Which of us… is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest — and for what pay?
Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay?

– Sesame and Lilies, Lecture I (“Of Kings’ Treasures”)
John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Un Corps

“It brings a new meaning for ratatouille, I’ll tell you that,” says Allen to Jim, jostling the Have-A-Heart wire trap with the three frantic rats at him. Allen ends his comment with a high forced laugh, like he often does, Ha ha ha Ha ha! This thing that Allen does with the laugh always reminds Jim of the old Woody Woodpecker cartoon, although he knows it is a little different, a coincidence and not a copy.

Allen then pushes the wire cage right up against the front of the dust-caked sweatshirt that Jim’s wearing and Jim yelps, jumping backward, and the outside pant leg snags on some old plaster lathing, nearly landing him on his ass. Jim’s annoyed, at the new rise of laughter from Allen, and at almost falling into all this shit, among the piles of old lathing and other debris that fills the space behind the store, among the piles and stacks of piping and electrical wires and radiators, and all the dirty, nail-spotted studding. Everything is covered with the dirt and dust of demolished houses.

Everything is covered with dirt and dust and the cloying sweet smell of old plaster that crumbles into sand and dust, and Jim is sick of it all.

“Fuck you,” Jim says to Allen, after doing a half-hop dance, regaining his balance, squinting at Allen in the absurdly bright sunlight.

“Nice dance,” Allen says, sniggering, waving the cage over his head, windmilling it until the rats are plastered against the bottom, making Jim think of astronaut training, for some reason, and of the old amusement park rides that he used to love as a kid, even if he always ended throwing up, it seemed. He starts laughing, looking at the circulating cage going round and round, and at Allen’s look of vacant glee, and Jim is smiling, shaking his head, and laughing, and coughing.

***

Even though it is a very warm day, Jim and Allen are covered with clothing. Jim wears a filthy blue shirt with a torn button down collar laying up, turned up with one end flapping over what once was a dark green sweatshirt that says Squirrel Island. A dirt and soot streaked sheet, knotted at the neck, hangs over him like a cape of a kid playing at superheros. He has a straw cowboy hat off which drapes a big piece of very crinkled silver mylar that was formerly part or all of a Happy Birthday balloon, taped and pinned and hanging from the brim, over his face.

The mylar makes it hard to see clearly, but he never goes outside without it. Through it he sees that Allen is wearing his usual garb, a mechanics’ dark blue overalls and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and sunglasses. A small piece of cloth is tucked under the cap, in the back, like a foreign legion soldier. Even through the color of the mylar Jim can see that Allen’s cheeks and the skin around Allen’s ragged thin beard is badly sunburned. Some spots on his face have the look of sores.

“You should use a hood,” Jim says, the mylar crinkling and swaying with his breath. They are standing before a house, or what used to be a house. Much of its roof has been destroyed by fire, most of its vinyl siding on one side melted. Part of the front outside wall has already been removed, and all the doors and windows he can see have been taken out and he can see into the interior of the house through the large front opening. He looks back toward Allen, but Allen has his back to him, walking toward their cart to put the rat cage in it. Jim can’t figure out if Allen is his age, or in his thirties or forties. He once asked him but was told to mind his business.

“You’re getting burned to shit,” Jim says, a little surprised by the whiny tone in his voice. Allen waves the comment off, not bothering to turn around. He pulls a folded square of canvas from the cart and then a plastic shopping bag. Allen steps back toward the house.

“Yo, pal,” Allen says, walking past Jim, into the house through where the front door used to be. Jim feels sweat running down his face and moves to wipe at it, but catches himself, stopping, startled by the ragged, dirt clogged cotton glove on his hand as he started to lift the mylar away from his brim.

They are in a residential neighborhood, one of the areas in Lowell that had had pretty bad fires. Some of the houses are burned to the ground. At one of these, a crew of five is hauling away debris, their curses and shouts and talk carry in the quiet morning air. Each is wrapped in a cape of sheets or blankets that are fixed over their heads. As Jim watches, one of the crew, carrying a chest or metal cabinet of some kind, catches his sheet on a copper pipe that sticks up from the mostly collapsed house, and the snag pulls him down on to the debris with a ripping sound followed by a curse. Jim snorts.

Allen calls out from inside the house. “Let’s go!” he shouts.

Jim starts to go up the front steps into the house. Allen calls out again.

“Bring something!” he shouts, and Jim stops and goes back to the cart to get an old flat shovel and a broom. When Jim walks into the house, Allen is sitting down against an inside wall, in shadow, cap off, eyes closed.

“You okay?” asks Jim, pulling his own hat off. His own face is covered by sparse new stubble, the same patchy growth and color as his hair. “This must be the body I’m supposed to get,” says Jim, nudging Allen with his foot.

“I thought everyone knew breakfast is the most important meal,” Allen says, softly, eyes still closed, and grunts.

Jim slides down the wall to sit beside him. Allen grunts again, turns hard to look at Jim crowded beside him, and then fumbles a big plastic soda bottle filled with water from the plastic bag on his other side and then takes a drink from it.

Jim steals a glance at Allen. His eyes are closed again. Jim is always surprised when he sees how thin and gaunt Allen is.

“Il fait chaud today, as they say,” says Jim, after a short silence in which he can hear the demolition noises and shouting next door. He takes the water bottle from Allen and drinks from it.

“No fuck,” says Allen, sitting forward off the wall, frowning at Jim. Then he leans his head back against the wall, shutting his eyes again. His lips are badly cracked and bleed in one spot. Some of the spots on Allen’s face and hands have the same purplish color.

Jim stands back up and walks further into the house. He stops and sniffs and smells the familiar odor of long rotting bodies.

“Our destiny awaits,” he calls back to Allen, trying to sound hearty, joking, but his voice trembles and a sense of another place shadows him. Allen grunts again, standing up.

“The fuckers could have at least flagged the sons of bitches,” says Allen. “Fucking hide and seek,” he says, as he pokes through the rooms on the first floor at the back of the house. There is another pile of copper pipes and some wiring in what used to be a kitchen. Pieces of baseboard radiators are pulled away from the broken open walls. Chunks of plaster and busted up parts of cabinets are scattered across the floor and a stainless steel sink is propped up against a box. Allen bends down to look at a tag tied to one of the pipes. “46,” he reads from the tag, calling out. “Which one is that?”

Jim is already is moving up the stairs. “What?” he calls back down.

“Whose team, 46?” Allen shouts.

Jim stops on the stairs. “Big Tits,” he says, quietly, to himself, picturing the woman clearly in his mind, relishing the sexual excitement that bubbles up in him, again surprised by how, despite being so beat and hungry all the time, he has never been so horny. Allen come through the doorway. “You know,” says Jim, looking down at Allen and gesturing with his hands in front of his chest, as if holding large, imaginary breasts. “The blond, the one with those really huge breasts, Carol, or Karen somebody.”

Allen grunts again. “The one you’ve been wasting your time on trying to get laid.”

“One of the ones,” Jim says, grinning.

“You’re unbelievable,” Allen says, shaking his head.

“Dare to win,” says Jim, grinning.

“Dare to lose,” replies Allen, shutting his eyes for a moment, leaning against the door jamb near the bottom of the stairs.

Jim snorts and hoists his tools and starts climbing up the stairs again. He goes into a bedroom that has already been emptied out. The walls here are heavily smudged by smoke. A window, still in its frame, has glass that is cracked and sooty, with pieces of the panes laying on the floor. The rotting smell is strong in the room. Jim moves to a small closet, its door ajar. He sees, inside it, three half desiccated corpses, all clumped together, a man, a woman, and a young child.

They look all clumped together. He stares at the mottled, marked flesh of the child, its belly cinched weirdly by the elastic waistband of the pajama, covered with still bright Disney characters. Jim is standing, staring down into the closet, so still that the light in the room begins to fade into dark, the darkness circling in unnoticed from the edges of his vision, and Jim’s fingers are growing tighter and tighter on the shovel handle he is clutching, his hands squeezing down on the wood like his sight is squeezing light, closing down, stepping back, and stepping back brings movement and the light, like a flare, and Jim is raising the shovel against it as if to ward it off.

Allen, who has stepped into the room, has to jerk his head back away from the back swing, and is shouting out a grunt or word of alarm, and almost catches the shovel with his hand, but freezes as the sound like a roar or groan pitching high and low from Jim’s throat starts with the forward swing of the shovel, which hits the closet doorframe with a cracking thud. “Hey!” shouts Allen, stepping forward and grabbing hold of the shovel handle as it pitches back over Jim’s shoulder for another blow.