Tiny Little Stones
They came over the hill, side by side, hunched against the cold, their breath making little puffs of cloud, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of their jeans. They each wore an orange shirt, the one with short sleeves and the other long and rolled up to the elbows and the silver bands on the shirts gleamed and flashed in the street lights as they walked by. They crossed the footpath and the verge and went over the road and stepped down into the section of gravel and crossed the gravel, kicking up stones and dust with their old boots. They came to a chain-link fence and turned and followed the fence to an old galvanised turnstile. It leaned like an ancient monument. Reclined. Sunken on a shifting firmament. And the two men stopped and stood before the turnstile and the one turned back the way they came and the other leaned against the fence. And the last dark moments before sunrise lay all about them.
Now the other workers came over the hill, alone or in little groups, with their hard hats on and their eskys swinging to one side and a thermos or a tool bag or a rolled-up stack of papers; they came over and they walked along the fence and beeped their access cards at the leaning turnstile and stepped through, one by one into the sleeping construction site. The two men stood against the fence and watched the other workers shuffle in. The one man was taller than the other. He stood apart from the fence, absent for a time. From his breast pocket he retrieved his makings and he put together a cigarette. He put the little white paper in his lips and took a pinch of tobacco from the bag and he put the bag and the papers back in his pocket and rolled the tobacco into the paper. The other man leaned heavily on the fence and his eyes went left and right as the workers walked by.
Scares me, that one, the man on the fence said.
What one?
That one. The leaning man leaned his head over slowly in the direction of one of the stumbling workers.
The tall one wet the rolled cigarette with his tongue and held it in the corner of his mouth and looked over. His big hands pat the surface of his pockets for a lighter and little clouds of dust came off him and billowed and tumbled. Rolling clouds in the cool morning air. Oh, yeah, he said. That one.
Yeah, said the short one leaning on the fence. Old, worn-out dog looking thing.
Ha! Yeah, said the tall one. He pulled the lighter from his breast pocket and cupped the cigarette with the one hand and sparked the lighter.
You know?
Yeah, I know. He’s had a rough old time of it, I’d say.
Yeah. Poor old broken dog of a thing. Dead eyes on ‘im. Barely lifts his feet. Couldn’t blame ya feelin' sorry for a bloke like that.
Yeah, said the tall one. He smoked.
Look at his teeth there. You can see his old teeth. You see his old teeth there, bared like an old dog. You see that? And the way he looks up at the world like that. You see there, the whites of his eyes? Head lolling about on that lollipop neck. All hunched over and grinning up at the world like that? Geeze. Teeth out everywhere. I reckon he’d bite ya. Soon as look at ya. That old bloke. I’d say he bites for nothing at all. Soon as look at ya. And nothing else at all.
That guy? said the tall one.
Wouldn’t you say?
He blew a steady plume of smoke from the corner of his mouth. I would say, he said.
Same old bloke. Same old job. For years I’d say. How long you reckon? That bloke and this same old dusty old job?
Years I reckon.
Yeah. And there he is, still trundling in with the rest of us every day. Old and tired and beaten and having never risen off that same spot he’s on now.
The smoking man turned slightly around and squinted at the leaning man. Gravel crunching beneath his boots. And what spot would that be?
This one, said the leaning man, and he stamped his boot on the dusty ground. The same one we’re on.
I see, said the tall one. His eyes drifted. Up the hill before them. The golden seam upon the landscape. The fading stars above. Shimmering like little pebbles in a pool.
How long you been doing this? the leaning man said.
Six years.
On this job?
This very job. He took a final drag of his cigarette and the smoke lingered in his open mouth for a moment. Then he drew the smoke in and blew it out in a big rolling plume across the car park. Plumes within plumes.
The leaning man stood up and stepped away from the fence. Cold, he said and he rubbed his hard hands together. Hard and dry and dust was in the deep cracks.
Anyway, said the tall one. He flicked the cigarette across the drifting plume. The dying embers made a broad, tumbling arc through the smoke. And the daylight fell down around them.
