Good Neighbors

Watching a bead of sweat skip off the face of your trowel, he thought, pausing for a brief moment after flicking a fresh clump of mortar on the top of a row of exposed bricks, is one of the great rewards of being a bricklayer in Washington, DC, in mid-July, the peak of summer, when every sane man and woman in the city is sittin’ within a few feet of his or her air-conditioner and all the dogs in town, squirrels, deer and jackrabbits, too, the smart ones, anyway, are sprawled out in the shade.

It was not as easy as it looked. No, sir. Not layin’ it properly, anyways. The flick, it had to come from the right side, nice and sharp, like that, usin’ your wrist. It was all in the wrist, and that’s the way he’d taught each and every one the young men who’d worked for him over the years. Using your wrist was the key. Like that. If you flicked it just like that, nice and sharp, he thought, admiring his technique, the mortar ended up right where you wanted it and you didn’t make any more work for yourself than necessary. The backstroke, now that’s what you used to spread the mortar. Nice and smooth, left to right. If you did it properly, like that, nice and smooth, nice and easy, you only needed one stroke to cover the surface of the bricks with a layer of mortar and you didn’t have to do any touch up. Yes, sir, he thought, plucking another brick off the top of the pile.

Willy had never touched a piano or a paintbrush, never written a poem or picked up a violin. But to do anything well, he’d learned over the years, whatever it was, no matter how seemingly mundane – whether you were a musician or a laborer – whether you were playin’ in a jazz band or washin’ a stack of dishes – required a little bit of artistry. Nothing fancy, mind you. Just enough patience and discipline, enough pride, to know the difference between doin’ a job the right way and merely gettin’ a job done.

His philosophy was nothin’ fancy, that’s for sure. It wasn’t much more than plain common sense. Some men are bricklayers. Other men laid brick. That was it. His whole philosophy. That there was a difference between bricklayers on the one hand, and men who merely laid brick. That’s what he believed in.

Perhaps his wife of thirty-five years, rest her soul, had been right. Perhaps it was more about stubbornness than pride. But until someone could explain to him the difference between the two, he’d told her on more than one occasion, he was gonna call it pride. He was stubborn sometimes, especially around the house. There was no doubt about that. But it takes pride to do a job well, he thought, pausing in the midst of tapping a row of brinks into place with the heel of his trowel, light taps to get the bricks aligned just right. You can take pride in your work, he thought, but you can’t be stubborn about something you do well. You can be stubborn, and you can be prideful, but if your stubborn without taking pride in your work, you gonna make a fool of yourself, and you’re gonna make a mess of whatever it is you’re doin’. And that’s what he shoulda told her. Yes he was stubborn. Yes he wasn’t always easy to live with, and a lot of that had to do with the fact that, yes, he could be kinda stubborn. He knew that. But pride, that, rather than stubbornness, was why he walked the trowel around the outside of bricks, lightly, just like that, until they were nice and level, and that’s why he told the young men who worked for him that they could use a level if they wanted to, but that, with a little practice, you couldn’t get bricks any straighter than you could with your own two eyes.

He reached for another brick, suppressing a slight smile. Confidence – even a little cockiness – is what keeps a man goin’. He knew that. He’d known a few men who never had much confidence in themselves, and they were the ones who got swallowed up by all the drugs and violence. Can’t be too cocky, though, either. A man who’s too cocky is as likely to make a fool of himself as a man who's been smokin' crack.

The scrapping noise came from the alley behind the corner rowhouse. LaVar, his youngest son, was preparing the next batch of mortar. The scrapping noise was the sound of the metal shovel periodically scraping the dry gravel at the bottom of the wheelbarrow. Some men are bricklayers, he’d told his son at the beginning of the week, and other men merely lay brick. You call yourself what you want, old man, his son had replied. Bricklayer, private contractor. You can call yourself whatever you want. The difference between a bricklayer and a man who merely lays brick, Willy had said, forgetting how many times he’d already failed to get this point across to his youngest son. You listenin’ to me, young man? The problem with his son was that he was as stubborn as his father, but he never took any pride in anything he did. Dropped out of school. Never kept a job for more than a few months. Let me make an analogy for you, young man. The difference between a bricklayer, a real bricklayer, and a man who merely lays brick – it’s the difference between a mechanic who fixes cars, really fixes em, and a man who merely gets a car runnin’ again. It’s the difference between a man who knows cars, really knows em, and a man who just replaces old parts with new ones.

Willy rotated the brick he was holding, looking to see which side had the fewest blemishes. Other parts of the conversation he’d had with his son came back to him. You may not think there’s a difference, young man, but real bricklayers, they can not only see the difference, they can hear it. Willy smiled as he dipped his trowel into the bucket of mortar. They can hear it. He’d been talkin’ at the time, just talkin’, goin’ with the flow, and the thought – they can hear it – had just popped into his head. They can hear it. Real bricklayers can hear the difference. He sunk the brick gently onto the mortar and slid it slightly backward, to within a quarter-inch of its neighbor. With the heel of his trowel he then tapped it gently into place. He could hear the difference. He really could. A few more light taps. It was the sound of precision. The sound of expertise.

After peaking up and down the sidewalk, after making sure the coast was clear, he closed his eyes. He was holding the trowel in his right hand, and he reached for the bucket of mortar with his left. His fingertips would be his eyes. He dipped his trowel into the bucket and withdrew it when the weight felt just about right. A flick of the wrist and the mortar flew off the face of the trowel and hit the top of the brick with a wet slap. With a nice and smooth stroke, he then spread the mortar. Then, with the heel of his trowel, he lightly tapped the latest addition into place. Yes, sir, he grinned, opening his eyes. You could hear it. You could really hear it. The sound of a bricklayer.

An hour or so later a car pulled up to the curb on the other side of the street. A young white man climbed out of the driver’s seat and thought for a moment about grabbing his grocery bags out of the backseat of his car before pocketing his keys and crossing the street.

“Greetings,” the man said.

“Good afternoon,” Willy replied, looking up.

“Looks good,” the man said, bending slightly at the waist and looking down the length of the half-finished retaining wall. “It looks really good.”

“It’s gettin’ there,” Willy said, standing up and wiping his hands on his workpants. “The name’s Willy.”

“Parker,” the man replied, his grip surprisingly firm. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Willy. I’ve been following your progress over the last couple of days – I live right there, on the corner – and you do really good work. And just last night, over dinner, I was telling my wife that maybe sometime next year, if we manage to save up a little money, it'd be great to hire you to fix up our wall, too.”

“Wasn’t that you and your wife I saw a few weeks back, carryin’ sheets of drywall down into the basement?”

“Yeah, it was,” he blushed. “A few of the sheets got a little banged up on the way in – we never really figured out the geometry of carrying them down the stairwell – but, yeah, that was us.”

“First time puttin’ up drywall?”

“Was it that obvious?”

“You two looked like you were enjoyin’ yourselves, that’s all. It’s not too often you see a drywall crew laughing on the job.”

“We had no idea what we were doing, and it’s easy to laugh at yourself when you’re clueless. I’m sure it will be a little different the next time, since we’ll both think we know what we’re doing.”

“I’ll bet it looks pretty good.”

“It looks a lot better than we thought it would. A professional would have done a much better job, but, for the most part, yeah, it actually looks pretty good.”

“Feels pretty good, too, I’m guessin’, doin’ all the work yourselves.”

“It does,” the man said, blushing again.

Willy set the trowel down and reached for his wallet. He pulled out one of the business cards his oldest daughter, Sheryl, an assistant manager at the Kinko’s down on 7th street, had printed for him. “When you’re ready to fix your wall, you give me a call. A few pointers is all you need. When you’re ready, you just call me. You can do the work yourself, but you’re gonna need a few pointers.”

The white man’s face, it had that look. A look of gratitude, of belonging. Black folks tended to be neighborly out of habit, and didn’t give it much thought. It was a part of the culture. White folks, though, they were a little different. Nothin’ seems to give a white man more pleasure than having a friendly conversation with one of his neighbors – and if the neighbor in question happens to be black, all the better.

“I hope you’re not just being polite,” the man said, holding the business card respectfully. “Because if you’re willing to give me a few pointers, I really might actually have the courage to fix the wall myself.”

Dumb ass motherfucker, LaVar mumbled under his breadth. He was staring at his father as the white man, a blur now, crossed the street and reached into his pocket for his keys. LaVar was staring hard at his father. Stupid ass motherfucker. His father dipped his trowel into the mortar. He was pretending he’d returned to work, but he was really buying time, just waiting for a chance to kiss even more ass.

LaVar was still holding the wheelbarrow aloft, squeezing the handles, when the white man emerged from the back seat of his car, grocery bags in hand. He’d been carrying a load of mortar around from the back of the house when he’d first spotted his father shaking hands with the white man and instantly he’d known exactly what was going on. The white man then said something from across the street and his father glanced innocently over his shoulder. LaVar imagined swinging the wheelbarrow, weightless now, a baseball bat, against the side of his father’s head. There was no blood in his vision. It was an angry blow, a violent concussion, but he did not see the wheelbarrow actually connect with his father’s head and did not feel the impact. The violence was an explosion of shock, anger and disgust. Don’t you have any motherfucking pride? he wanted to scream. He didn’t blame the white man, had hardly registered his presence. It was his father who had humiliated him. His father who time and again refused to acknowledge the obvious, that the white folks who’d been pouring into the neighborhood would hire a bunch of mexicans before they’d ever hire a black man and that his happy ass nigger routine only made him look like a fool. Wake the fuck up, he’d once shouted at his father. Have you ever, ever seen a black man working on a white man’s house?

The sound of his father tapping a brink into place hurt so bad it was as though someone were hammering a chisel into his eyes. And then he was walking again, guiding the wheelbarrow around the side of the house and across the uneven grass and over to where he and his father would lift the wheelbarrow down to the sidewalk. Moving again, using his muscles, dulled the pain. And it was hot. The sun was directly overhead, it was the worst time of the day to be pushing a wheelbarrow, the worst time of the year. He was sweating profusely. It was almost too hot to be angry, and by the time he set the wheelbarrow down on its hind legs and his father stood up to help him lift the wheelbarrow down to the sidewalk he was breathing again, his fever had broken.

“On the count of three,” his father said.You’re a joke, old man, LaVar thought, smiling at his father as he lifted his end of the wheelbarrow into the air. You’re a fuckin' joke.