Dry-walling and Career Planning

Dale had a shriveled look about him; at 72, he resembled a dried corn husk, his deep brown skin stretched over bone and tightly-corded muscle, etched with a fine lacework of wrinkles. He could srtetch to 5’6’’, but a now permanent hunch left him stranded at about 5’3’’—on a windy day, I often imagined that Dale might blow away, like a maple leaf dried and driven by autumn.
However, I hadn’t worked an hour under Dale before I realized that appearances deceive: he was the foulest cuss I’d ever met. My first day on the job, as I helped Moses, the Mexican mudder (construction for “drywall finisher”) plaster an outside wall, Dale came around the corner, his gait short, bird-like, his left arm in a sling (he tore his rotator cuff throwing 100 lb. packs of shingles in a dumpster), his right arm protectively clutching a set of plans for the Mission. He let his wide, feral gaze trail across our wall, before wheezing casually: “Gawd, Moses, that looks like shit. That looks like the afterbirth of a bastard rat.” His words had not ceased chasing my stomach into my rib cage, before he resumed his steady progress around the building.
Yeah, Dale was a real character, but, I think my favorite that summer was Allen. I spent most of my days following Allen from site to site: he did whatever the corporate suits deemed unworthy of a subcontractor's time, and I did whatever he deemed unworthy of his time. We erected ornamental pillars, painted pool decks, installed doors, even delivered the boss' furniture.
Dale had a wild look about him; Allen always appeared mildly surprised. I could never tell for sure whether every occurrence actually stunned him, or if his inch-thick glasses merely saddled him with a startled expression.
Allen's ambiguous features notwithstanding, I can speak with authority on his favorite verbal expression: he responded to my lunch menu, and to news of a Cessna crashing into a house a mile away, with the same, semi-alarmed syllable—“Shit.” Allen had a way of milking the burst of profanity: when something truly shocked him, his jaw would hang slack, and the sound would trickle from him, effervescent as the fizz from canned soda. “Sheeet…you serious?” I would solemnly bob my head in affirmation, and he would reply with an incredulous shake of his head, perhaps even doffing his camouflage baseball cap to wipe away the sweat that trickled from his thinning, prematurely white hair, as though the very subject caused him to perspire in agitation.
“Prematurely white” pretty well summed Allen’s appearance—hard work, long hours, and the cares of the breadwinner had aged him before his time. Still broad-shouldered and bull-necked at 55, his hair, bleached white by stress, and his skin, browned and creased by the sun, easily could have passed on a 65 year-old.
I liked Allen, though. I liked him because he was funny, but didn’t know it. Allen had worked just about every job under the sun over his 35 year career, and, to hear him talk, he aspired to undertake the few remaining choices all at once. Allen had worked as a master electrician on an oil rig, a phone lineman, a mechanic, a carpenter, a concrete mixer, a trucker, and a few other jobs that hadn’t merited explanation. When I met him, he had settled in as our resident handyman, doing ten different jobs, and hardly getting paid more than a broom-pusher like me.
Allen spent the majority of our driving time plotting his next career move: he may have dreamed up several entirely new trades during the course of our travels (at least, I hadn’t heard of them). One day, Allen announced matter-of-factly, “I’m thinkin’ ‘bout gettin’ into fixin’ golf carts.” That’s how these schemes always began, with Allen “gettin’ into” something, much as a ten year-old might land himself in a different scrape every day. After titling that day’s chapter, he would launch into a rapturous description of the intricacies of his new profession, painting visions of hydraulic lifts sending carts skyward, of tiny cranes heaving batteries from the plastic frame. Or, the next day, Allen would be “thinkin’ ‘bout gettin’ into doors”—he would fabricate frames and stain the heavy oak, if he could only come up with $30,000 in start-up capital. A few days later, he was dreaming about cleaning and repainting grout—except that the work was tedious, and would be brutal on his already-mangled back. During the three months we worked together, I think we tracked up just about every building trade, revisiting our favorite haunts multiple times.
For the first month, listening to him complain about his current mistreatment, reminisce about the past, and dream for the future, I wondered why a guy with Allen’s skill, trying to raise a family, would work for the few pennies he earned. When I timidly asked him why he left his job as an electrician, my voice barely audible over the clanks and groans of his protesting work van, he looked over at me with a faintly puzzled expression. He stared ahead at the road for a minute, scratched his nose, and finally answered, “Well, I don’t know…I reckon I just got restless. I never been fired, but I never worked no job more’n five years. I always got to wonderin’ ‘bout new trades, new places, new people. The road’s always looked invitin’ t’me.” A strange solemnity descended over the van on the tails of that statement: for a long time, I could not look at George, whether from pity or awe, I couldn’t be sure.