Foundation
The story was that he and Willard were drunk
when they poured the foundation. It was a hot
day, unusual for May, and the sky was
cloud-veiled, the sun nothing but a glowing
round cloaked in grey. The men mixed the
cement by hand in a wheelbarrow, kept taking
slugs from the whiskey bottle. Vi and the
girls started out planting flowers, then
prepared a lunch of liverwurst sandwiches,
sugary potato salad, and coleslaw. Finally
all there was left to do was to sit on the
metal lawn chairs and watch.
Everything went down so easily. The cement
had a nice resistance, just yielding enough,
like Vi on a good night. It was a perfect
mix, Willard agreed, as he passed the whiskey
bottle back. Running a trowel over it was
soothing, could almost put you to sleep. Dusk
was enveloping the neighborhood as they
wrapped up. One of the girls had fallen
asleep on a blanket on the dirt, and the
other one glowered as she kicked up clouds of
dust in the rutted driveway. Al struggled
with the wheelbarrow until he decided the
hell with it, it was just a rusty piece of
shit anyway.
Vi finally had to drive everyone back to
Delaware, the men singing a song she didn’t
recognize, the girls bleary-eyed and hungry.
When they returned the next weekend, excited
to start building the cottage, Al ran his
hands across the foundation and groaned. It
didn’t take a level or a plumb line to figure
out that they had to start all over again.
Image: The house at Hollywood
Beach, August 1957.