Read Online Make Me Work by Ralph Lombreglia - Free Book Online Page A

to race the best three out of five. Yellow extension cords emerge from two knife switches at the beginning of the long, enclosed track. A racer hooks his sander to a cord, waits for the signal, and throws the switch. Anita starts taping the first racers getting ready to run.
    â€œCan you do that?” Rebecca says. “Are you O.K.?”
    â€œIt’s just a tiny little camera,” Anita says. “I’m fine. I love shooting.”
    Her camera goes through a cable to the small monitor propped on a chair. I watch the proceedings on the screen, through Anita’s eye. The racers get into position; the official gives the signal; they throw the switches. The whole thing takes about three seconds—the sanders hurtling down the track so fast I’m surprised Anita can pan to get it. Somehow it’s not quite the mythic deed I imagined. But Benny’s enjoying it thoroughly. “Way to go, boy!” he calls out to the winner.
    Most of the thirty or so contenders have shown up with the sanders they use every day, rugged machines that put bread on the table but don’t know the taste of glory. After a half hour of heats, all but ten have been eliminated. Tempesto, known to be fast, has skipped the preliminaries. Now he’s up. The guys with the HIPPIE TRASH T-shirts have the hot sander, an expensive-looking Milwaukee, but Tempesto doesn’t go against them at first. He has to grind his way up through the ranks. He approaches the track holding Dwight’s garbage bag, and with a grand flourish he unveils Veritas Grit.
    â€œWhat the hell is that!” the other racers cry, laughing at the ugly homebrew thing. “What’s Verified Grit?”
    â€œVeritas,” Tempesto corrects them. “It’s Latin for Harvard.”
    He plugs the machine in and places it on the track next to a spanking Black & Decker, lots of heavy chrome. The official counts down to the start. When the Makita gets the juice it makes a cracking sound they haven’t heard around here since Yastrzemski retired, bucks into the air, hits the floor and zigzags out of control, pinballs against the wooden boundaries, knocks its opponent over, and finally flips right out of the track and across the floor before Tempesto shuts it down.
    â€œWhat the hell was that!” the carpenters shout.
    Dwight and Benny huddle around Tempesto for a conference. Tempesto seems to know what’s wrong. He sticks a screwdriver into the machine to adjust some things, installs a new sandpaper belt, and they run again. Whatever he’s done is what it needed, because now Veritas Grit just makes the Black & Decker look silly, smoking past the finish line before the poor Decker is halfway there.
    The carpenters are mad. They demand to see the Makita. They want to hold it. “It don’t weigh nothin’!” one of them exclaims. “Disqualify this thing!”
    â€œNo, boys,” says Dwight. “No, no. Nobody said this was a stock-sander race. You don’t change the rules in the middle of a game.”
    The carpenters run their knowing thumbs along the belt of Veritas Grit. “Where did you get this?” one of them asks. “I’ve never seen this anywhere.”
    â€œThat’s our sponsor’s new product,” says Tempesto, winking at Benny, who is happily florid on the sidelines, gin and tonic coming through the armpits of his suit. “Soon at a store near you.”
    The carpenters call a time-out to tweak their machines. Rebecca puts Anita in a chair by the window and rubs her with ice while Dwight rewinds the tape to look at it.
    â€œI’m liking this!” Benny says, watching the little screen. “I think I can sell the kid on this! This is the kind of thing he just might like!”
    â€œThat’s the spirit, Benny!” Dwight says.
    â€œI just had a thought!” Benny says. “A big thought! This could become some kind of craze! We could become the