by Crash Barry

Demolition Man

The ganja saved us.

I was shoveling rubble when the Mad Scientist and Giant, who were jackhammering atop the bank vault’s roof, discovered the first signs of the layer of steel embedded deep within the concrete ceiling. The steel looked like used railroad track: three dozen 12-foot I-beams. The men who built this bank vault 75 years earlier hadn’t been fooling around. We’d been hammering away at the vault’s 18-inch concrete roof and walls for a couple of weeks. To discover the hidden layer of steel was a real bummer, to put it mildly.

The Mad Scientist wanted to quit. He was exhausted and hurting. We all were. That’s what happens when you spend your days muckling a 70-pound jackhammer sideways in tight spaces. Crouched, we pounded at bizarre angles, pulverizing the concrete vault into golf-ball-sized chunks. All because my boss at the art museum, a milquetoast hunchback under doctor’s orders not to lift over 25 pounds, had decided the two-story vault took up too much room in the crumbling brick bank in Eastport owned by his family’s foundation. He wanted the space for an elevator shaft.

I’d been employed part-time at the art museum for almost two years. The steady work was the only benefit. I was paid, after taxes, $9.50 an hour for a variety of tasks — from cleaning, to publicity, to hanging shows, to managing special projects, including the vault demolition. I couldn’t let the fellas quit, because it was my job to make the vault disappear.

Confounded by the discovery of steel and eager to lift my comrades’ spirits, I whipped out a huge joint of Washington County green bud that I had grown with the librarian’s boyfriend out on his land in Perry. Standing among the piles of dusty rubble, we smoked and examined the situation. The project had run into roadblocks many times already, including the need to remove 10 tons of steel plate and a five-ton vault door before we could start jackhammering. We hadn’t encountered any problem that could withstand our collective brute force and determination.

But the Mad Scientist and Giant were tired. So were the two brothers and Spidey, my other rag-tag team of demolitionists. Everyone agreed it was the worst job ever and 12 bucks an hour, freelance, wasn’t enough to cover the cost of the aches, pains and sprains. They wanted more cash, but my boss said money was tight and that they were lucky to have the gig. So that’s what I told my fellas whenever they asked for more dough.

“That dude couldn’t handle this friggin’ hammer for five minutes, let alone five hours,” Giant drawled, his bald head glistening with sweat. A lunatic with the hammer, he refused safety equipment, preferring to wear his bandana as a dust mask and his MP3 player in lieu of hearing protection. He was crazy, literally. Manic energy fueled his demolition obsession. “He’s sitting in his nice mansion, drinking wine and eating popcorn,” Giant said, pointing up the street, “while we’re down here bustin’ our balls.”

“I’d like to bust my balls in his old lady,” the Mad Scientist added, thrusting his pelvis in the direction of the bossman’s house. Having sex with the bossman’s youngish wife was a constant refrain for him. “I’ll show her how a real man does it,” said the Mad Scientist, who hadn’t been laid in two-and-half years. “Yeah!”

I sent the fellas home for the night because I did my best thinking alone, shoveling debris into the giant dumpster. The demolition project was just another one of the boss’ bad ideas. The vaults were cool, big enough to park a truck inside. The one upstairs was from the 1920s, shiny and stainless steel. The downstairs vault’s door was original, from 1888. They would have made great repositories for the museum’s musty collection of work by minor dead artists who, at one point or another, wandered through the Passamaquoddy region (the sole qualification for inclusion in the museum’s collection). But I had to knock the vaults down, because in Eastport I took whatever work I could get.

I knew bribery would keep the fellas jackhammering. Since the boss wasn’t gonna fork over more cash, I decided I’d donate an ounce of weed — out of my personal stash — to the budget. The next day, I told the crew the good news.  For every six pieces of steel extracted, the team would receive an eighth of an ounce of premium marijuana. The team who removed the most steel would receive a bonus quarter-ounce. My announcement was greeted with cheers. Together, we formulated the removal technique, using the jackhammers, eight-foot wrecking bars, and a 20-ton hydraulic jack.

The fellas pushed and pushed. I came back from supper to find the Mad Scientist and Giant stripped to the waist and glistening with sweat, their forearms caked in concrete dust. Working side by side, they chiseled steadily around each rail, then wiggled the steel with the wrecking bar. A tedious, but effective technique. Efficient as robots, they communicated with hand gestures and occasional shouts over the jackhammers’ machine-gun chatter.

The two of them removed 11 pieces of steel by the end of their shift and wanted to keep going so they could get a second bag of weed, but the week before the cops had told us we couldn’t run the compressor after 10 p.m. When I’d questioned their authority to shut us down, they threatened to arrest me for disturbing the peace.

Two days after the steel was discovered, all the rails were stacked neatly outside the building so the Mad Scientist could lug them home for re-use. The teams had tied, 18 pieces each, so they split the quarter-ounce bonus. Everyone was happy and we were all wicked high and felt nothing could stop us from finishing the job.

Until we discovered another layer of steel in the vault’s floor.

•••

Three weeks later, the job was almost done when I quit. I quit a couple seconds before the boss could fire me. He was wicked unhappy the job was taking more than a month and $12,000 to demolish a measly two-story, concrete-and-steel vault. He complained about the cost of machine rentals and debris disposal. Then he told me he might bring in masons from Bangor, at 35 bucks an hour, to finish the job.

I told him he was an idiot. Infuriated, he jabbed his index finger in my face and asked if I was working for the museum or myself.

“Here you go.” I tossed him my keys and walked away, once again broke and unemployed in the poorest part of Maine. But at least I wasn’t working for that stupid son-of-a-bitch.

•••

To this day, the pain from extreme jackhammering lingers, occasionally haunting my wrists and feet. Others on the crew fared much worse and suffered more. But not because of jackhammering. One of the brothers was killed during an argument with his girlfriend. The other brother ended up in jail for stealing from a construction site to support his pill habit. Giant went completely off his meds and ended up in a mental hospital. The Mad Scientist retreated to his compound, obsessing over his lack of a girlfriend and his desire to be abducted by aliens.

A week after I quit, my crew was replaced by masons wearing hard hats and using fancy saws with expensive blades. Cost the museum a helluva lot more than my gang, especially since the Bangor boys needed food and lodging. But the boss didn’t care. Hiring local didn’t mean nothing to him. He just wanted the job done.