Framer

Tyson watched them leave, the foreman and the son-of-a-bitch painter both. He unclipped his belt and folded his bags into his father’s toolbox. A few finish nails trickled out, the same nails the painter had bitched about, the number of holes he’d have to putty, how he hadn’t bid for covering up other people’s mistakes. Tyson had wanted to drive his hammer straight into his teeth, at least through the sheetrock, show him how the house had been framed by chimps, no corner quite square, not a single stud on layout, not even a header above the door, anybody’s guess where any nail would strike home.

He framed like his ass was on fire, walls flying up, but every stud hit layout, got braced back to plumb if it was too warped or twisted. His father had been the finisher—Tyson already off wrestling concrete forms, raising the walls on the next—but he’d taught him the tricks, more and more desperately toward the end.

Tyson had left the hammer blossom the painter fitted his thumb into, he admitted that, his head a thousand miles away from this suckass job. Anything, even this gypo foreman, to get off the bench, pay a few more bills from the stack. And, no, he’d whispered, he hadn’t used the air nailer. His father said going that fast only got you in deeper quicker. And, it turned out, the foreman had been the chimp who’d done the framing. Way deeper, way quicker.

He took the brass slide bevel from the sill, folded it in on itself like a jack knife and put it into its drawer in the toolbox. Then, hesitating only a moment, Tyson lifted his long-handled, waffle-faced framing hammer from the box, its heft weapon-like, medieval. He flipped it a few times, then turned the straight claw forward and stepped toward the air compressor the foreman had plugged back in, wondering what kind of explosion he’d get puncturing its tank. But when he swung it was only at the hose.

The claw sliced it clean, the hose whipping like a broke-back snake, the compressor motor kicking in its goddamn roar. Tyson jerked his hammer out of the flooring and stepped to the door where the painter had pointed out nails he hadn’t even set yet. He set them all now, an inch and a quarter waffle stomp crushed into the cheapass fingerjoint over every single one.

He turned to the rest of the room, the air hose still, but the compressor laboring on, unable to bring the whole room up to pressure. Suddenly Tyson felt the same way, and when he looked out the bay, saw the foreman and painter laughing by the painter’s van, he reared back and pitched his hammer straight through the glass, the delicate wood framing.

Before his hammer landed, he’d turned and hefted the toolbox. He staggered down the hall with it, blowing by the foreman at the doorway, who only stood back and said, “Your check will go toward that window.”

Tyson slid the toolbox into his truck, retrieved his hammer from the lumpy new sod, and flipped the gaping painter the finger before starting off down the hill.

He hit pavement soon enough, managed to hold to the speed limit, drive through town almost like a sane person, pulling into his spot at the end of the long handicap row, all like it was quitting time, not ten in the morning. He nodded to Marla at the front desk, said his hellos to Mrs. Davies quaking in front of her room, Mrs. Hoffman asking to see the birds. He took the hand of Mrs. Vaughn, patting it, saying he would indeed find someone who could help.

He saluted Mr. Shushanek at his corner, who straightened and raised his arm as high as it would go. The black sands of Iwo Jima to here. Tyson whispered “Semper Fi” and patted his shoulder before slipping through his father’s doorway.

Tyson sagged into his chair at the head of the...