A day at work

It has been bitterly cold the past few days. We work outside framing houses in the cold. It is like being inside a freezer. The sky is dark and white frost coats every tree and bush. When you look up, a fog blocks the horizon and makes our world smaller. The lumber we carry on our shoulders is covered with ice that we must scrape off before we can cut the wood and nail it together. Our feet slip and we fall, cursing. Climbing through the two-story jungle gym that is a house being built, is dangerous and everyone is careful. We joke about falling off the edge of a wall twenty feet up and landing in the snow. It is all part of our job and we are good at it and it is very rare that anyone gets hurt. When we are done there is a home standing where a few weeks before there was nothing. The work is brutally hard, and we sleep well every night. The cold soaks through our layers of clothing and numbs our limbs. We built a fire of wood scraps out of some deep instinctual need. We cannot stand by the fire of course, we must work. The fire shakes a lone fist of smoke at the cold sky which ignores it completely. We cannot feel the fire but we hear it crackling and the smoke stings our eyes. It’s actually a detriment but we feed it and keep it alive all day for some reason that we do not really understand…

Not many crews are working today. We could have stayed home. Anyone of us could have come up with a reason to not come here today. If the boss decided to go, no one would complain. But no man complains about being here. The cold is cursed all day, as if it were a live being that was trying to hurt us. We work hard like we always do, as a team, everyone pulling his weight. It is unfathomable to each of us, to not show up and leave three men to do the work of four. There is pride, chauvinistic male pride, in being here today and suffering together. It is not politically correct in this culture, in this day and age, but nations are built by people who are not politically correct. Anyone who cannot keep up with us physically are beneath us, lesser somehow. And not many could keep up with us. We are men who are the salt of the earth, who did not seek a higher education, who know only what happens in our little part of the world. We work hard and go home tired and satisfied. If you asked any of us we would not say we were happy. But we work every day and take care of our families and pay our bills. We are generally passed by, but we have much to teach about humanity, to those wise enough to learn.

We work in the paralyzing cold and I think back to the remnants of Napoleon’s army retreating from Moscow, marching for weeks on bloody feet wrapped in rags, starving, eating their horses to stay alive, dropping in the snow by the thousands never to get up again. The thought of it makes me shiver, but helps me endure, for this is nothing in comparison. It is good to have a sense of history. I will go home tonight in a few hours and take a hot shower, and eat a warm meal and sleep with a warm, beautiful woman. And we will all come back here tomorrow and suffer together because this is our job, we have people counting on us, and these houses need to get built.

This afternoon the sky began to brighten. It was as if someone had slowly turned up the lights in a darkened theater. We glanced at the sky but didn’t say anything about it. It was too cold for hope. But suddenly the sun burned through the haze. Light was everywhere, the sun beaming with power and light out of a perfectly blue sky. The pure blue that I have only seen before in a lover’s eyes. The ice crystals in the snow glistening like thousands of tons of sugar as the sunlight ran laughing across it’s surface. We were silent in the face of this incredible surprise. Each man turned his face to the sun. We grinned in simple enjoyment of the moment. Our smiling faces, stiff, chaffed red by the biting cold, said thank you to that wonderful, golden orb. The sun warmed our faces, like a woman reaching down from the heavens and holding our frozen cheeks in each hand, smiling into our eyes and telling us, “This is for you.” The work finally brings this pause to an end, but we are revitalized, the spirit of the crew brought back to life. Men start talking about their plans for the approaching weekend, when an hour before the only sound was the silence of grim determination. Jokes and laughter are passed around. Everything is funny, we are giddy with the energy beaming down on us. The ice begins to disappear from the lumber and from our tools. Coats are taken off, and sleeves rolled up, despite the fact that it was still painfully cold. The work became easier somehow, our sore muscles ache less, and the day ends on a good note. The tools are carried to the truck and put away. We all stand in the bright sunlight and talk a moment, laugh a bit, then drive off in our separate directions, headed home to food, rest, and warmth. We would all be back in the morning, whether it was cold or warm, sunny, or snowing. We had work to do.