“And Then It Rained” is a work of
fiction, but it’s based on real events so tragic that I was driven to find
solace in the only sure way that I know – through the catharsis of writing. I’m very
glad that this story placed first in Fiction in the Write on the Lake Contest.
It’s an incredible honour, but like all of my work, I wrote it first and
foremost for myself.
And Then It Rained
CW Lovatt – 26/03/2012 – 22/05/2012
Flashes
of lightning had begun to glimmer, mute, on the horizon, but went unnoticed as Ben
took his foot off the gas, slowing to a crawl. The truck’s headlights shone
full upon the mailbox at the end of the lane, the letters stenciled on its side
were faded, but still recognizable: ‘The Woodsons.’
This was the place all right, but he
had mixed feelings when he switched on his signal and turned into the yard.
Marcy, at the head office, had given him the address over the phone, but only after
he’d insisted.
“You don’t have
to do this.”
But he did have
to, that was the thing.
(Whump!)
“Just tell me,”
he’d said.
Two pinpoints
of light were reflected off the low beams, and the yard erupted in a
deep-chested baying that could only come from something enormous.
Ben switched
off the engine and stepped out. The dog’s barking was even louder now,
approaching rapidly.
He murmured,
“Hey, boy!”
The barking
stopped long enough for the Rottweiler to take stock and consider. Then it was,
‘Nope, don’t know you’, and it began
again, but with a short pause after each, sending a message that was subtly different:
“Boss! We got company – better come
quick!”
Ben tried
again. “Nothing to worry about, fella. I’m not here to hurt anyone,” but even
as he said it, he wondered how much of that was true.
Just then the
porch light came on, illuminating the faded clapboard siding on the front of
the old bungalow. A screen door squealed open, and a voice, vaguely female,
rasped, “Clancy! Hush now! Where’s your manners?”
The barking
stopped, as if a hand had been clamped over the dog’s muzzle. He contented
himself with one last suppressed “ruff”, and wandered off without further ado.
“Mrs. Woodson?”
A plain,
middle-aged woman peered at him uncertainly, so he stepped closer to be more
easily seen, making it easier for him to see her in turn. The flesh around her
eyes was red and swollen.
“It’s Ben
Ginter. I meant to come earlier, but…”
Recognition was
instant. Doubtless his name had been mentioned to her several times these past
few months. Mrs. Woodson’s tone was neutral when she swung the door fully open
and said, “Come inside.”
He entered into
a clean but aging kitchen. An ancient
refrigerator sagged against one wall, emitting a long-suffering groan. A
well-used stove crouched patiently next to it, surrounded by plain wooden
cabinets, with a counter of chipped and stained formica. A stainless steel sink
completed the triangle: it was a habit that his eye could never quite relinquish
after forty years in the trades – and he noted that the sink was too far left,
slightly off-center to the window overlooking the driveway.
Mrs. Woodson
ushered him into the living room, and asked him to sit. He chose a worn,
vinyl-covered easy chair beneath a velvet painting of Elvis, and immediately
wished that he hadn’t. This chair must have been Cecil’s.
“Can I get you anything? Coffee?”
“No thanks.”
The very thought of her acting the part of the hostess felt obscene.
Her expression
became more calculating when she saw his hands fidget with his cap. “No, maybe
not coffee. I expect you might want something stronger.”
Ben hesitated.
Suddenly he needed a drink more than anything. Mrs. Woodson ended his
indecision with, “Might as well. I’m having one.”
He murmured, “Okay…thanks,”
painfully aware of how easily he’d surrendered.
She went into
the kitchen and returned with two plastic tumblers, and a bottle of Crown
Royal, three-quarters full. She unstopped the cap and poured for them both.
Then she took a seat on the sofa across from him, picked up a half-finished
afghan, and began to crochet.
“Hope you don’t
mind. I like to keep busy.”
“No, of course
not.”
Now he wished
that he hadn’t come. Let the head office and the authorities take care of it.
What was she to him anyway? What was Cecil, when it came to that? He was just
someone he’d hired in a moment of desperation, because there’d been a schedule
to keep, and not enough tradesmen to be found. But even as the thought formed
in his mind, he knew that it wouldn’t do. The fact was that he had hired him. He’d invited this woman’s
husband into the realm where he, Ben, was responsible. That’s why he was here –
why he had to be.
He hadn’t
realized how long the silence had stretched until she said, “So, Mr. Ginter,
suppose you tell me what happened?”
“Ben,” he
replied, more as a reflex. “Call me Ben.”
“Okay, Ben, and
you call me Elsie.” Then she sighed, and prompted, “The Mounties have already
been by. They told me what they knew, which wasn’t much.” The crocheting
stopped, and he found those red-rimmed eyes studying him…almost pleading. “I
thought you might fill me in on the details.”
Ben closed his
eyes. The awful ‘whump’ came without
prompting, the same as it had throughout the day – like a heavy sheet of snow
falling from an eave - and there he was again, arguing with his pre-cast
foreman, while the crane slowly clanked into place. Over by the structure, Cecil
stood on a ladder with an angle grinder in his hand, and a plastic visor
attached to his hardhat, waiting for instructions – none of them knowing that
he had only moments to live.
“There was a
mistake with one of the wall slabs,” he told her.
It played over
in his mind:
“We got a problem, Jim. There’s supposed to
be a door here.”
Jim had shuffled noncommittally and made a
show of studying the blueprints. Finally he suggested, “Maybe we can change the floor plan a
little.”
Quietly Elsie
said, “I see.”
“The walls are
made of pre-cast concrete,” he explained, “welded to the superstructure.”
“I know,” she
said, still quietly, but a ghost of a smile creased her mouth, “Cecil never
shut up about it. It was always something. Seems he couldn’t wait to get home
every night to tell me the latest.” The smile disappeared, to be replaced by a
short, pensive frown. She took a sip from her glass and set it back on the
armrest. “Go on.”
“Each slab is
different. All of the openings – doors and windows, and the like – are formed
in before they’re installed.”
“I know that,
too, Ben. I told you, Cecil likes…” she caught herself, “liked to talk about what was going on.” Not unkindly, she added, “It
was something new for him.”
“Oh?”
“Yep,” and the
smile returned. “He’d tell me, ‘It’s not like farming, Elsie. Just gotta do
what I’m told. No worries, no thinkin’, nothin’ to make my head hurt’.” Her
voice faltered, and she took another, healthier sip from her glass. “I expect
he should have applied himself more in that department.”
Ben didn’t know
how to respond. It was true, of course. It was an all too preventable accident
brought on by a series of errors, and crowned by a last, thoughtless act, but he
couldn’t tell her that, not in those words. The silence was in danger of
becoming awkward, so he took a sip from his own glass, and continued.
“This morning,
I was looking at what had been erected the day before, and saw that a section
had been put in the wrong place.”
“The openings
were wrong?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“So it had to
be dismantled?”
He remembered:
“Jim, changing the layout isn’t an option,
and you know it.”
“Well, what then?”
He had to raise his voice over the roar of a
large diesel engine. A concrete truck turned onto the site, disappearing behind
the back of the building. Ben checked his watch - right on time.
“It’ll have to be changed.”
“Yes.”
In a low
guarded voice Elsie asked, “Did you supervise that personally, Ben?”
Jim rolled his eyes, still attempting to
avoid the obvious. “Aw Christ, Ben, that’s bullshit.”
Ben agreed, “We’re already behind schedule
as it is.” He took another glance at his watch, and made a decision. “I’d
better be at the pour. Those guys are still green.”
(‘Whump!’)
“No, Mrs.
Woodson…”
“Elsie,
remember?”
“Sorry. No,
Elsie, I had to be somewhere else. The air-handling units are due to arrive
next week, and the mechanical people needed the floor to be poured so that they
could be installed.” Somehow apologetic, he added, “Our crew’s pretty young.”
“I can imagine
that it’s a young man’s job.”
“The flat work
is,” he agreed.
“Cecil told me
that he’d been on a few pours. Said it almost broke him in two.”
Ben allowed himself
a guarded smile. “I can relate.”
Then, almost casually,
she returned to the subject. “So who supervised the moving of the slab?”
He felt his
smile melt away.
“Look, I’m going to have to leave this with
you, Jim. So quick as you can, okay?”
Not entirely
avoiding the question, yet unable to face her, he said, “It was my
responsibility.”
She nodded, silently
focusing on her glass. Moments passed. He could hear the compressor in the refrigerator
grumble on. Finally she whispered, “It was your responsibility…and my man’s
dead. Is that it?”
As much as Ben
wanted to answer, as much as he wanted to tell her, ‘Yes, it was my fault,’ the
words refused to come.
(Whump!)
“I’m sorry, I
shouldn’t have said that.”
Elsie had taken
up her crochet hook again, her fingers working without conscious effort. She
paused only to dash a tear from her eye, also without being aware of doing so.
“Yes, you
should,” he said, as if her apology had offended him, spurring the words from
his mouth. “It’s the truth.” Wasn’t that why he was here? Didn’t he want her to
confirm what he was feeling – that he was to blame?
Elsie sighed,
and the afghan slumped onto her lap.
Unblinking, she looked him full in the face. “No Ben, it’s not.”
But Ben
couldn’t bring himself to agree.
She continued
to stare at him, her brow knit in a frown. Her face had long since lost what
little beauty it had ever possessed, but her concern made much of the plainness
disappear. The refrigerator heaved a sigh and took a break, the void filled by
the intermittent drip of a leaking faucet. Finally she picked up her crocheting
again, and said, “Suppose you continue.”
There wasn’t
much more to tell. As he’d turned to follow the concrete truck, he could hear Cecil
asking something over the roar of the crane’s engine, and Jim’s disgusted
reply, “Yeah, he says we gotta move the fucking thing!” followed by his
shouting something to the crane operator, and the skirl of Cecil’s grinder, but
all were scarcely noted. By then his mind was already preoccupied with laying
the floor. If it hadn’t been, if he had stayed to see the job through, he might
have been able to prevent what was about to happen. Even so, he was vaguely
troubled as he reached the end of the structure and rounded the corner. After
forty years, the sites and sounds of construction had become engrained. It
might look like chaos, even to a trained eye, but there was an order to it all;
everything was always done in a sequence…always. Something, some sound - some thing was out of place. If only he’d had
a few seconds longer to figure out what it was.
(Whump!)
Ben looked at
her, steady as he could, and got it out in a single breath, “Cecil cut the welds
before the crane could take on any of the weight.”
Jim’s face, white and bewildered, inches
from his own, shouting, “I tried to tell him, Ben. Jesus Christ! I was yelling
for him to stop, but the grinder…you know…the damned fool couldn’t hear me!”
Elsie groaned,
“Oh my God!”
Ben’s hat was
crumpled in his fists. “Yeah.”
Whump!
The sound hadn’t been loud, but horribly out
of place. That’s what had made him stop and come sprinting back; it was that
and the fact that the penny had finally dropped as to what had been troubling
him. It was the grinder. Cecil was cutting the slab free of the superstructure
far too soon!
He rounded the corner at a run, his mind
registering everything as he came: the slab lying flat on the ground, the
crane’s hook still high in the air, and Jim with his back to it all, doubled
over, the splatter of vomit on his boots. He could feel the hairs rising on the
back of his neck, his own voice sounding foreign – sounding scared as hell –
when he heard himself demand, “For Christ’s sake, where’s Cecil?” Jim couldn’t
answer, but he didn’t need to: Ben already knew.
The dripping
faucet gave way once more to the discontent of the refrigerator, like an old
and reluctant actor taking centre-stage in a long forgotten play.
Elsie took up
the bottle, re-filling her glass. She tipped it interrogatively toward Ben, but
he shook his head. She didn’t press him. Instead, she took a sip and asked,
“So, that’s it?”
“Yeah, that’s
it.” Inadequate as it was, there was little more he could tell her.
Elsie nodded,
reflecting. “It was his own fault.”
“I tried to tell him, Ben!”
Miserable, Ben
shook his head. “I’m responsible. If only….”
She waved her
hand, impatiently. “Cecil kept goin’ on about how you were always pushing
safety.” The smile briefly returned. “He said that you were an old woman about
that - never letting up.” Then the lightness was gone from her voice, replaced
by something cold. “But at the end of it all, a man has to be responsible for
himself!”
Ben thought
about all the safety meetings, all the lectures, the site inspections and
reports – a sea of paperwork that, in the end, had been enough to protect the
company and even himself, but had failed completely when it came to saving
Cecil.
He continued to
fist his hands into his cap, and uttered what, to him, was the highest praise.
“He was a good worker.”
But instead of
the gratitude that he’d hoped for, Elsie cast a baleful eye. “Maybe he was for
you, but he dragged his ass plenty around here.” Her gesture encompassed the
entire property. “It damn near drove me crazy,” she relented slightly, “although
at bottom he was a good man. Sometimes good’s all you get,” and then, in a
heartbeat, she relapsed into anger. “ I never married him for his brains!” She
turned to Ben, sensing his discomfort. “I expect you think that’s hard of me,
don’t you – speaking ill of the dead?”
Ben stared at
the floor and, of course, said nothing.
Elsie nodded,
accepting his silence as an answer. “Well, I don’t give a damn what you, or
anyone else thinks. Such as he was, Cecil was all mine, and I can say anything
about him I please. Right now, as far as I’m concerned, that sonuvabitch is
deep in the doghouse with me, and is likely to stay that way for some time to
come!” There was a fierce glare in her eyes, but she couldn’t keep her voice
from hitching over the last words. Still she persevered, “It was that stupid
bastard that’s gone and done this to me, Ben, not you.” She spat, laughing
bitterly into her glass, “Goin’ and gettin’ himself killed like that. No one’s
fault but his own!”
Ben rose to his
feet, more abruptly than intended, but the room was suddenly closing in, and there
wasn’t nearly enough air to breathe.
“I guess that’s
all I can tell you. I’m sorry, I wish there was more.”
Elsie set the
afghan aside and rose to her feet as well, escorting him to the door. Her eyes
were dry when she said, “I’m glad you came, Ben. Thank you for that.”
He hesitated at
the threshold, “If there’s anything you need…”
She waved the
words away. “No, I’ll be okay. I got the kids, and plenty of good neighbours.
I’ll be fine.” Behind her, the faucet continued to drip, and the refrigerator maintained
its long-aggrieved road toward expiring.
He turned and
left, feeling many things. None of them what he had come hoping to find.
Outside, Ben
got in his truck, turning on the ignition. The headlights shone full on Clancy,
lying at the front of the house, with his head on his paws, waiting patiently
for Cecil to come home.
Half a mile
down the gravel Ben pulled over to the shoulder, lighting a cigarette with
not-quite-steady hands. Closer now, strobes of lightning mingled with the
menacing rumble of thunder, revealing a heavy, overcast sky. The day wasn’t
through with him yet.
Most of it had
been spent with the police, and then a Health and Safety officer, who had
arrived shortly after the ambulance had left. In between, there had been time
for a brief stopover at the mechanical room. It was a cold hard fact that
concrete didn’t care about death. All it knew was that, once a pour started, it
had to finish, and would require all the usual pampering from beginning to end.
Rennie, the
flatwork foreman, was young. He knew his way around concrete more than he did
around men. When Ben stuck his head through the door opening, he saw him at one
end of the screed, attempting to coach one of the new kids struggling ineffectually
at the other end. Meanwhile, others were variously raking too much, not enough,
or not at all. Ben pulled on his rubber boots and waded in, barking orders,
trying unsuccessfully to keep the anger out of his voice. He dismissed the boy
on the screed, taking the position himself. Five minutes later, both the truck
and his anger were gone, and there was time for a few words.
Leaning casually
on a long-handled spade, Rennie said, “Hear there’s been trouble.” After Ben
told him, he slowly shook his head, then whispered like a prayer, “Sweet
Jesus.”
“Yeah,” Ben
agreed, and then came to the point. “You’re going to have to manage. My day’s
looking to be pretty full.”
Rennie accepted
the news without complaint. “I got this.”
“Finish the
pour, keep anyone you can trust with a trowel, and send the rest home.” Health
and Safety were bound to shut them down while they conducted their
investigation, but no one would want to stay anyway. Hell, he didn’t want to stay. He wanted to get as far away as he could,
and never think of this place, or Cecil, or that sound ever again, but he knew
that wasn’t going to happen. The Inspector would have plenty of questions, and
it was his job to supply the answers.
Rennie snorted,
somewhere between amusement and contempt. “I’m a long way from trusting any of
these momma’s boys on tools. No worries, boss, there’s only a couple hundred
square feet. I can do it with my eyes closed.” Almost as an afterthought, he
looked up at the underside of the roof decking, shrugged, and appended,
“Provided it don’t rain.”
Projects seldom
ran entirely in perfect synchronicity. The decking had already been laid, but
the roofers were late, held up on another project. Meanwhile the units would
arrive on schedule, and desperately needed a home. It had been a gamble to put
the floor in with the deck exposed to the elements, but at the time the sky had
not been unduly overcast, so the risk had been deemed acceptable. The trouble
was, if the gamble was lost, Rennie would urgently need a hand, and with his
crew already sent home, that meant Ben, spending a long cold night, fighting to
deflect the rainwater until the concrete could set unmolested.
Ben flicked the
butt of his cigarette out the window before putting the truck in gear, trying
to convince himself that the lightning wasn’t drawing any closer. Forty years
in the trades, but never a day like this one. A man had died on his watch, and
regardless of what Elsie Woodson or anyone else said, he was nowhere close to
coming to grips with that. Maybe one day he would be able to, but not tonight. Tonight,
he was sure, sleep would be just about as possible as bringing back the past.
His home was on
the far side of the city, with the job site along the way. Still a mile from
the turnoff, he tried to ignore the first drops splattering against his windshield,
but soon it was no longer possible as more and more followed, forcing him to
switch on the wipers. Tired in body, and
sick in spirit, he turned the truck into the enclosure, and parked next to
Rennie’s pickup, just outside the mechanical room, where a single, insufficient
bulb glimmered through a window.
Seconds later it began to pour.
The End
