Jackson
It’s not even eight o’clock
yet, but I know today is going to be hot. It’s something in the air, maybe the
scent, or maybe just the way the morning breeze catches the trailing fingers of
the weeping willow trees that encircle our yard. I can’t put my finger on it,
but you don’t spend nearly twenty years out in the country and not start to
pick up on these things.
Anyway, about that heat.
It’s actually a really bad thing, because we’re starting on the roof today.
When Dad had two pallets of shingles delivered a few days ago, I texted Matt to
let him know we’d be starting today.
On the horizon, a column of
dust dragged sideways by the wind grabs my attention. That’s the one nice thing
about dirt roads – it’s easy to tell when someone is coming over. The
source of the disturbance on the road is an old red pickup truck. Another full
minute passes before it coughs its way into the yard, carried on a dusty cloud.
Matt hops out and slams the door shut behind him, making the whole truck shake.
I raise an eyebrow. “Nice
piece of equipment.”
“It gets me around.”
Dad picks that moment to
come out of the house, saving me from having to think up a witty response.
Dad’s voice carries easily across the space between us, “So you’re here to help
us out? Matt, right?”
“Yes, sir.” He nods vigorously,
reaching out to shake my dad’s hand.
“Jeff,” Dad states as he
accepts the hand offered to him.
“Nice to meet you,” Matt
replies robustly. I’m surprised. Apparently he can be pretty damn polite when
he wants to be.
Dad looks him up and down,
seeming pleased with what he sees. And why wouldn’t he be? Bundles of shingles
are fucking heavy, and Matt has muscle to spare. “You have any roofing
experience?”
Matt nods again. “I helped
with my uncle’s house once. It was steeper than this,” he says, shielding his
eyes from the sun so he can get a better look at the roof.
“Good, that will make the
work go faster. And you’re right, this roof isn’t that steep, but it’s high,”
Dad warns, gesturing to our two-story farmhouse. “If you fall, you’re fired
before you hit the ground,” he adds with a chuckle.
Dad likes to think he’s
funny, but he’s usually not. Matt has the good sense to laugh though.
Following the two of them up
the ladder, I clamber onto the roof after them. My stomach squirms as I get my
footing on the curling shingles. It feels like a long time since Dad and I
redid the garage roof two summers ago. He’d wanted to do the house at the same
time, but he didn’t have the money I guess.
“Are you paying attention,
Jackson?”
“Huh?” I snap my head in
Dad’s direction. Matt is standing right beside him. What a suck up.
Dad’s eyes narrow at me but
he resumes talking. “So today you’ll be tearing off. Shingles, tarpaper, roof
vents, the old drip edge… everything. I’m hoping you’ll have time to take out
any leftover nails from the decking once all the old stuff is off, but if not,
we’ll tackle it tomorrow.”
“All clear,” Matt says.
“Wait a second, Dad,” I
interject. “You’re not going to be helping us?”
He shrugs. “There are only
two shingle shovels, so I’d just get in the way.”
That just figures. “Ah…
okay.” I want to tell him it’s a dick move not to help us with the tear off,
but I bite my tongue. I don’t want to get in a fight with Dad in front of Matt.
I barely know the guy, and I don’t want to make him uncomfortable. At least
that’s what I’m telling myself.
Dad doesn’t waste any more
time before scampering down the ladder, returning in a minute to hand up a
potato pitchfork and the only actual shingle shovel that we own. It’s a weird
sort of flat and narrow shovel with grooves on the end for catching nails and a
pivot on the back to help with leverage. “All right, boys, have at it,” Dad
says before leaving us alone.
It’s early enough the sun is
still mostly blocked by the trees, but we don’t have more than a few hours or
so before it hits us full blast. Matt seems to know it too, because he picks up
the pitchfork and raises his eyebrows at me. “Let’s get this shit done,” he
says, shoving the pitchfork tines underneath a row of shingles. As he pries
them up, they make the sticky ripping sound of tar separating.
The muscles in his arms are
thick, tensing with every movement of the shovel. Continuing in a row, he
loosens up an entire section before finally freeing a dozen shingles at once.
Giving them a shove with his foot, the piece scrapes across the roof and
disappears over the edge. A second later a muffled thud sounds up from the
ground. Yeah, it’s a ways down.
“You going to make me do
this all by myself?” he teases.
“Uh, no, sorry,” I say
quickly, picking up the shingle shovel.
The work goes surprisingly
quickly, or at least it feels that way. After a half hour, we’ve torn off
almost a third of the side we’re working on. I think Dad would have been more
nervous about this job if the roof were bigger, but our house is skinny and
tall, so there just isn’t all that much roof.
“Damn,” Matt says, leaning
against his pitchfork. “Sun’s going to be over the trees in a minute.”
“It shouldn’t be too bad,” I
say. “We’ve already gotten a lot done.”
Matt turns his gaze on me.
“It’s going to suck. Trust me.” When I shrug, he continues, “I thought you said
you’d roofed before. The sun is the enemy, dude.”
“It was a few years ago.”
“Sure,” he says, jabbing the
pitchfork under another row of shingles as the first outstretched fingertips of
sunlight touch us.
Over the next fifteen
minutes, the sun rises above the tops of the trees and begins to broil us. I
figured Matt was just being dramatic, but to my frustration, I have to admit he
was right. It’s not just working in the sun, because any idiot could guess that
that’s hot and uncomfortable. But the shingles beneath us are
black
, and
the heat rolls off them in waves.
“Told you so,” Matt says,
grinning.
I drop my hand from my
forehead, wiping the sweat on my shorts. “Yeah, fine. You were right.”
He doesn’t seem interested
in driving the point home, because he doesn’t respond other than to set down
the pitchfork and start pulling his shirt off. Except with his arms still in
the air, the shirt gets caught, sticking to his back. No doubt courtesy of a
layer of perspiration developed in the last few minutes under the sun’s searing
gaze.
Trying not to laugh as he
fights to get free of his own shirt, I step closer to him and loop a finger
underneath where the fabric is stuck to his sweaty back. As I lift up, he tugs
it off the rest of the way. Now revealed, the contours of his muscles draw my
hungry eyes. It’s a shame to cover a body like that with clothing. It’s not
like he’s super ripped or anything, he’s just… really toned. My eyes wander
down his back, to the glistening sweat just above the waistband of his shorts.
“Dude,” he says, sounding
annoyed.
Is he mad that I helped him
get his shirt off? Or because I stared at him a bit too long afterward? I’m
afraid to ask, so I pick up the shingle shovel and don’t look back. At least
not for a few minutes.
After two hours of working
under the beating sun, we stop for lunch and rest an hour to avoid going back
into the hottest part of the day. Dad made sandwiches for us, but we’re too
tired to say much.
When we climb back up the
ladder to tear off the second half of the roof, we’re better prepared. Armed
with two Nalgene bottles full of water and gloves to ward off the blisters
threatening to erupt on our hands, we dive into the rest of the work.
The flash of Matt’s dark
hair in the sunlight and the sweat on his skin make it hard to keep my focus on
the work. Whenever he digs his pitchfork under another row of shingles, the
muscles in his back all tense up together like they’re in some kind of
competition with each other.
“Why do you keep looking at
me like that?” Matt asks after catching me staring.
For the first time today,
I’m thankful for the sun beating down. Without it, my embarrassment wouldn’t
have the mild sunburn to hide under. “I’m not,” I reply quickly.
Halting in his work of
peeling up old shingles, he leans against his pitchfork and watches me. “Yeah,
you were.”
Shit. How am I going to talk
my way out of this one? Worst-case scenarios stream through my head. Him
punching me in the face. Him refusing to help anymore and just leaving. Worse
yet – him telling my dad.
His eyes haven’t moved from
me. If I’m going to salvage this, I have to do it right now. “I, uh... I just
am kind of jealous of your, uh, build. Every time I start working out, I never
get any results.” Fighting to keep my breathing steady, I allow myself a moment
to be impressed that I just came up with that on the fly.
“Well, shit,” he says, but
he doesn’t sound mad. A sly smile sneaks onto his face. “I’ve gotten stares
before, but usually it’s, um, girls.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be
weird about it.” I could kick myself for having just said that. It’s not
weird
to check out another guy. It’s just not straight. But this isn’t a time to
stand on principle.
Matt shrugs, picking up his
pitchfork. “It’s cool. I figure it’s just a compliment.”
Phew. That was close.
Pivoting so I’m aiming at the roof and not Matt, I tear into the next row of
shingles. We work in silence until the wind picks up, coaxing us up to the peak
of the roof so we can catch the most of the breeze.
“If you’re interested,” Matt
suggests, “I could show you through a workout. It’s not hard to gain muscle,
you just need to eat properly for your body and do the right lifts.”
I glance up from the bland
dark gray of the roof. “That’d be great.” Assuming that we’re still on speaking
terms by the time we finish this damn job, I mentally add.
Hours later, we drag
ourselves down the ladder. The sun disappeared a while ago, so we couldn’t have
worked any longer even if we’d wanted to. Every part of my body is sore,
including a lot of areas I didn’t think could actually hurt. Even my feet feel
unsteady on the ground, but somehow, almost inexplicably, we got done with
everything Dad hoped we would.
An hour ago, the shingles
were all torn off and any last nails had been ripped out, leaving the dirty
pine decking boards exposed and smooth. We thought we were done until Dad
checked the weather and saw a chance of rain. So we had to go back up and put
down tarps and plastic.
I collapse at the kitchen
table across from Matt. He sighs, leaning back in his chair. “That was a long
day.”
I’m so exhausted I don’t
want to even think about talking, but if Matt can manage it, I can too. “And we
haven’t even started putting the new stuff on.”
He grimaces. “Don’t remind
me.”
The screen door slams and
Dad comes in, looking pleased. “You guys did a good job.”
I groan. Matt tries to smile
but he just looks like he’s in pain. I guess even he doesn’t have the energy to
be overly polite to my dad right now.
Rubbing a hand across the
back of his neck, Dad sits down with us. “If you’d like to sleep over, Matt,
you’re free to use the guest bedroom. Assuming that you’re still up for helping
us tomorrow, that is.”
“I’ll see the job through,”
he says. “An early start will give us a better chance of finishing tomorrow.”
My eyes drift across the
table. “That mean you’re going to stay over tonight?”
He hesitates, conflict
brewing in his features. Finally he shrugs. “Sure, why not?”
A part of me wants to ask if
he’s interested in watching TV or maybe doing something else, but I’m afraid
he’d say no. He’s staying over because he doesn’t want to drive home and then
back tomorrow morning, not because he wants to have a sleepover like a pair of
twelve-year olds. A hot swath of embarrassment cuts across my chest, making me
glad I didn’t suggest anything. If we were actually friends, it would be
different. But we aren’t. He’s just a guy I met last week at the hardware
store.
My thoughts stray, thinking
back on the day. We talked every now and then on the roof, but mostly we just
worked. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. You can learn a lot about someone
by the way they work. Slow and methodical, or fast and recklessly. Matt was
more on the latter end, not that it mattered with tearing the shingles off.
Nailing them on is when we need to be careful.
“I’m going to wash up,” Matt
says as he gets up.
His voice snaps me out of my
thoughts. I’m not normally so prone to spacing out, but an exhausted body leads
to a wandering mind. “Bathroom is up on the left.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Oh, right. He came in a few
times during the day. Without getting up from my spot at the kitchen table, I
watch him retreat up the stairs. He’s kind of reserved, but he seems like a
nice guy. At the very least, he’s a hard worker.