Ode to Contractors Possessing Various Levels of Expertise
Alison Pelegrin
ODE TO CONTRACTORS POSSESSING
VARIOUS LEVELS OF EXPERTISE
This one’s a shout-out to the git-r-dones,
the crowd since Katrina most idolized
and sucked up to—seminude roofers,
hard hatters, electricians, tree doctors,
Ditch Witch pilots dwelling in tent cities
or, like our lumberjacks, the Dollar General
parking lot. A round of drinks and first pick
of the MREs for you. Look—one thing
I’ve learned is what you had to do, you did.
They roughed it, and my hubby pimped me when
he had me with my sweet voice make the calls.
Soon they came in pairs, like yin and yang,
one to chain-smoke in the truck, the other
to get paid—in our case, three grand up front
before Tangipahoa’s understudies
of beanpole-rotund Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
would aim their crowbars at the fouled Sheetrock.
With no other prospects, we hired them
on the spot, feeling at once swindled
and spared on that first day and then the next
when nothing happened until dusk, and then
it came down all at once—skeleton walls
and Sheetrock ready to float before we could
line up shingles or a roofer. Sometimes
the vision doesn’t translate to the page.
I’m not even sure I’m mad with them
for soaking brushes in my Calphalon
roasting pan and deciding we’d be fine
if they used the toilet as an ashtray.
Boys will be boys. They finished soon enough.
Maybe because we were nearing the end,
I liked the last ones best, Scientologists
out of Lafayette that we hired away
from a neighbor. I learned to barter with
this crew, longnecks for the long lost secrets
of the split-jamb door. We had a routine
going. Morning call at six in our kitchen,
coffee and chicory, kiss the shakes goodbye.
One day we had the photo albums out,
looking for a background shot of where
the plastered-over phone jack used to be.
Like children, like the rest, they moved along
and never call. A fiction, what I knew so well.
No proof but dirty thumbprints and memory
of their tattoos which slurred, “We’re into knives.”
A broken record, the blue lines of their body art—
dagger, dagger, dagger, dagger, heart.