Dirt-Man

Out front it was brisk, the day was dimming in the sky, and the server was making the rounds with some pieces of breaded onion and a dipping sauce.
“I’ll have some of that,” I said to the accommodating young hostess.
She offered me some from the tray, then came back with a hot coffee and cream, said that someone else had maybe ordered two of them, then wanted one, and would I like the other one? I told her I would, poured the cream into the good coffee, warmed myself there in front of the Australian Steak Barn, while large people shuffled past, some limping from their tremendous weight—all of them wanting to get at the steaks in the steak barn.

At the Steak Barn the slogans were simple, if nonsensical: “Right! Our steaks are better’n eatin’ dirt, mate!” In my view the food was much better than dirt; I ordered the ribs, thinking that maybe this was not such a strong choice, but the meal was absolutely delicious. While waiting for the rest of my party, I’d thumbed through the pages of a book on French cottages and farmhouses. They were trying to sell it—along with a pile of other books—at the Friday sale. When I came along they offered me the whole lot for a buck. I took the books I wanted and left the rest. One of the books that stayed behind had to do with piloting boats in harbors. It was very old, talked about how many lights the boat should have, and where they should be positioned. Then there were drawings of boats, showing where the lights were and also describing how to park the boat and get it maneuvered in the busy waterways. I felt a cavernous sadness for the poor souls who—a thousand years ago—had to sit down with this book, look at the tiny print and try to read the horrible stuff.

So the wait was not so bad; I was outside, yes, enjoying the end of the day. The server would ply me with chicken and onions from time to time, and would ask how the coffee was. Her youth and energy were infectious: I stirred a little in my seat, maybe thumbed my cottage book a little more vigorously. When I saw a stray dollar on the ground, I swept it up greedily.
“This wait is not so bad,” I thought. “Even if it is long.”

Later we heard a band play, had not far to drive. I expected the music to be terrible, but was surprised when it turned out to be quite good. They sang and thumped out tunes to a mostly empty room, peopled mainly by those of the band’s acquaintance. I made booming voice noises to show my appreciation. They sounded like this:
“Whoomp! Whoomp! Whoomp!”
Others yelled things to show how much they enjoyed the songs, the band’s efforts. There was little else to do. Someone sounded like Curly of the Three Stooges. I had a coke, served in a small plastic cup—the kind you might see plenty of at a church picnic, because they are so cheap. At least it was a coke.

Then, forty years before this outing of dinner and music, the dirt man was stuck in his Dodge pickup. Spinning the rear wheels at the site, the early stages of digging just begun, he cursed there behind the wheel, tried reversing the stick-shift transmission, but it dug in deeper to the moist springtime ground.
“Fuck it!” he yelled. “Darryl, get that fucking cat over here with a cable!” He yelled into his radio. The yellow behemoth was striking at thin trees, the willowy things yielding with little resistance. Some larger ones came crashing down while another crawler shoved them into a massive pile to be picked up later by the wood people—the ones who could use the cleared logs for boards or pulp them into paper. The two crawlers worked in concert, the one making a mess, the other one sweeping it up. Everywhere the steel tracks that propelled the things over any terrain dug into the fresh earth, made corrugated ridges that dried that way if the site was left undisturbed for a few days—hardened washboards that a young boy would follow with his feet, walking where a forty-ton tractor had made a path, climbing on the logs it had felled, then standing in wonder in front of the silent machine.

Darryl turned the blade of the ponderous machine towards the Dodge, made the engine heave a sigh of exertion to show that he was hurrying to the site foreman’s aid. He could throttle it up all he wanted, but it didn’t really matter: These massive crawlers would never give anyone the impression they were in a hurry. Pure torque, delivered at ultra-low speeds, was their specialty. Climbing over things or simply knocking them down, or making their own road was what they did best. Pulling a stuck Dodge pickup out of the mud was not a typical job, was somewhat beneath the big Cat’s mission in life.

The Cat pulled up to the front of the Dodge with a strong steel cable hanging from a hook on the top of the blade. Darryl hopped down out of the open cab, the steel cage up there protecting him from toppling trees or a possible rollover. He wrapped the end of the cable around the truck’s front bumper, then climbed back onto the machine and throttled up the engine. Slowly he backed away, while the steel bumper strained, then bent with the force of the crawler against the sucking mud that held the truck fast. This job was insignificant to the big machine, it felt not the least resistance to its efforts. It would simply rip the front bumper off the truck, leave the Dodge stuck in the mud, and go on its way. Finally the muck gave up its victim, allowed the truck to roll free, the wheels skating over the uneven and ragged terrain as if it were a rag-doll. When the tractor had pulled the truck clear, Darryl let the diesel idle down to murmuring puffs of smoke lazily huffing out of the stack. He pulled forward a little to allow the cable some slack, got down again and unhooked the truck from the leash that had so ignominiously dragged it through the mud. The front bumper was bent, but still intact.

In a little time there would be a dinner party, a get-together in the new house—right there where the Dodge had been stuck, where the dirt-man, the site foreman had yelled “Fuck it!” There would be one of those little chandeliers and a pair of French doors that looked out on what remained of the trees. The new homeowners had opted for a deck, a place where they could sit and barbecue maybe, or just look through the French doors and leave it at that. The new paint would still smell new, the house would groan a little on the firm new footing that held it fast, that was just a little while ago the ridged dirt and toppled trees and yelling workers and churning machines tilling the soil for the planting of this new crop. Everyone would sit down, wait for the food, declare it absolutely delicious, toast the hosts and their new place in the midst of the new houses, their happy reflections glowing from the panes of the French doors.

And then, maybe a lifetime later, with the kids grown and off to school and then work, with letters maybe from time to time, and then the calls becoming less frequent, the house where the dirt-man had cursed with his stuck Dodge would finally settle into a rhythm of foreverness, like it had always been there, had never known a time when it wasn’t there. It would look different, with a new room added to make a young family more comfortable, and a pool out back, and two barking dogs to welcome the new owners home. Trees had grown to a goodly size—not as big as the ones that were there from the old times, but big nonetheless.

And the old Dodge would sit outside the dirt excavating firm, the huge machines held silently inside a fortress of fences and strong gates. The pickup was an outcast, no longer welcome inside the compound. The dirt-man who’d used it was given another truck, a newer model. He was close to retiring anyway; the years had taken their toll on him: First the old cable-operated machines that were sheer torture to operate, then the hydraulic machines, then the stress of overseeing jobs where every day presented more opportunities for things to go wrong, and not one of the problems was a cheap or easy fix. He would take his medicines, follow the doctor’s advice, reduce his fat intake and watch the ulcer that so plagued him.

The truck said “Best Offer,” printed on a FOR SALE sign. I walked inside the polished and orderly offices of the dirt-moving firm, feeling a kinship with that place. I talked to one of the owners of the big operation, said I needed a truck like that—just like that one. Something that might start up on a weekend to make a trip to the dump or fetch building materials. I didn’t explain that my old Mercury was no longer a viable option. He didn’t want to hear it. Business was not so good, what with money being tight and the builders in a slump. He wanted to put the big machines to work, start moving some dirt.

“Three-hundred dollars,” I said, knowing that I was walking a thin line between what the truck might reasonably fetch and being unreasonably cheap.

I went to the ATM, withdrew the cash, asked the owner to please hold the truck—two weeks at the most, I said. Ok—after that he would start charging storage. With two weeks gone, I made the trip over there with my brother, got the tags transferred from the old Mercury, drove the dirt-man’s truck home in the rain.