Black Creek Crossing

Chapter 13

EY, SULLIVAN! YOU GONNA GIVE ME A HAND WITH this or just sit on your ass all day?”

Marty Sullivan flicked his cigarette butt into the puddle that had formed under the cement mixer, then ambled over to the spot where Jack Varney was readying the huge header that would span the double front door of the house they were working on. In the five hours since Ed Fletcher had brought Marty to the site of the half-dozen new houses he was building on a cul-de-sac a mile east of the village’s center, Marty had figured out exactly what was wrong not only with the house he was working on, but the whole project as well.

And the problems all started with Jack Varney, who was supposed to be the foreman of the job.

For the first couple of hours this morning, Marty had tried to do pretty much what Varney wanted him to, but it hadn’t taken long before he figured out that Varney was giving him all the crap jobs because he was the boss’s brother-in-law.

First it had been building forms for the bases of the columns that would eventually support the roof of the Colonial-style house, and no matter what Marty had done, Varney found something to bitch about. Initially, it had been the forms themselves, which Varney insisted weren’t squared perfectly. “What the hell does it matter?” Marty argued as Varney had shown him that the form was a quarter of an inch wider on one side than the other. “The thing’s going to be buried in dirt anyway!”

“Ed’s got a reputation, and I got a reputation,” Varney replied. “We build things right, whether you can see them or not.”

“And piss away half your profit,” Marty muttered.

Varney had acted like he didn’t even hear him, and made him knock the form apart and start over again. Marty had done it, though he knew it was a waste of time.

Then Varney started in about the way he’d put the rebar in the forms. “You need twice as much — I don’t want that thing breaking when we put the columns on them.”

“They’re not gonna break,” Marty countered. “I used plenty.”

“You got a degree in engineering?” Varney asked, loud enough for three of the other guys on the job to hear him.

Once again Marty had seethed, and once again he’d done what he was told. But as the morning wore on, he’d come to the conclusion that Varney had it in for him.

All morning long Varney made him do everything over again, always claiming there was something wrong, when Marty knew damned well there wasn’t. But what really pissed him off was that Jack Varney was at least ten years younger than he was. What the hell was Ed Fletcher thinking of, putting a kid like Varney in charge of the whole project, then making his own brother-in-law work for the kid?

What Ed should have done, Marty thought, was put him in charge. If he was running the job, these crappy houses would get put up in half the time, and they’d make twice the profit. Everywhere he looked he saw guys using screws where nails would have done just as well, and measuring over and over to get the studs just the right length when any idiot knew you could shim up the headers to fill the gaps where the studs were too short. If it all looked okay when it was finished, who cared if a few things didn’t fit perfectly under the siding and plasterboard?

And the frosting on the cake was that everybody else seemed to just go along with Varney.

Now Varney was yelling at him again, just because he’d taken a couple of minutes to have a smoke. “Can’t a guy even take a break around here?” he grumbled as he started to pick up one end of the twelve-foot beam that would form a header strong enough to support three times the weight that would be put on it.

More stupidity.

Less profit.

If Ed put him in charge—

“You put on a brace?” Varney asked just as he was about to lift the end of the beam.

Marty glowered at him. “What kind of sissy wears a brace just to pick up a piece of wood?”

“I do,” Varney replied, tapping the thick leather device strapped around his waist to give his back extra support.

“What are you, some kinda pussy?” Marty shot back. Twenty feet away, Ritchie Henderson looked up from the stud he’d been about to cut, his Skilsaw hovering in the air.

Varney’s eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you try not arguing with me just once, okay?”

“If you had any brains, I wouldn’t have to argue with you,” Marty countered, clenching his fists and feeling a rush of pleasure as he saw the foreman’s face redden.

Varney took a deep breath. “If you’re looking for a fight, go somewhere else, okay? And I’m tired of arguing with you — we’ve got work to do here.” He raised his voice. “Hey, Henderson! You want to give me a hand with this beam?”

“Be right with you,” Ritchie Henderson replied.

But before the other man could get there, Marty Sullivan bent down, tipped the beam enough to get his fingers under it, then lifted it into the air, hoisting it above his head and getting his other hand under it just before it toppled back to the ground. “Where do you want it?” he growled. Without waiting for a response, he started toward the upright studs that flanked the doorway, staggering under the weight of the beam.

“Jesus, Sullivan!” Varney yelled, moving quickly toward one end of the beam, which was now starting to twist in Marty’s grip. “What are you trying to—”

But it was too late. A spasm of pain in Marty Sullivan’s back made him suddenly jerk around, and one end of the beam clipped Varney’s chin, cutting off his words and knocking him to the ground. At the same instant, Marty let out a howl of agony and dropped the beam, which missed Varney’s head by a fraction of an inch as it crashed down.

Swearing, Ritchie Henderson knelt down next to Jack Varney. “You okay, boss?”

Varney reached up to rub his jaw, then sat up. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Now Henderson stood up, his fists clenched as he glowered at Marty Sullivan. “Are you nuts? You coulda killed him!”

“It was his fault,” Marty yelled. “If he hadn’t made me lose my balance—”

“His fault? He wasn’t the one who—”

Jack Varney was back on his feet, stepping between the two angry men. “Okay, okay, let’s all calm down,” he said. His jaw was throbbing and he could taste blood in his mouth from where his teeth had cut into his cheek when the beam had smashed into him. “Nobody’s dead, and my jaw’s not broken.”

“You coulda broken my back, throwing me off balance that way,” Marty said, rubbing at the cramped muscle in his lower back. “I should—”

“You should take the rest of the day off,” Varney told him. When Marty started to say something else, he shook his head. “Just leave it alone, Sullivan, okay? Maybe it was your fault and maybe it was my fault, but either way, it’s over. Just go home, take it easy, and we’ll start fresh tomorrow.”

Two minutes later Marty Sullivan was gone, but as he left the job site, he knew he wasn’t about to go home.

Not right now anyway.

Right now he was going to have a drink.