Tonight was my last chance. I had to get back to the yard by five so I could be at The Hangout by six, waiting for Angela, ready to show her I was the one she wanted. That way it’d be me walking her to the parking lot when the time came, sneaking my hand up her shirt again, and seeing what happened next.
“WELL, SHIT, I guess we’re late for our date,” Jimmy said when we got to the first drop, over on Greenhills. Roofers crowded the top of the pink-bricked ranch house like lizards on a rock. They were drinking Cokes and lying back, eyes hooded under ballcaps. We’d done a few shingle runs before, and the first time out Jimmy had told me about roofers. “Lowest of the low,” he’d said. “When a man can’t get a job doing anything else, he becomes a roofer.” Since then I’d always regarded roofers, and roofs, with a quiet disdain.
The head roofer came over to the truck. After we’d driven across the ruined chain-link fence and parked on the grass we’d found him sitting under a crab-apple tree, the only thing in the backyard left standing. His skin was leathered and red, and he wore a dirty denim shirt and a chewed-up Lone Star Feed hat.
“Twenty bucks and me and my partner’ll put these shingles on the roof,” Jimmy said, nodding at me when he said “partner.”
“Done,” the head roofer said, and passed Jimmy a twenty and got back under his tree. He took a Marlboro from the pack in his shirt pocket and lit up.
If the roofers didn’t give us the twenty bucks we unloaded the shingles on the ground, which sucked for them. They’d have to haul the bundles up one by one on a ladder. But with the truck backed just right we only had to lift them from the bed, which was already more than halfway up the side of your basic ranch house. After he pocketed the twenty and gave me a ten, Jimmy edged the truck against the house, and then we got out.
“Go on up,” Jimmy said once we’d both climbed onto the bed.
“You go up.” The few other times we’d done this I’d been the one stuck on the roof. If I wasn’t careful my foot could go through a soft spot, put me in a wheelchair for life if the roof was rotten enough. Mike had told me the stories himself.
“You going to sling these shingles?” Jimmy asked.
I couldn’t, of course — I was too weak. Each bundle was sixty pounds. Without a word I scrabbled up over the gutter, and once I was on the roof Jimmy started handing the shingles to me. He hoisted them like they were nothing while I waddled, bent-backed, as I carried them up and down the slope of the house and dropped them wherever the roofers pointed. They didn’t get up, just nodded and grunted. As I walked back to fetch the next bundle, my arms floated up in release and I’d look out at the mile-long tornado cut that ran through town, scabbed over here and there with fresh plywood and timber, dotted with trash piles and teams of volunteers in the neon-colored shirts donated by the TV station over in Tyler. Then I’d pick up the next bundle and forget about the tornado as I strained and breathed little breaths and prayed I wouldn’t make a fool of myself before I dumped the sucker. On the roof’s far slope, where the plywood hadn’t been replaced, it was harder to find the rafters, and my third trip over I missed one. My foot sank into the plywood — a soft spot, rotted to sponge. This was it. Thinking of Angela, the three minutes of her I’d had and all the minutes I wanted, I eased my weight to my other foot, still balanced on a rafter. The roofer watching me let out a guzzling laugh. I wobbled, then got myself clear, and once both feet were settled I tossed the shingles before the roofer could point. We only had a few bundles left and each trip back I eyed the divot and moved my feet in straight lines along the rafters I’d found. Soon we’d finished. The roofers began to cuss and rise. Before I got off the roof they already had the nail guns going, the bright new chestnut shingles spreading up from the eaves.
WHEN THE TORNADO HAD COME, back in April, I was at the junior college, on the top floor of Pfaff Hall waiting for my history class. The siren we always heard on the second Wednesday of every month blared, and at first I thought it was an idiot cop pulling a prank. But then an announcement echoed down the cinder-block halls: a tornado had touched down and we had to get to the bottom floor, away from glass. A sudden giddiness rattled the air. The juco profs stationed themselves at spaced points and waved us forward, as if they’d trained for it, and at the end of the hall Franciosa James, who I’d shared a table with in fourth-grade homeroom, shouted, “Gonna motherfucking storm up in here.” People near him laughed. “I ain’t making no joke.”
Franciosa’s words were the true signal. Low-grade panic kicked through me, and I fought my way toward the stairs, weaving around others. Just before the stairwell, though, I got blocked by three girls whose tank-topped, salon-toasted skin I’d contemplated all semester. They held each other as they walked, the one in the middle bawling. Temporarily forfeiting my panic, I reached out to put a hand on her. With everything upended, who knew what might happen? But a guy in a camo shirt elbowed himself between us. The bulk of his thick, broad body muffled what I’d started saying to the girl, about it being okay, and I had to listen to him show off. He said he’d walk right now over to the Show Room for a shot if he could get some company, and one of the girls chuckled. I gave up and downstairs I sat an extra length from the nearest person. Death, I meet thee alone, I said to myself, thinking it was from a poem in high school. I didn’t really believe I was going to die, I just liked the charge of it, like everyone else.
A giant girl in shiny basketball shorts, curly hair sweat-plastered to her head, stared at her cell phone as texts came in and called out to everyone that the tornado had crossed Dudley Road. Then the power went out and the bawling girl screamed. In school they’d told us a tornado was supposed to sound like a freight train, but I didn’t hear anything. We all sat there in silence, except the guy in the camo shirt, who for no reason burst out laughing a couple of times, maniacal. Twenty minutes later a janitor came in and said we could get up, the tornado was gone. It had veered just after Dudley and sliced through another part of town.
For a moment disappointment seeped through the hall, then we rallied. Everyone tried their cell phones, but the tower must have been down, so we filed out of the building and while some went to their cars I settled in with the rest — the three girls among them — who walked under the now-calm sky to look for destruction. We headed east, where the janitor and sweaty-haired girl’s reports had last placed the tornado, and at Henderson Boulevard we found a police barricade already put up. A hushed crowd had gathered along it, bristling with arms that wheeled about at the whims of greedy, pointing fingers. Across from the barricade the doughnut shop had folded in on itself, its refrigerator of milks tilting out what remained of the front door, the cartons spoiling in the sun. I could only muster a whispered “Holy shit” as I marveled.
Half a block up the famous barbecue place had vanished into a pile, its blue vans picked up and sprinkled across the street. Paramedics were there, ministering to people with cuts. Beyond, in the neighborhood that spread from behind the strip of restaurants, splintery twists of wood curled up out of the ground, the remains of trees, and the houses looked like knocked-out drunks, windows empty and black, bits of everything vomited everywhere, glass, mail, china, pictures, stuffed animals, appliances large and small. A police cruiser was parked at the head of the street, lights flashing, and at some of the houses people had come into their yards. It was like looking at zoo animals in their habitats. Beside me a knot of men estimated death counts. Ten, twenty. One fevered guy in a green Subway shirt said it’d be a hundred at least. Some police had stopped in for footlong tunas, and that’s what he’d heard, a hundred, and then he’d clocked out and left to come see. The number jittered through me. I looked around for the three girls, hoping I could be the one to tell them, but they were off who knew where.