14
My Feet No Longer Touch Earth
In October Dad won a contract to build industrial granaries in Malad City, the
dusty farmtown on the other side of Buck’s Peak. It was a big job for a small
outfit—the crew was just Dad, Shawn, Luke, and Audrey’s husband,
Benjamin—but Shawn was a good foreman, and with him in charge Dad had
acquired a reputation for fast, reliable work.
Shawn wouldn’t let Dad take shortcuts. Half the time I passed the shop, I’d
hear the two of them shouting at each other, Dad saying Shawn was wasting
time, Shawn screaming that Dad had damned near taken someone’s head off.
Shawn worked long days cleaning, cutting and welding the raw materials
for the granaries, and once construction began he was usually on-site in
Malad. When he and Dad came home, hours after sunset, they were nearly
always cussing. Shawn wanted to professionalize the operation, to invest the
profits from the Malad job in new equipment; Dad wanted things to stay the
same. Shawn said Dad didn’t understand that construction was more
competitive than scrapping, and that if they wanted to land real contracts,
they needed to spend real money on real equipment—specifically, a new
welder and a man lift with a basket.
“We can’t keep using a forklift and an old cheese pallet,” Shawn said. “It
looks like shit, and it’s dangerous besides.”
Dad laughed out loud at the idea of a man basket. He’d been using a
forklift and pallet for twenty years.
I worked late most nights. Randy planned to take a big road trip to find new
accounts, and he’d asked me to manage the business while he was gone. He
taught me how to use his computer to keep the books, process orders,
maintain inventory. It was from Randy that I first heard of the Internet. He
showed me how to get online, how to visit a webpage, how to write an email.
The day he left, he gave me a cellphone so he could reach me at all hours.