ROT AND WOODWORM

Go down the side of my yard and you'd see a big old wooden barn covered with planks six inches wide and one inch thick with a clay tile roof. The lean? That was not due to the man slouching there, it was more to do with worm, rotten nails and weak, damp timber. He was an older guy with a thinning grey top hanging out from beneath an old trilby and a suit that, unless his fortunes had changed during the intervening years, I suspected was his only possession. 

I knew him, the man, just about the slackest guy you’d ever meet. The last time I’d seen him was way back working with the trench diggers. A guy whose idea of helping was to hold your coat and kick dust for an hour before saying his legs ached. That’s where I’d seen him, next to a trench, leaning on a shovel waiting for someone to pass him a coat to hold. His boots were already dusty. He saw me and smiled. I saw and ignored him. 

Now here he was walking into my office where I knew he’d be asking for a job and I knew I’d probably give him one. Bold as you like he was straight in and sat down hard on the hard seat of the table chair facing my desk. Took off his hat and swept his hair back behind his ears and that made him look ten years younger than the sixty years he’d bothered the world and all in it. He didn’t say much, just looked me in the eye, a stare I held for as long as I was able. 

The suit was new, which would be right. It was Monday and, after buying enough booze, he’d change it every Saturday with the last of the pay he hadn’t earned but still got. They called him Duke, those who bothered to take time to know him. A wasted life driven by a past of all-consuming guilt. Of drink and regular new suits and holding shovels and coats.  

“Well?” One thing I noticed: the lack of whisky smell when he spoke. 

“One week’s labouring.” That was the most I’d spoken to him in years and that was the best I’d offer him. I wrote an address on a scrap of paper and pushed it over. Without a word he left. 

As I said, that was Monday. Friday, he stood in the doorway darkening the room, holding his own jacket and looking tired. “A few more days if you can manage it.” Then added with a cough, “Please,” and that was something rarely heard. 

“Monday,” I said, “see the barn, clean it out, tidy it up, I've stock arriving Tuesday. One thing, you’re on your own so there’s no coats to hold. Can you handle that?” 

“Sure,” was spoken through depression tinged with relief. 

Tuesday the artic arrived and I grabbed the keys to the forklift.  

“Open the doors,” I said to the man and revved up. Swung the forks and lifted a pallet. One ton of roofing lead. Twenty rolls. Took a wide arc into the barn with the forks still high. 

I heard the man yell, “Drop the load or you’ll…” but it was too late. I’d forgotten the lean of the wall. At ground level there was enough space for the wide swing in. Up high, where the forks were, meant the pallet clipped a rotten beam. I heard the snap and heard the rush of debris and felt the roof load land on the cab and bury me. Then it all went black. 

The first thing I saw as I opened my eyes was a jacket on the dirt. The next thing was the man’s face staring into my eyes. Blood on his cheeks. His blood. From his lacerated hands and fingers as he wiped sweat. 

As he pulled off the last of the timbers, threw off the remaining roof tiles, he asked, “How’d you feel? Anything broken?” 

I pulled up onto my knees, stood and said, “I think there’s no proper damage.” 

Then he surprised me, “I ain’t taken a drop in twenty years. The ten before that. The ten that you remember was all full of guilt. You were real young then. What you don’t know is that I tried and couldn’t get her out of the rubble. After that I was a mess and your grandma took you in. Now I hope I’ve made amends.” 

I looked hard into his eyes through tears. It had taken thirty long years before I could cry.