Chapter 1
Knox
My phone shrills out the pesky melody I dread in my dreams. Those words sound contradictory, but when it comes to phone alarms, both descriptors can be apt.
Another day.
Knuckling sleep from my eyes, I release a groan into the empty motel room. I further disturb the peace with a giant, cavernous yawn and drag my hands down my cheek. The scratching sound serves as a reminder that my face hasn’t seen a razor in days.
None of the guys on the job site cares what I look like, that’s for sure, but I try to maintain some semblance of respectability. You never know when a city inspector or an OSHA rep might happen by. The last such visit was a couple weeks ago, and my internal contractor’s clock says it’s about time for another.
I open my phone, which went dark, the coward, after spitting out its nasty wakeup call. I tap on the blue weather app, and it takes forever to load.
No one is around to hear my bad mood, so I growl when it finally does and my eyes land on the forecast. More chilly temps. More rain.
Will it ever stop? Rain must have fallen five out of every seven days during the four weeks I’ve been in this Texas town. It’s a wonder work at the site is on schedule.
Mostly on schedule.
So another day of slimy mud awaits.Groan.I’d rather lie on this awful mattress a few hours longer than contend with another round of cold, soaked clothing and slippery clay mucking up more than my boots.
Could you at least clean your fingernails once in a while, Knox?
I toss off the covers. Got no time for that nonsense.
In the shower, I let hot water run over me for several minutes. Last night’s shower washed off the grime. This morning’s is to get me warm clear to my bones before December’s cold seeps through my coveralls and the soggy mess of a construction site has me pumping myself up with reminders I actually enjoy what I do.
I do like my job. The idea of days behind a desk, steeping under fluorescent lighting, makes me shudder—but day one-thousand of north winds and slimy mud wears on a body, even on a guy like me.
I use my palm to rub a porthole opening in the steam on the mirror and take a look at the man staring back. The guy who’s fooling no one. It isn’t the mud or the brushes with frostbite causing trouble. I was whistling merrily along until December struck two days ago.
Christmas wedding, my eye.
Couldn’t she have made her decision and pulled the plug in September and not ruined the holiday season in perpetuity?
My study Bible on the nightstand crooks its finger at me as I tuck my wallet in my rear pocket ten minutes later. I’d intended to make time this morning, even whip out the commentary stacked beneath it, but…maybe tonight.
As it is, my guys, the bunch of babies, are going to be cussing me for making them wait in the cold. Every morning, they expect me to already have the truck heated up so they can warm their behinds the instant they finally show up.
Except for Mike. We’ll all be waiting on his sorry rear end. I tolerate the occasional five-minute delay most mornings, but the next time I catch a whiff of the prior night’s alcohol when he slides his bum into the truck, he’s out. If that sickly sweet smell is still pouring through his…pores…by morning, he had way too much the night before to be safe at a jobsite.
It's guys like him that give the rest of us a bad name and that make our home away from home, a thirty-year-old motel on the edge of town, feel shadier than what it is. I don’t dare ask questions about where he finds the women I see skulking out of his room some mornings.
At least he’s not one of the guys with a wife or steady girlfriend back in Kansas City. I don’t have either of those things myself, but that’s a different sad story altogether, a subject I choose not to allow to derail my morning.
Warm for the time being in my coveralls with the LHS Construction logo on the chest, I step into a brisk morning thatstill looks like night. Sunrise comes late this time of year, and we get an early start. We tack on a few extra minutes in the mornings since most of the guys require a run through a drive-thru before arriving at the jobsite.
Mike has a jump on me for once. He’s kicked back against the wheel well of the company’s muddy four-by-four, tucking a pinch in his cheek. Crawford is puffing on a cancer stick, and Cliff is holding the giant insulated mug I’ve seen him carry for as long as I can remember.
Cliff has led many a crew for LHS. I’ve started wondering how long he’ll contend with the physical labor, the blazing heat or bitter cold, and the weeks away from home. More and more, thanks to Rand, our ambitious overseer, our jobs require travel.
And therein might lie the key to Cliff’s easy acceptance of being away from home. Since Cheryl passed two years ago, he doesn’t have much to hold him in one place.
He isn’t the only one.
Again, beside the point.
Judging by the empty parking slots surrounding my crew cab truck, the rest of the out-of-town crew got a head start. Guess tomorrow’s warm-up shower needs to run shorter or begin earlier.
