Read Online Waiting by Philip Salom - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Philip Salom
Tags: Fiction
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out iron from shallow aquifers and veil everything in a filthy not a flirty red. They rain unsightly stains as if the stuff came hurtling from the massed backsides of a hundred hippos. Those grumpy animals that like to spray to further seed-life and to show they do not suffer fools.
An irregularly-shaped block of stone will not be forced into the gap. Whether it is a stubborn block or an unwelcoming gap, it has to be done. Angus leaves the engine running, like a good diesel should be, and tramps over to his ute to grab the pick and sledge hammer and his heavy steel chisel. The sky is clear and blue above him, as he pulls on gloves, then the unlikely safety goggles. Roughened hands were once the sign of a macho worker, a type immediately ruined by an eye-patch. Health and Safety is in capitals everyday now, as it never was then, with workers whose first action was to remove the annoying safety guards from machines, and who mocked anyone who worked with obvious care for their hands.
Several blows of the pick knock a small sparking gap in the stone, enough for him to swap the big attacking steel and shoulder-high blows for the chiselling. The hammer is heavier than some blokes could lift with one hand, let alone swing against the ball-end of the steel chisel. It takes slow, determined blows, one, and one, and one. And rests. Then again. Nothing happens fast with this material. No obvious grain like some rocks, or those rocks that give nothing then shatter at your feet. The blows must be judged carefully, given the blunt imprecision of the tools, and to avoid the jarring that kills the wrists and does little to the rock-face.
Iâm breaking rocks in the hot sunâ¦
How he wishes he didnât keep remembering this.
Then a section sheers off and falls beside the block.
He eases the clutch on the bobcat and nudges the boulder forwards into position, against, then into the gap between the other blocks. He pulls back and it stays. Not bad, not bad at all. He feels the satisfaction from making small adjustment to very heavy masses.
From uphill he can estimate the visual design by measure â the slope is cut into two by equal terraces made of stone â but from below he will need to judge it as the neighbours and the passers-by will see it. By eye. On paper it may seem perfect but from below its proportions look utterly wrong. Some might say, as the kids say, whatever. He is not ever, and never ever, a whatever person. He wants it right.
Playing with the stop-start and the left-right dynamics of his bobcat has made him slur with pleasure in the face of the greater powers. The bobcat pushes blade-first into a large ramp of stones. As it lifts the square-ish block he wants, a rounder stone tips awkwardly and the gods seize it, this spherical boulder, they bowl it straight downhill at the most expensive car they can see.
It tumbles out onto the driveway and, as he watches, it bounces heavily down the hard long path and thumps into a parked Mercedes. Black, glossy, German enamel. Quite beautiful. Deeply indented.
It bleeds silver. What to do? The shock of it, his error, embarÂrassment in full view. When he manages to get down to the car Angus tries to lift the stone by himself. Using the black and yellow bobcat would look like a bumble bee attacking a black car. Instead, staggering, he feels like a crazy Scots tossing boulders. He thinks of his entrails exploding through the fibrous walls of his abdomen or, much worse, his scrotum.
Hey you!
The feeling of this sound is heavier than the boulder. Or hernia. Hate. He can feel its vengeful eyes.
I have just taken a photo of you, shouts a woman. I have caught you red-handed.
As she wobbles fatly down towards him, still holding her mobile, the worldâs newest weapon for law-courts and YouTube. She lifts it higher to prove her point and as if she is comparing their held objects: her little iPhone and his cannon ball.
Is it⦠your car? I guess it is. Iâm
An irregularly-shaped block of stone will not be forced into the gap. Whether it is a stubborn block or an unwelcoming gap, it has to be done. Angus leaves the engine running, like a good diesel should be, and tramps over to his ute to grab the pick and sledge hammer and his heavy steel chisel. The sky is clear and blue above him, as he pulls on gloves, then the unlikely safety goggles. Roughened hands were once the sign of a macho worker, a type immediately ruined by an eye-patch. Health and Safety is in capitals everyday now, as it never was then, with workers whose first action was to remove the annoying safety guards from machines, and who mocked anyone who worked with obvious care for their hands.
Several blows of the pick knock a small sparking gap in the stone, enough for him to swap the big attacking steel and shoulder-high blows for the chiselling. The hammer is heavier than some blokes could lift with one hand, let alone swing against the ball-end of the steel chisel. It takes slow, determined blows, one, and one, and one. And rests. Then again. Nothing happens fast with this material. No obvious grain like some rocks, or those rocks that give nothing then shatter at your feet. The blows must be judged carefully, given the blunt imprecision of the tools, and to avoid the jarring that kills the wrists and does little to the rock-face.
Iâm breaking rocks in the hot sunâ¦
How he wishes he didnât keep remembering this.
Then a section sheers off and falls beside the block.
He eases the clutch on the bobcat and nudges the boulder forwards into position, against, then into the gap between the other blocks. He pulls back and it stays. Not bad, not bad at all. He feels the satisfaction from making small adjustment to very heavy masses.
From uphill he can estimate the visual design by measure â the slope is cut into two by equal terraces made of stone â but from below he will need to judge it as the neighbours and the passers-by will see it. By eye. On paper it may seem perfect but from below its proportions look utterly wrong. Some might say, as the kids say, whatever. He is not ever, and never ever, a whatever person. He wants it right.
Playing with the stop-start and the left-right dynamics of his bobcat has made him slur with pleasure in the face of the greater powers. The bobcat pushes blade-first into a large ramp of stones. As it lifts the square-ish block he wants, a rounder stone tips awkwardly and the gods seize it, this spherical boulder, they bowl it straight downhill at the most expensive car they can see.
It tumbles out onto the driveway and, as he watches, it bounces heavily down the hard long path and thumps into a parked Mercedes. Black, glossy, German enamel. Quite beautiful. Deeply indented.
It bleeds silver. What to do? The shock of it, his error, embarÂrassment in full view. When he manages to get down to the car Angus tries to lift the stone by himself. Using the black and yellow bobcat would look like a bumble bee attacking a black car. Instead, staggering, he feels like a crazy Scots tossing boulders. He thinks of his entrails exploding through the fibrous walls of his abdomen or, much worse, his scrotum.
Hey you!
The feeling of this sound is heavier than the boulder. Or hernia. Hate. He can feel its vengeful eyes.
I have just taken a photo of you, shouts a woman. I have caught you red-handed.
As she wobbles fatly down towards him, still holding her mobile, the worldâs newest weapon for law-courts and YouTube. She lifts it higher to prove her point and as if she is comparing their held objects: her little iPhone and his cannon ball.
Is it⦠your car? I guess it is. Iâm
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