Read Online Call Me Home by Megan Kruse - Free Book Online

to walk back up through town. All of the little shops were closed, except for a little bar called Pete’s – it looked smaller than the Longhorn and like if you needed to look at it twice you probably weren’t invited. There were plenty of cars outside the Longhorn, though, and he could hear the jukebox.
    Whatever scene he imagined – Minor Kicked Out of Local Bar, Loses Job He Was Never Qualified For! – faded away. Dave Riley called him over and made an invisible sign to the waitress and suddenly there was beer in front of him, and he was being introduced to some of the men who worked on the other sites, and it really was that bar dream, then. He took off his jacket and his arms had streaks of dust, and the guy everyone called Slow Honey clapped him hard on the back. He drank from the beer.
    â€œYou make any money today, Honey?” someone asked. “We’ve got a load of scrap and rebar down on eight.”
    Honey tipped the brim of his hat up. “Yup,” he said.
    Dave was sitting beside him and he put a hand on Jackson’s shoulder. Jackson started from the warm weight of it. “Honey’s our not-for-profit junkman. He makes his own little fortune picking off our scrap.” Jackson had seen Honey in his pickup hauling a trailer of scrap metal, twisted parts. Honey didn’t seem slow; but then, Jackson thought, it was hard to tell with the quiet ones. Hehadn’t spoken more than a few words in the last few days and they probably thought he was slow, too. Better to be a thought a fool than proved a fool, he thought.
    Newlon, the crew boss, bought a round for everyone. The conversation dipped and swung, words like the tools themselves, the raw material of work. Rebar, scrap, plywood. Skill saw. Forms. The sturdy little blocks of names: Ed, Don, Dick, Joe – Jack, he thought, he would be Jack. Who had it good, who didn’t. The concrete guys, who had it easy. All of their scrap settling down in the foundation, roughneck gypsies, backfilling dirt and moving on. The beer was dark and bitter and Jackson let it wash over him, conversation, the comfort of being unnoticed, of being part of a group of men who worked.
    â€œI was driving one of the big old one tons, thirty-year-old dump truck things with the hydraulic lift –”
    â€œShe had tits like this –”
    â€œâ€“ just hit the switch and dumped it all on that brand new Lexus –”
    â€œYou just couldn’t believe she was his sister –”
    He tried to name each man at the table and couldn’t. Don Newlon was the boss, he knew that – olive-skinned, long and lean, that dark beard. He looked away. Dick, Ed, Eli – they were construction, still snowed with sawdust that fell from their clothes to the bar floor. Joe was the one next to him – lanky and mean looking. He had a scar over his left eye.
    â€œMy first summer,” Joe was saying to Don, “that bastard was up on the roof and I was down below, cutting whatever he yelled out and handing it up to him. I was on the ground with the plywood and it had just rained – I’m standing in a pool of water and it’s hell. I’m dying, and I’m scared as shit because it’s my first job and he’s such a bastard, and I keep fucking up because that saw is killing my hands, and finally he gets pissed and comes down and grabs the saw and nearly drops it, like What the fuck? There was a current running through that fucker. That was two hours I was getting electrocuted because I was so damn afraid of him.”
    Don laughed and shook his head. He turned toward the bartender and swept his hand in a circle. Another round. He was a good boss, Jackson thought. He could tell by the way the men talked in front of him. And Ed, the one at the end of the table. Ed was funny, but he was good, Jackson thought. He finished his beer and picked up the new one. He’d never had beer that tasted so good, just