it seemed. And wetter. Heavier. The Gnome was pissed, blaming me for the building not being tarped-in.

My tools were on a huge work table upstairs, covered in snow. While I searched, the Nag started laying into me, saying the snow was my fault.

“Fuck you,” I said to the Nag. “And fuck you too,” I said, pointing at the Gnome, who was about to get indignant.

“Jimmy,” his mom screamed, “Call the police!”

The police? By this point, I’d loaded assorted hammers and mauls into my backpack. Ready to go, I grabbed my three-foot crowbar and headed for the stairs.

“Mom!” Jimmy yelped, standing in my way, like he was gonna stop me from leaving. “The phone’s not hooked up!”

“Get out of my way,” I growled, “you friggin’ child molester.”

His face turned furious and he grabbed the crowbar from my grip.

Luckily, he was wimp and I was able to snatch the tool back as he raised it, before he could whack me.

I gave him a shove and made my way outside. The Nag followed, screaming and yelling for the cops. But I escaped without further incident.

•••

I felt bad afterward for calling Jimmy a child molester. My beef was with his folks, not him. Wasn’t his fault he was the spawn of his parents. A year later, we actually became pals. Slowly, over time, other details about his home life came out. Like how they were worried sick about Jimmy’s brother serving in Iraq. And their bizarre sleeping habits. They routinely switched bedrooms in their gigantic old house. He described how one time he woke up in the middle of the night, in bed with both parents.

Eventually, Dale and Sammy finished the job. The Gnome and Nag sold the building, for an amazing $275,000. Two months later, it sold for 300 grand. They were leaving town, but not before Jimmy was arrested for shoplifting a candy bar from the Irving at six in the morning. According to the newspaper account, he claimed to have been sleepwalking.

Crash Barry reads from his novel, Sex, Drugs and Blueberries, at Books Etc. in
Falmouth on Jan. 28 at 7 p.m.