Hello readership!
Today is my 27th birthday. As I gave myself a resolution to work even more and get something really solid going with writing, well I give you a new episodic novel. This one will be a lot harder to write. I want to really give all of my writing potential to one episodic novel on this web site. So less action but more atmospheres and emotions. There will still be action of course, but it will be more diffuse.
This is the first episode and I can gladly say it was hard as hell to write. I really had to put my gut on the paper, but that's the way I want to go with Dead End Follies, giving you guys everything. I hope you enjoy, don't be shy to put feedback in the comments section.
Building a cathedral takes years of hard labor. Hundreds of men put countless hours of their craftsmanship to build a temple worthy of God. Families were formed and others were broken during the making of this holy place. A cathedral has seen people die and seen people born. It has lived through the centuries, through the storms, through the wars and the plagues. It is a refuge, a symbol of strength and hope. Most of all, a cathedral, from its erection to its long and immovable reign over a community, embodies the sacred.
The last temple in the mind of men represents as much from a human perspective as from a divine one. The pride of families is written in its stones. The hopes of the dying ones, the dedication of its priests, the desperate seek for a meaning of all the lost souls. You can feel this when you step inside a cathedral. There lies the true meaning of sacred. A refuge for humans at the edge of life. A place where you can feel protected, even against the inevitable. A cathedral makes you feel like that because for a period of time a lot greater than your own, all of the energy flowing into this place has been oriented in only one direction. Where you all turned your hopes. The sacred is deeply human.
I took no pleasure seeing the St.Cuthbert Cathedral go down on this gloomy Saturday morning. I used to be a proud construction worker. A proud carpenter specialized in commercial buildings. I took a lot of joy in my work. Making something where there used to be nothing, making pieces of materials into a place where people earned a living gave me fulfillment like no other things on earth. For me, there was not a sight more beautiful and sad than a completed construction site. Each goodbyes filled me with pride and hope that the next construction would be as rewarding as the one recently completed.
Working on a construction site isn’t exactly like being in school. Even if you’re specialized, you have to learn a little bit of everything if you want to be useful. You’ll be asked to help around many times a day, so have one shot at listening and understanding what’s explained to you before you get tagged as the site’s retard. Construction workers are rough people. They like to work fast and efficient so if you want your days to go by well, you have get up to speed.
I came around to manipulate the wrecking ball because I used to hang around with Anthony, our demolitions guy at lunch break. In between sandwich bites and coffee drops, he explained to me the ins and the outs of the wrecking ball. I caught on pretty quickly, it was no rocket science. Demolishing was a fun part of the work. Lot of times, when we started a site, we had to bring down raggedy old buildings that were occupying the lot. Warehouses, abandoned apartment buildings, that kind of stuff. Never a cathedral. Never ever. A lot of the guys at work were thoroughly religious, so abandoned cathedrals and demolishing a cathedral were two things that put fear in their eyes by the sole mention of the idea. No one wanted to demolish the St.Cuthbert cathedral. I wasn’t the religious type and I knew how to handle the ball, so they called me. I was supposed to start working on the condominiums only on Monday, but two days paid at eighty bucks an hour are two days paid at eighty bucks an hour. The only reason why I refused work was to spend time with my fiancée Eve, but she was out of town for a school teacher congress in Buffalo, so I had no reason to refuse.
Of course, I had principles too. St.Cuthbert cathedral was a thing of beauty and I thought it was retarded having to plow through that to build ugly uppity condominiums. The passion of the finest carpenters, brick layers and craftsmen were in that place. It should have stayed there, be declared a preserved site or something. The thing was over three hundred years old. What right a rich guy had to mow down the work of so many lives? I did it. I did it because it was my job, because I was saving up for the honeymoon I planned for Eve and me in Venice. She always talked about going to Venice, so stepping over my principles and demolishing St.Cuthbert’s cathedral was just another step to a happy wedding.
I did what I had to do, under the pouring rain and punishing wind. God himself tried to do everything he could to stop me from bringing down his temple. There was a manifestation in the street while I did my work. In a few swings of the destruction machine I was sitting on, I plowed down hundreds of years of pride for the Queens residents. I could see in the crowd faces I knew, faces of my childhood sad at the destruction of this important landmark. That morning, I brought down a piece of each one of these people’s life.
Cleaning included, I worked for six hours on that day. I had worked fast and efficient, so my foreman was pretty happy with me. When I left the site, he told me I’d find a little surprise in my pay check, that Mr. Epstein who paid for the construction of the condominiums was happy that the demolition went fast and smooth despite the shitty weather and the fuss it had created in the media. The story went as far as Fox News. I couldn’t help but to feel depressed when I drove back home. I told myself it was the last time I did demolition. I was a builder, not a destroyer. Fat pay check or not, it was deeply unsatisfying to destroy someone else’s creation.
Eve wasn’t supposed to get home until the next day. Her thing in Buffalo was pretty serious; it was related to a promotion she was supposed to get. She was going to be representing her school in some kind of U.S wide board of education. I missed her a lot, but I was glad for her, she was such a worker. There was the pre-show of a New York Giants game on T.V when I got home, so after my shower, I ordered a pizza, cracked open a beer and sat on the couch to see Eli Manning and his minions crush the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. An evening of football in underwear after a long day of work. I knew how to extract the best out of these lonely nights without my loved one.
I got the phone call around 9 PM; the third quarter was coming on an end.
“Hello!” my voice was weighted by an evening of silence and alcohol.
“Hey baby”, Eve’s voice was weak and straining.
“Hey hon, are you ok?”
“…Cliff, I don’t have much time. Let me talk please.” she seemed to be in pain.
“Honey, what’s going on there?”
“Something happened…” she said.
“Something like what? Are you ok, are you safe?” I asked, walking around with the cordless phone.
“Not really, look, we got in a collision coming back from the restaurant.”
“BABY! What hospital are you at? I’m coming right over. Bear with me on the phone.” Is said, holding the cordless in between my head and my shoulder, putting a pair of jeans on.
“Clifford, listen to me. I’m not in any hospital, I won’t make it there. It’s bad.” she said with that voice of serious times.
“How bad?” I asked.
“I’m not going to make it to the hospital. I just wanted to hear your voice one last time.”
“Baby don’t say that. You gon’ be fine!”
“No Cliff. Please believe me.”
I started to sob on the phone.
“Baby…just hold on, you’re going to be fine, we’re going to Venice next spring, I’m saving up so you can see Venice.” I bawled.
“Don’t be sad baby, you don’t deserve sadness. I just want to tell you a proper goodbye. Go to Venice for me Cliff, see Venice and enjoy it as much as I have would.”
I heard sirens in the background. She wasn’t lying.
“Honey, where are you?” I barely articulated.
“The interstate, just outside Buffalo…Cliff…I love you…”
“EVIE! EVIE PLEASE DON’T GO.”
Whatever happened to the phone after that was beyond my caring. I wept like an idiot for a minute before putting a vest on and running down to my car. That piece of shit rain was still pouring like I was Noah or something. It was probably what got to Eve on the road. Speeding my way to Buffalo, crying, alone in my car, with shitty emotional pop rock on the radio, I started damning myself for tearing down that cathedral. I wasn’t religious, but I was a superstitious guy. I knew somehow it was related, I knew somehow I fucked up by accepting this job and now, destiny made sure I would regret it for the rest of my life.
Share
0 comments:
Post a Comment