After the Trencher

My favorite part was after the trencher, once it's loud, vibrating blade finished digging through the earth, and we began to lay the pipes. After the trencher, the world was silent. Even when we were working in a yard like the one that day, near the overpass, things seemed quiet.

This was our third sprinkler installation. Nathan and I worked together at the church I started a year-and-a-half earlier. I hired him to lead the band. Kind of hired him- we paid him $500 a month, when we could. In that year we had become closer than brothers- two introverted kids in their early twenties standing on a stage each week in front of a growing crowd, both of us clueless about what we were doing.

It was his idea to start installing sprinkler systems. We could both use the money.

"We can make three, four hundred dollars apiece for a few days work," he had told me.

It was less like a few days work and more like paid vacation. This world was so different from ours. Our days were spent with lofty ideas, with late night strategy meetings in coffee houses full of couches and indie kids wearing scarves and wool hats. Our days were filled with noise; with music my God there is always music, always noise.

These days were our antonym. There was something pure about looking forward to a beer, about using PVC pipe, tobacco, and swear words, about dirt beneath our fingernails and sweaty shirts laid out on the driveway. These days seemed... these days seemed... sacred.

Out here there was nothing fashionable. There was no music, no iPods. Out here, after the trencher, our soundtrack was a shovel sliding into earth, an axe against a root, and, occasionally, one of our mouths giving voice to a long-internalized thought.

"This root is so damn stubborn" wasn't idle talk, it was a declaration of good finally triumphing over evil when the last fiber would snap. "How about a gatorade?" didn't just ask if a similar thirst was shared, but asked, "Can we just sit for a moment, just be still, just be?"

So when he said, "John, there's something I've been wanting to tell you," I knew it was a statement that divided time.

My knuckles, cut from scraping against gravel, whitened around the twisting pipe.

"Ok," I said, staring at the dirt beneath my knees.

"I got offered a job at a church in Charleston."

Staring at the dirt beneath my knees.

"Ok," I said. But I need you here, Nate. Not because you lead the band, not because I'm your boss, not because of the church. None of that matters, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.

"They offered me $45,000 a year. And benefits."

Staring at the dirt beneath my knees.

I need you here because you're my brother. I nodded my head. Out here, in this sacred place, it didn't seem right to express fear. Or tears. I didn't say anything, couldn't say anything, but in the seconds that passed, calendars changed. A.D., with all its hope and peace and joy walked into an empty tomb, wrapped itself in sheets, and fell asleep. I was staring at the dirt beneath my knees.

I twisted my wrists and the two ends of the pipe creaked to life. I turned my head towards Nathan. He had quit working. He was smiling, watching the worry inside express itself on my face.

"I told them 'Hell, no.' Told them I already had a church. Told them I believed in what we were doing here. Told them I believed in you." He dropped his eyes back to the trench, to the pipe that was almost finished.

"You bastard. Why would you tell me all that?"

"Well I can't just say I love you."

********

Later that afternoon, as we filled in the trenches, burying the pipe, lightning streaked across the sky.

"Looks like we're going to get wet."

I followed his gaze, past the lifeless trencher, above the graffiti-covered overpass, and to the darkening sky with its flood-heavy clouds. When we finished, we could sit in the grass and listen to the splashing as the downpour made us new. I looked down at the shovel, at the rust colored dirt, at the veins in my forearms, and felt the salt slip into my eyes.