Monday

Hawks circle over the factory and light in the dead trees in the wetland south of the trailer city.  Under the truck bridge widgeons and mallards drift in a forest of cattails.  I limp along the gravel pedestrian path with my tipster, cursing the perpetually lamed Gator, idle by the lunch tent with a flat tire.  I would have had to carry these buckets anyway, for after you park by the loading dock there could be endless yards, endless steps to go til you reach your place of work in the building.

So Jose and I stand in the orange and tan scissor lift and watch the descending copper pipe stubs and goosenecked fire sprinklers and wait for the platform to stop hesitating and quivering like a nervous dog.    We check over our shoulders to make sure we're not jabbing each other in the face with our extension poles and feel for the paint troughs with our feet.  Mine ache:  the $20 boots I bought months ago are finally completely gone, little better than bedroom slippers.  Occasionally I bump my head on a pipe or a fire sprinkler.  Eventually I'm on the floor and he's in the lift and I'm slapping the eighteen-inch roller far above and coming all the way down, then slapping again a little lower, coming all the way down, all the way up, all the way down, all the way up, and laying off way over, probably too far over, this is just primer after all...

Somehow seven becomes ten and ten becomes noon and noon becomes 3:11 and I'm hurrying, wondering if I'll get to class on time.  I make a soft white burrito of the eighteen-inch and a piece of plastic and pack my grip and limp down the six stairways to the loading dock.  Mechanical engineers trudge ahead of me, slowly, (why are they never hurried?), and I grimace as I pass them and walk by the taco trucks and under the steel shelter over the guard shack.

Traffic is like cold honey on Sunset east of Sylvan Hill.  Luckily I have Andy Williams to keep me company.  Born Free, he croons as the cars inch toward their ultimate reward.  Suddenly there's a breeze on my face and I can no longer read the license plate frame of the car ahead of me.  But soon it's back to suspended animation, this time on the Banfield and the concrete echo of Sullivan's Gulch under the hospital.  There's nothing to do but watch the blocks of grey and blue and glittering cars and rooftops and listen to Andy Williams thanking his audience (has it been that long on the road?).

Finally, FINALLY, I'm moving at sixty miles an hour again and swinging around the clover petal at NE 122nd.  And the breeze is back, drying the sweat on my face and making the cotton on my shoulder stir.  I am reminded of the tension in my shoulders and neck.

In the dim warehouse we watch videos of a balding Englishman painting faux finishes.  He has a soothing drone and some of the apprentices nod and surrender; some tap their pens in irritation.  The craftsman is clean, clean, clean, with a big heavy watch and the faintest hint of a smile.  He can't quite believe, himself, how convincing his work is.

Afterwards Mr. Heino assures us we could easily ask a hundred dollars an hour for such work.

The day is nowhere near dead when I pull out of the parking lot and turn onto Whitaker Way.  I decide to take Fremont home and put on Book of Love.  The music is driving and angular but softened by the orange haze over Sullivan's Gulch and the mesas of East Portland .  The heat has finally abated and all I can think about is getting home and my beautiful wife (not really yet, but so close I may as well say it) there waiting for me.