“Bad,” the Louisianan hollered back from the next level down. “The one stay is out entirely. Putting a bad strain on the others. You got three lines and God holding it up.”
God, he felt, could be relied on, but he wasn’t so sure of the other stays. “OK.” Flaco put the two-way to his face. “Crane, what do you have on the pivot arm up in the ceiling?”
“Hook and ball, why?”
“Run some tackle out there and swing it over. We can run a basket rig under the nose lock and lower it using both cranes.”
“I don’t know…”
“Do it!” Flaco had no authority to give the orders. But someone had to do something, fast. He looked to Jimmy, who scowled and nodded and leaned out of the ship to make a thumbs-up gesture to the control booth.
The echo of the motors tripping in the ceiling emphasized how silent the maintenance hangar had become. Flaco watched as several cables of chain tackle ran out the pivot arm, which then swung across the room until it could drop the line between the nose lock and the ship. Flaco guided the operator using the two-way until the ball-and-hook dangled just outside the ship.
Flaco swallowed and gave a nod to the three men with him. Then he clipped his safety line to a cross bar and, before he could remember what a fool he was, stepped across and into the curve of the hook.
It was a big hook, strong enough to hold more than a mere human—and a skinny one at that; but Flaco could not stand comfortably except on one foot. He clipped his second line to the lanyard on the hook cable. Jimmy unclipped the first line and it rolled up into its reel on Flaco’s belt. Flaco wrapped his arm around the crane cable and gave him a nod, trying to look unconcerned. Jimmy gave him a salute. “See you in heaven.”
The cable danced and swayed. Flaco looked up to see Red Hawkins clipping himself to the line farther up. “We don’t have to both be out here,” Flaco said.
“Fuck you, Chico. This is my job. They unhooked your load down below and brought number two crane over to the other side of my load. I’m going to transfer over. You bring the fly end of the tackle underneath and I’ll run it up the other side. Then we’ll do the same thing with the second strap. You got a problem with that, Chico?”
“No problem. Like you said, gringo. Your job.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
Flaco waited until Red had secured himself on the other side of the nose lock, then gave the crane operator the go-ahead to lower them both. When they met underneath, Flaco handed Red the free end of one of the chains. He was acutely aware of the massive structure dangling over him. He could feel its weight curling the hairs on the back of his neck. He said, “It would be tragic if the rigging gave way now.”
Red grunted and looked up. “Yeah, it’d be the end of a beautiful fucking friendship. But look again, Chico. It ain’t the rigging giving way, it’s the nose lock. Fucking corrosion is what it is.” He fixed the end of the chain to his crane. “And damn me if I’ll let you look good at my expense.”
They finished the job without speaking. When the basket rig was secure—and they checked that six ways from Sunday—Red gave the signal to the crane operator to lower away on both cranes. The nose lock swung as the new lines took off some of the weight and its center of gravity shifted, but it reached the ground without incident. The other candidates and the Pegasus people burst into applause as Flaco dropped off the hook onto the floor. Meat, up on the catwalk, gave him a thumbs-up. Red slid down a free chain from the traverse beam. He glowered at the nose lock while he tugged his heavy canvas gloves off. Flaco tucked his own gloves in his tool belt and offered his hand.
“Good work, man.”
Red slapped his gloves against his left palm. He looked like he wanted to punch out the mechanism. “I always do good work, mate.” He turned away without shaking hands and faced White Hat, who had come over and was squatting by the nose lock. One of the men in the brown coveralls was kneeling by his side, and they were conversing in low tones. “So, what’s the verdict?” Red demanded.
The brown-coveralled man held up fingertips covered with rust. “It appears to be salt water corrosion, but we cannot be sure yet.”
“No, blimey. I meant the goddamned test!”
White Hat looked up. “The results will be posted this evening,” he said.
Flaco grabbed the examiner’s sleeve and tugged him around. “You crazy, ’mano,” he shouted. “What kind of test was that? People could have been hurt; killed, maybe!” He threw his work order, his exam paper, to the ground. Red stepped away from him, as if to dissociate himself from the outburst. Tomorrow Flaco would curse himself for yelling at the examiner and blowing his chances for the job, but right now he didn’t care.
White Hat flushed, and his ears grew a prominent red. He stood up and yanked his sleeve from Flaco’s grasp. “Get a grip, kid,” he said. “We don’t play things that way. You may not be worth jack shit, but that nose lock is sure as hell valuable hardware.”
Flaco stood back and his arms fell to his side. “It wasn’t?…”
“A test?” White Hat snorted. “Of course it was. It just wasn’t planned.”
Flaco flew into JFK on US West. Serafina was waiting for him at the end of the concourse and nearly knocked him over when she jumped into his arms. They were standing in the middle of the flow of traffic, but Flaco didn’t care. For every glower they got from an outta-my-way businessman they got five smiles from people who remembered what love had been like.
“Oh, Flaco, I missed you,” she said between rapid-fire kisses.
“And I missed you,” he said, lowering her to the floor.
“Ha,” she tucked her arm through his and they made their way through the crowds toward the shuttle bus. “You out there in the sunny desert with all those Mexicana women to tease you…”
“I did not see one ’Chicana half so beautiful as you.” And it was true. Others might argue that Serafina’s nose was a little too big, or that her breasts were not, or that her legs were too short, but not Flaco. He could remember the women in the New Kon Tiki, their golden brown and tan skin, their easy availability; but worn, and old before their years, and none so fine on the eyes as Serafina. Serafina’s love was free, and he had paid for it the ultimate price: the rest of his life.
For dinner that evening, Flaco took Serafina to Mambi on Broadway. It was a warm night. A night that wanted walking. They strolled cross-town arm in arm, letting silence do for words. August 16 was only a week and a half off, and a festive mood was beginning to build in the neighborhood. There had been Dominicans on Manhattan since the late seventeen hundreds. Upper Broadway—here at the northern tip of Manhattan—was a Dominican Broadway and the clubs and theaters that lined the street pulsed to the merengue. The breeze carried the rich odors of sofrito and mangu and thick guisados. The panas and their bombias, the young men and their women, were laughing and dancing in the street, holding impromptu parties on the corners, or eating their mondongo with beans and wet rice. Not that the anniversary of Trujillo’s capture meant anything to them. It meant little enough to Flaco, despite the long, impassioned stories he had heard at his grandfather’s knee. Mostly third and fourth generation in America, the brightly dressed young men and women bubbling on the street knew the day only as an excuse for alegría.
Flaco exchanged greetings with a dozen friends in the few short blocks. Half of them did not even know that Flaco had been gone. A carefree bunch, even when care was called for. Here and there in the crowd Flaco marked older men in their thirties with hooded, predatory eyes, and he hugged Serafina closer to him. Danger wore an older face than it once did. There was safety in crowds, but it was never entirely safe.