A Friend of the Earth by T. C. Boyle Read Free Book Online

like body blows. Sierra, who has an opinion on everything, is uncharacteristically silent, a shadow perched on a rock at the side of the road – she may want to save the world, but not at this hour. He can hardly blame her. He’s sapped too, feeling it in his hamstrings, his shoulders, his tender knee, and when he tries to focus on anything other than the stars, random spots and blotches float across his field of vision like paramecia frolicking under the lens of a microscope. But they’re not done yet. Now it’s the water. And again, their comrades–in–arms have chosen well. Shut your eyes and listen. That’s right. That sound he’s been hearing isn’t the white noise of traffic on a freeway or the hiss of a stylus clogged with lint – it’s water, the muted gargle of a stream passing into a conduit not fifty feet up the road. This is what the buckets are for – to carry the water to the trench and moisten the concrete. They’re almost home.
    But not quite. There seems to be some confusion about the concrete, the proportion of water to mix in, and have any of them – even he, son of a builder and thirty–nine years on this earth – ever actually worked with concrete? Have any of them built a wall, smoothed out a walk, set bricks? Teo once watched a pair of Mexican laborers construct a deck round the family pool, but he was a kid then and it was a long time ago. He thinks they just dumped the bags into a hand–cranked mixer and added water from the hose. Did they need a mixer, was that the problem? Andrea thinks she can recall setting fenceposts with her father on their ranch in Montana, and Tierwater has a vague recollection of watching his own father set charges of dynamite on one of his job sites, stones flung up in the air and bang and bang again, but as far as concrete is concerned, he’s drawing a blank. I think we just dump the bags in the trench, level it out and add water to the desired consistency,’ he concludes with all the authority of a man who flunked chemistry twice.
    Andrea is dubious. ‘Sounds like a recipe for cake batter.’
    Teo: ‘What consistency, though? This is quick–set stuff, sure, but if we get it too runny it’s never going to set up in two hours, and that’s all we’ve got.’
    A sigh of exasperation from Sierra. I can’t believe you guys – I mean,three adults, and we come all the way out here, with all this planning and all, and nobody knows what they’re doing? No wonder my generation is going to wind up inheriting a desert.’ He can hear the plaintive, plangent sound of her bony hands executing mosquitoes. ‘Plus, I’m tired. Really like monster–tired. I want to go home to bed.’
    He’s giving it some thought. How hard could it be? The people who do this for a living – laying concrete, that is – could hardly be confused with geniuses. ‘What does it say on the package? Are there any directions?’
    â€˜Close one eye,’ Andrea warns, ‘because that way you don’t lose all your night vision, just in case, I mean, if anybody –’ and then she flicks on the flashlight. The world suddenly explodes in light, and it’s a new world, dun–colored and circumscribed, sacks of concrete like overstuffed brown pillows, the pipestems of their legs, the blackened sneakers. He’s inadvertently closed his good eye, the one that sees up close, and he has to go binocular – and risk a perilous moment of night–blindness – to read what it says on the bag.
    King Kon–Crete,
it reads, over the picture of a cartoon ape in sunglasses strutting around a wheelbarrow,
Premium Concrete. Mix Entire Bag with Water to Desired Consistency. Keep Away from Children.
    â€˜Back to consistency again,’ Teo says, shuffling his feet round the bag, and that’s all that can be seen of him, his feet – his