Everything Looks Like a Nail

I looked over at Charles to see if he would bow his head. He didn’t. I stared at him until he noticed and then raised my eyebrows and shot him a bloodshot smirk. He laughed out loud, a booming crusty top of the morning noise, making the people next to us sway uncomfortably with their heads hanging down towards the constructions site dirt at our feet. I shook my head – slightly in disbelief and slightly to assess the progression of my hangover.

We were corralled beneath an immense trailer in a sizzling drizzle to receive the morning blessing. The young man standing atop the trailer gripped a bible in his left hand and a skill saw in his right, the short electrical chord dangling like a serpent. After passing the lord’s peace upon all of us he shared the dangers of using a power tool in the rain. Again I smiled slowly and again Charles laughed.

When it came time to split up into crews for the day we stood alone in a sea of people. Groups fractioned off and headed in different directions. A church-youth-group from Indiana wearing silkscreened lime green tees broke into song as they made their way to finish siding the sheds in the back yards of the adjacent ultra bright houses. We stood still, silently hoping to be invited to finish framing the house from the day before.

The Canadians Mitch and Lynn saw us standing and looking for our next move through the fog in our heads and approached. I smiled and shook hands. Charles stood quiet. They were headed to work in a warehouse doing some form of light carpentry. I took a deep breath shook the night before from my shoulders and forced myself into a chipper mood, inspired by the pleasantness of Mitch and Lynn. These two Canadians were troopers. Mitch, an engineer from Toronto, had long silver hair and wore thick-rimmed black and grey glasses and an odd fitting orange baseball cap giving him the appearance of a friendly professor. Lynn sported gaudy tattoos and a heavy accent. They had both outlasted us the night before at a Rebirth Brass blasting and I was curious as to how they pulled it off. We smiled together and spent the day tearing apart hundreds of walls built by volunteer groups from across the country that were shipped to New Orleans but were either to big or too small to use - in either off by inches. I spent the day breaking off plywood floorboards and dismantling stud framing.

Some of the wood was left in the rain before reaching the warehouse and couldn't be salvaged. Those pieces were discarded. Written across the sides of many of the boards were messages to the would be future dwellers. "Bless This House" and "Nevada loves you and is praying for you," or "Built by Anna, who hit her thumb three times," and "May your new home bring peace." These messages were thrown into a pile of scrap lumber outside to be dealt with later.