Cold Roof

by Eric Chaet

In response to the imminent attack by forces of the United States, Britain, & whatever other nations' forces President George W. Bush of the U.S. & his crew, & Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain & his crew could enlist, against Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction they insisted they had proof Saddam Hussein possessed (but they refused to show the evidence), I received a flurry of indignant e-mail articles, including several forwarded to me by a writer & publisher I respect, & have been corresponding with for a few years, Albert Boehm.

I wrote a brief essay, to the effect that such indignation was essentially spinning one's wheels, that one could act most effectively by facing up to how much power one had & didn't have in the current situation, & concentrating on developing one's capacities to be of greater constructive use in the near & distant future, when whatever good was accomplished would be done by good & capable people able to find one another & work together—& I e-mailed it to him.

Albert, in turn, wrote a glowing testimonial of my work, sandwiched around my little essay, & sent it to a fellow who puts out a periodic e-mail newsletter to several thousand subscribers—& the whole thing appeared about 6 weeks later.

Within a few hours of reading it myself, I received a telephone call, from a deep voice, who identified himself as Brendan O'Neill. Brendan said he had read the article, & thought that we were living parallel lives, that it was amazing our paths hadn't crossed earlier. Like me, he had hitchhiked for many years. Now he & his wife & teenage kids lived on a little farmstead, raising some animals & organic vegetables, & he had a business installing solar collectors. He had two big jobs lined up, but also a little one next week. He thought I might be interested in some occasional work.

"My favorite kind!" I said.

"I thought as much. I'll give you a call next week when it's more firmed up. It's a house moved into downtown Fort Harrison by Affordable Housing, Incorporated, a non-profit agency. I know its director."

I said okay, & told Eileen about it. Eileen was enthusiastic.

"Things are opening up for you!" she said.

"Yeah, I get to work on a roof in the freezing cold, doing work I'm not any good at."

"It's an opportunity!" Eileen said.

"Yeah, it is, you're right," I said.

For the next week, I tried to get my reading & writing work done a little ahead, in case it would be interrupted a day, & also not to count on getting the call.

Then, at 8 p.m. about a week later—I'd pretty much decided that it wasn't going to happen—Brendan called, & said that the job was on for 9 the next morning, & told me what tools to bring.

Adrenaline kicked in, & I didn't sleep well that night.

In the morning, I put on 4 layers of clothes—different ones than I usually wear—& assembled a kit of tools I don't usually use. Eileen helped me—they're her tools, mainly: hammer, screwdrivers, utility knife, channel-lock, tape, & an apron to hold them. I managed to eat breakfast & use the plumbing in the allotted time—but I drove off, about a quarter mile, without the tool kit, & had to return for it. So there wasn't time to get gas on the way—gas was pretty low, but I figured that, if I remembered to get it on the way home, all would be well.

After threading my way thru morning rush-hour traffic at the edge of Fort Harrison, & when I was about 3/4 of the way to the job site, I thought, I wonder if I locked the door, when I went back in to get the tool-kit? I probably did. But whether I did or didn't, I'm not going back to check, so I might as well forget about it, concentrate on finding the site, not getting hurt or hurting anyone, & contributing as much as possible, then getting home safely.

I got to the site just about 9 a.m., & a couple of minutes later, Brendan drove up. He looked a lot like me—under 6 feet tall, wide open face, beard turning gray. His hair was long, tho—& braided. He had an old van full of equipment, none of it new or matching, & in an apparent jumble—but he knew where everything was. It was clear he'd done a lot of gathering & organizing in preparation for today's work. He immediately started taking things out, & setting them up.

When he had set up a table, & taken out some long threaded rods, he cut a 9-inch segment of one of the rods with a hacksaw, then handed the saw to me, & told me that we needed 9 segments of 9 inches—& I started cutting—& dressing the ends of the cut segments, by filing off any sharpness.

Before I had finished, another guy arrived. I did the last 3 segments using the power saw, which the new guy, Bob Shaver, took from his vehicle, plugged in, & showed me how to use.

Bob was a little taller than Brendan or me—another beard turning gray. We were all wearing layers of clothes. Bob's & Brendan's faces had more color than mine, from being out in the sun more.

The last member of the crew arrived. Edward was an Indian, I don't know what tribe, maybe 30, with a little gold ring worn as an earring. He had a very dark face with a flattish nose—maybe part Black, maybe just a dark tribe—a black goatee, & dark eyes that occasionally looked into yours, but didn't dwell there, when he was caught exploring. Edward was a bit shorter than the rest of us, also slim, probably more muscular, nervous. His face was pock-marked.

Brendan never stopped working from the time he arrived until we quit, except for the maybe 20 minutes we took for lunch.

Bob kept going, too. He'd worked with Brendan before, but was, himself, the only employee of a company trying to sell its services to copper mining companies out west, he told me, when I asked. They set up solar collecting apparatus, which heated the ore, allowing a lot less chemical to purify the ore more easily, quickly, & completely. Brendan had done some work for his company, & he was returning the favor.

When I asked, Edward said he ordinarily worked temp, that companies wouldn't hire him, since he had no driver's license, & since they all ran background checks since 9-11. I didn't know what he meant by that.

A truck arrived, & we hauled 2 large solar collectors, 25 square meters each, maybe 8 inches deep, from the truck, around the house—& leaned them against the south wall at the back of the house, where I had set up a ladder. Brendan signed papers for the truck driver, after making sure that the shipment had arrived without damage.

Then, with Edward & me below, & Brendan & Bob on the roof over an extension of the first story, which was halfway to the roof over the second story, we pushed & pulled & got the collectors up to the first level. Then, on the roof above, the 3 others nailed in 2-by-4's for us to plant our feet against, & against which to park the heavy & precious solar collectors, until we could assemble them & the apparatus which would attach them, properly tilted, to the roof.

When we arrived, there was frost on the roof, but it was gone by the time we went up—it was a bright day, without clouds or wind.

There were two guys working inside the house, tearing out old cabinetry, working among disconnected pipes, sinks, stoves, etc., & walls with gaping holes in the plaster, exposing the wood skeleton, wiring, & piping.

For a while, Brendan, Edward, & I were grouped inside, in a little room on the second floor, with walls partly torn up. Brendan was using a little tube cutter, on some copper tubing. He had Edward clean the ends of the segments he cut, with a utility knife, then some sandpaper, in preparation for soldering. Then, once I had seen how it was done, that became my job. Brendan was welcoming Edward back, I didn't know from what, telling Edward that he was a lucky man. Edward gave no indication that he felt lucky.

Brendan talked about the last time he was hitchhiking, when he got a ride about 20 miles south of Fort Harrison, & realized that it would take him home. He said he started crying, & told the driver not to worry, he was okay. He just knew that, after years, he wouldn't have to be on the alert, all the time, any more.

Edward & I climbed steep & narrow old wooden stairs on which someone had written "Remove Stairs," up into an attic with about 6 inches of dirty insulation lying loose on the floor. Light came thru a window in the sloping north side of the roof, filtering thru dust. We carefully moved to where we needed to go, probing for & stepping on solid places, so as not to fall thru. We put down some odd-shaped pieces of wafer board, & lay on our backs, nailing 2-by-4's into the sloping ceiling.

I was terrible at nailing up above, lying on my back, neither accurate nor strong. Edward did more than half of it, besides the measuring, & telling me what to do & where. I told him I was sorry, & offered to fetch, to make up for it, & he was okay with that.

From above, Brendan & Bob were drilling holes thru the roof, & thru the 2-by-4's. Then they pushed thru the pieces of threaded rod, & Edward & I put washers & nuts on them, & tightened them up with wrenches, from below, while they did the same from above. I had done similar work before, with bolts, nuts, & wrenches—& fastened the nuts tightly, momentarily sure of my competence.

"Hey, you should get a job in construction," I told Edward. "You've got skills."

"Where?" he asked.

We had to repeat the process, further toward the peaked center of the room, so that, the second time, we were able to work standing up.

Edward wondered aloud how they had moved such a big house among all the power & telephone cables.

Church bells, not far off, rang out The Battle Hymn of the Republic. I figured it was noon, & we wouldn't be stopping for lunch.

But, some time later—I didn't have a watch—we all sat in a room full of rubble, with lots of windows, on the first floor, with our backs against the walls. Brendan had a carrot, a sandwich, & some vegetable juice in a can. Bob had an apple, sandwich, & can of soda. I had two peanut butter & jelly sandwiches in baggies that Eileen had prepared for me last night, & a thermos of diluted coffee. Since Edward didn't have anything, except one of those big plastic cups you get when you buy coffee at a gas station, empty, I offered to share my diluted coffee with him, & he accepted. But he wouldn't take one of my sandwiches.

I told about when I worked as a temp in L.A., one day, & got sent to a huge building full of maybe a thousand tiny offices, which turned out to be somehow part of the defense industry. When I showed up, they were expecting a woman, it being clerical work, & the guy I reported to went nuts, & started going in 3 directions at once.

"They were—," I searched for a word.

"Paranoid," Brendan suggested, with a snort of laughter.

"Yeah, I guess. They didn't want me there, & I didn't want to be there, but there I was. The guy I was working for kind of hid me in a corner, & I typed tables of numbers on one of those IBM Selectric typewriters. He also gave me one of his tuna sandwiches, I recall.

"I'm not hungry," I concluded, & extended one of my sandwiches toward Edward.

He took it, expressionless, & ate it.

Bob asked Brendan about a job they'd done along the Lake, several months ago, I gathered.

"That guy stiffed me for 1800 dollars—this wasn't exactly right, that wasn't exactly the way he wanted it. Nothing about his stuff that was in the way all the time we were working, that we helped him move, when he finally let us—or how we had to use parts he bought, that didn't fit the rest of the parts, exactly. Don't get me started."

I asked Brendan about the business end of the work.

"Tell me about it, & I'll talk it up," I said.

"For a residence, like this, 5500 dollars—there's a lot of expensive parts. That'll heat 60 percent of your hot water, & give you some electricity, on bright days, too—20 watts. If you've got an electric water heater, it should pay you back 8 percent a year. Less if you've got natural gas."

We were soon back to work, installing the collectors, now, on about a 40 degree angle to the 30-some degree angle roof, on the south side of the house. I did a lot of fetching, watching, & occasionally handing things up, while the others drilled holes in metal legs & found the proper assemblage apparatus & made necessary adjustments.

For a while, I was up on the roof alone, as the sun began to set & the wind picked up—I was sitting, propping the otherwise unsupported collector against my knee-cap. It was sharp & cold right thru the lined jeans & long underwear.

The others were working down at the van, measuring, cutting, drilling, & assembling little pieces of aluminum bent at a right angle, then bent again at a right angle, so that each aluminum piece was an open 3/4 rectangle with rounded corners, with flanges at the open end, & bolts thru holes in the flanges held on with nuts—these little assemblies would hold the collectors to their legs.

About a dozen seagulls flew nearby. They're so elegant & graceful—but, like dandelions in warm weather, so common it's hard to remember how glorious they are. A while later, maybe 8 crows flew by, cawing to one another—one of them swooping just enough toward me, to see how I'd react to the provocation, the way they do. Crows seem to have a sly sense of humor—like they'd poke you in the ribs with their elbows, if they had elbows.

On Wayne Boulevard below, there was a good deal of traffic. On the other, side streets, it was mainly here & there a parked car. The houses were all old, drab, large, & peaked—Northern European style, hard to heat, oil or natural gas, & lots of electricity—with lots of coal, oil, natural gas, or uranium to generate the electricity, & power & telephone cables everywhere. Grids of houses built by craftsmen, not architects or engineers—by people who knew how to build houses from having learned from people who knew how to build houses, no one knowing exactly why this was the best way, or perhaps wasn't the best way, the rest of us just glad someone knew how to build some kind of shelter before we all froze.

That is, the rest of us except the tribes who had lived in bent-branch-ribbed, bark-covered long-houses heated by fires on the ground, with smoke holes, several families to a long-house—who had to retreat as the European style houses kept going up—bang, bang, bang—iron, then steel-headed hammer & iron, then steel nail—& shooting rifles if necessary—or, when, in fear, thought necessary.

There were cars parked in yards behind many of the houses. The yards were mainly bare dirt, & the cars mainly old ones, some severely dented up. There were some trees, mostly looking grim without leaves—but also a beautiful spruce, slim, spiral waves of branches of blue-green needles, maybe 20 feet away—reaching up above the streets, yards, cables, houses, & roofs, like a steeple or minaret.

I thought, as I watched the traffic go by on Wayne, of parades I had seen as a child, or in brief snatches on television, lately—the Christmas parades with Santa Claus & all the announcers talking about trendy toys—& of the parade of people into & from Europe, to America—& also across Siberia & the Bering Strait, & into & all over America from the northwest. And the waves of Africans in the holds of slave ships.

And people of all times & places—into & across Africa & Australia & the islands of the South Seas—Egypt & Sumeria—the rivers & the gods from the sky & the voyages of the spirits of the dead—the Hittites in their chariots with iron swords, weapons of terror & domination—Aztecs & Incas & the people they dominated & the people who successfully or unsuccessfully resisted them.

Arab & Turkish & Mongol Islamic caliphates & empires—the Dar al-Islam—the Byzantine & Venetian & Russian empires—Athens' commercial empire, the Persian Empire, Alexander's empire, Rome—khans, caesars, shahs, kings & queens, & czars—the ancient Hebrews & the diaspora—the surges back & forth across Europe during the Napoleonic wars, & before that, during the time of the Reformation—the galley slave trade of the Mediterranean & the Arab black slave trade down the coast of the Horn of Africa.

Thousands of years of Chinese growth & contraction, & all the people on the periphery of China adjusting. Huns & Mongols—the Goths—the Holy Roman Empire, the Holy Alliance. Absolutism & the ideal of liberty, then the ideal of economic justice. Sects & parties—castes, guilds, & unions—burghers & aristocrats—renters & landlords—risk-taking entrepreneurial capitalists & risk-averse, fortunate descendents living off dividends—revolutions & reprisals—the Balkans, Southeast Asia.

The British Empire—world wars & the great late-20th century wars of Africa—Israel & Palestine today.

The commerce & shrewd or clumsy diplomacy of the elites of every time & place with one another, & the wars they set off in their overlapping reaching out for spheres of colonization, for supplies, for markets, for booty, for self-importance—while most of the rest of the people—plowing, hauling water, gathering firewood, feeding animals, nursing babies—struggled only for some peace of mind & more resources than the day required, before they got sick, or ruined by taxes or war, or dead.

Then, as the sky turned darker, with a rosy horizon that couldn't last long, everyone came back up on the roof, & fastened the collectors in place, & the photovoltaic cell to one of the collectors.

Bob said he had a dog locked up he had to get back to, & Edward wondered if we had done enough for the day. But Brendan said we had to get the last parts drilled thru & attached to the roof today—I guessed copper tube bits for water pipes to fit into, but didn't know—there might be snow before the next time it could be got to.

So everyone was on a mission to get done, focused—except me. I was kind of dreamy & watching, having gone beyond the time when I could keep concentrating amid all the new things, tools, sights, activities—beyond being able to do much other than watch, learn, & avoid getting in the way.

While the last connections were being made on the roof, I started carrying tools & cords down to the van. Edward joined me.

Then everyone was down by the van, & Bob took off in his vehicle.

Brendan was stowing the last of his tools, when Edward asked me if he could get a ride home, & I said okay. Brendan said he had our numbers & addresses, & that he was going for a beer, that he could still do that, anyway. He said that he & I should get together & talk sometime. I said sure, that he was always welcome at my place. That seemed pretty lame, but, at the moment, I didn't know what else to suggest.

Edward & I got into the car, & I asked Edward where we were going. He said about 4 miles west, to Papermill Drive—which wasn't my direction, I told him, & I didn't know my way over there, so he would have to help me navigate, please.

We turned right, then right again, then left onto Wayne, now full of rush-hour traffic, in the dark, all headlights, streetlights, & window lights of buildings alongside the roads—including, here & there, colored Christmas lights, & a few neon signs of small stores.

Next we turned right at a stop-light onto Jackson, the much busier street we'd take the 4 miles west. A digital clock read 5:06. Jackson was full of lanes of cars flowing with us, & to the left, coming at us, an opposing river. Everyone was speeding, especially for about half a mile on a big overpass, where the road widened & was bordered by low concrete walls. After about a mile, I pulled in at a gas station, & bought $5 worth of gas.

Then, we were lucky: someone kind let us back into the flow, where we were trying to get in from the station's driveway, only 10 yards from the traffic light.

So, we were off again.

"Which way will we be turning?" I asked Edward.

"Left."

"Be sure to tell me when, with plenty of warning," I said. "I didn't learn to drive 'til I was 35. It's been a long time, now, but I've never learned to take it for granted. I'm very careful. I usually do whatever I can to avoid driving in a city during rush-hour, & I don't know my way around here."

"Okay."

"Why don't you have a driver's license?" I asked him.

"I got into a hassle with the police."

"They lock you up?"

"No, shot me."

"Ay! When do you get your license back?"

"Never."

"Ay! Harsh punishment."

"Yeah."

"Is this where we turn?" I asked.

"About a mile," Edward said. "You could get in the left lane after this light."

I did.

"And after we turn," I asked, "what then?"

"Then about half a mile, & turn right."

All this time we were running a gauntlet of stores & fast food places, with cars going about 10 miles per hour faster than the speed limit. As one cut across our lane, to turn into a mall with a Toys R Us in it, I said, sarcastically, "Got to get to Toys R Us!"

"Probably," Edward said.

We turned left off the main drag, which was already becoming less clogged—a lower concentration of businesses—onto a darker, residential street, Papermill Road—for about half a mile—then took a right onto a still darker street, 25 miles per hour now, no traffic, black trees & their shadows from streetlamps in front of new 3-story apartment buildings, windows bright in the dark, on either side.

"Over there," Edward said.

I turned into a driveway, & stopped.

"This okay?" I asked.

"Yes."

Edward got out, & reached back in, & we shook hands.

"I suppose we'll be working together again," he said, meeting my eyes & holding steady.

"Probably," I said.

"It's been good to meet you," he said.

"You, too."

When he shut the door, I pulled back out of the driveway, returned to Papermill Road, & took it south, for several miles among homes & businesses I'd never seen before, in just a trickle of traffic. Then I turned east onto a busier street—still not much traffic, tho—between immense, deserted, mainly horizontal buildings of 2 & 3 stories, with lines of lit-up windows marking each story, & signs in front I didn't get a chance to decipher before I was past them. I had to be alert, mainly, for signs of streets, the names of which I might recognize, & for other cars.

When I came to Highway 41, I thought I'd better take it, since I knew it—& got on, & was once again in a knot of speeding cars in a river of speeding cars—the opposing river separated from us now by a median—dark, cold, headlights—the boldest drivers risking all our lives darting in & out & across lanes—bright & clever advertisements calling for attention everywhere.

But soon traffic thinned out, & I was mainly out of the city, & began looking for my exit. 41 to U, looking, looking, some guy with his brights right on my tail, U to DD—& the guy on my tail turned with me, still with his brights glaring in the rear-view mirror.

Slowing down into Wrightstown—the lumberyard, the railroad tracks—& onto County 96 by Otis's Bar & the old, deserted grocery store (they'd moved a mile down the road, to a brand-new, huge building). No lights behind me now, only an occasional overhead orange street light. Across the river on the old bridge, & onto ZZ—only my headlights now showing the road ahead, & the trees alongside. I couldn't see the river, which ZZ skirts.

"Don't relax quite yet," I was telling myself, "not 'til you're in the driveway, itself."

Then I pulled into the driveway, left the lights on, fetched the mail. Turned off the engine, took the keys, & unlocked the door, opened the garage door, started the engine again, parked the car.

Took in the toolkit, turned on lights. Took off my outer jacket, turned up heat, stripped off layers of clothes, & threw the pants in which I'd lain in the insulation onto the floor by the washing machine.

I had put water to boiling for herb tea, cut up a pear, & taken one bite, when the phone rang. Eileen, calling from the car, wanted to know if I was all right—she'd called twice earlier, she said. All day at the hospital (where she works—she's like an angel), people kept saying how cold & windy it was outside.

"No, it wasn't bad."

She said not to cook, she'd get some food.

"Good."

"I'm near Uncle's Subs. Would a sub sandwich be okay?"

"Sure."

"What kind?"

"The food kind."

"Turkey, tuna?"

"Yeah, turkey, tuna, whatever."

"On whole wheat?"

"Yes! Perfect!"

"Vegetables on it?"

"Whatever they'll give me. Please. Food!"

"Don't cook!" she said.

"Don't worry," I said. "I'm eating a pear, & waiting for the sub sandwich."

"Good. I hope you feel good about what you did."

"I'm tired. I'll feel good about it tomorrow."

.

A few days later, I received a check in the mail, from Brendan O'Neill, for $96.  I called, & thanked him.

A few days after that, I received an e-mail from a friend in Switzerland, to whom I'd mentioned the job, saying, "Glad you are safely off the rooftop.... Not something I would like to do for a living."

I wrote him back:

"The idea is to survive, somehow, preferably doing a lot of different, useful things, occasionally, living cheap between, remaining independent, therefore, & able to speak, write as I see fit, &, if necessary, pay to publish or broadcast, or whatever, myself.

"Two possible upcoming jobs, not on roof, laying solar 'slabs' under a college swimming pool, under an Indian reservation greenhouse.  Could be good.  Still, I'll have to actually work, if these come up.  I hate to actually work, as much as anyone—but I know it's good for me.

"This last job, I think, added about a year to my life, in 8 hours of breaking thru my sedentary ways."

Copyright © Eric Chaet 2003