Just you try, he thought. I’ll be right here, reminding my kid to brush his teeth.
—
They were reroofing an old mission close to the center of town. Empty for decades, it was now being converted to apartments. Peter’s crew had spent two weeks dismantling the rotted belfry and had begun to strip off the old slates. The roof was steeply pitched; they worked on twelve-inch-wide horizontal boards, called cleats, anchored by metal brackets nailed into the sheeting and spaced at six-foot intervals. A pair of ladders, lying flush with the roof at the ends of the cleats, acted as staircases connecting them.
All morning they worked shirtless in the heat. Peter was on the uppermost cleat with two others, Jock Alvado and Sam Foutopolis, who went by the name Foto. Foto had worked construction for years, but Jock had been there just a couple of months. He was young, seventeen or so, with a narrow, acned face and long greasy hair he wore in a ponytail. Nobody liked him; his movements were too sudden, and he talked too much. It was an unwritten rule of the roofing crews not to remark on the danger. It was a form of respect. Looking down, Jock liked to say stupid things like “Wow, that would hurt” and “That would most definitely fuck a person up.”
At noon they broke for lunch. Climbing down was too much trouble, so they ate where they were. Jock was talking about a girl he had seen in the market, but Peter was barely listening. The sounds of the city drifted upward in an aural haze; from time to time a bird floated past.
“Let’s get back to it,” Foto said.
They were using pry bars and mallets to chip out the old tiles. Peter and Foto moved to the third cleat; Jock was working below them to the right. He was still talking about the woman—her hair, a certain way she walked, a look that passed between them.
“Will he ever shut up?” Foto said. He was a thick, muscular man, his black beard sprinkled with gray.
“I think he just likes the sound of his own voice.”
“I’m going to throw his ass off this roof, I swear.” Foto glanced up, squinting into the sun. “Looks like we missed a couple.”
Several tiles remained along the ridgeline. Peter slid his bar and mallet into his tool belt. “I’ll go.”
“Forget it, lover boy can do it.” He yelled down, “Jock, get up there.”
“I’m not the one who missed those. That was Jaxon’s section.”
“It’s yours now.”
“Fine,” the boy huffed. “Whatever you say.”
Jock unclipped his harness, scrambled up the ladder to the uppermost cleat, and wedged his pry bar under one of the tiles. As he lifted the mallet to strike, Peter realized he was straight above them.
“Wait a sec—”
The tile popped free. It sang past, narrowly missing Foto’s head.
“You idiot!”
“Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
“Where did you think we were?” Foto said. “You did that on purpose. And clip in, for Christ’s sake.”
“It was an accident,” Jock said. “Calm down. You’ll have to move.”
They shifted to the side. Jock finished up and had begun to climb down when Peter heard a pop. Jock let out a yelp. A second pop, and with a loud clatter the ladder rocketed down the roof with Jock still attached. At the last second he lunged clear and began to slide down the roof on his belly. After his first cry, he hadn’t made a sound. His hands were madly searching for something to grab hold of, his toes digging into the tiles to slow his descent. Nobody had ever fallen that Peter knew of. Suddenly this seemed not possible but inevitable; Jock was the one chosen.
Ten feet from the edge his body halted. His hand had found something: a rusty spike.
“Help!”
Peter unclipped and scrambled down to the lowest cleat. Gripping a bracket, he leaned out. “Take my hand.”
The boy was frozen with terror. His right hand was clutching the spike, his left gripping the edge of a tile. Every inch of him was pressed to the surface.
“If I move I’ll fall.”
“No, you won’t.”
Far below, people had stopped on the street to look.
“Foto, toss me my safety line,” Peter said.
“It won’t reach. I’ll have to reset the anchor.”
The spike was bending under Jock’s weight. “Oh God, I’m slipping!”
“Stop squirming. Foto, hurry up with that rope.”
Down it came. Peter had no time to clip in; the boy was about to fall. As Foto pulled the line taut through the block, Peter wrapped it around his forearm and lunged toward Jock. The spike broke loose; Jock began to slide.