I set the boots down with a different appreciation of Todd’s scornful look; someone who had worn those boots every day for a year, under the conditions Todd and William had worn them, likely didn’t appreciate some punk high school kid using them as a fashion statement.
I put on my white Converse high-tops instead.
I didn’t know if I was getting dressed for work or to just pick up my one-day paycheck, but I figured twenty-five dollars was twenty-five dollars and I had passed Todd’s test. I left home at a quarter to seven, wanting to be on time . . . if I still had a job.
I arrived at the jobsite before anyone else. Since I knew the padlock combination on the garage door, I unlocked it. Not sure what to do, I put on the leather gloves Todd had given me and picked up stray pieces of rebar, organizing them by size. I put other tools and supplies in the white five-gallon buckets, and with the garage floor relatively clear of debris, I picked up the push broom and swept until a throaty rumble announced the Chevy’s arrival. Todd parked in front of the house and came down the dirt driveway with his toothpick in place. He stopped to look about, then came into the garage and did the same thing. Finally, he looked at me.
“William said you stayed late to finish up.”
“I didn’t get it all done by five.”
“I know. I came back to make sure you locked up.”
Which meant he didn’t trust me to do it right.
“Well.” He cleared his throat and shifted the toothpick. I fully expected to be fired. “I figure a guy who would hump concrete in the hot sun all day is willing to work hard. You want a job?”
It took me a moment to find my voice. “Yes, sir.”
“Don’t call me ‘sir.’ My name’s Todd.”
“Okay.”
Todd smiled, this time like I had no idea what I was getting into. He turned on the heels of his boots and walked to the front yard. I followed. He removed the toothpick and used it to point to the roof of the house. “I’m going to need you to tear off the roof.” Todd explained we were adding a second story to the single-story home. “I don’t have a harness, so you’re going to have to do it from inside the attic.”
“Okay.” I assumed a harness was something I’d wear to keep from falling off the roof. The pitch was steep. I still wondered how I’d remove the shingles from the inside.
Todd returned to the garage and grabbed a crowbar. “Grab the Sawzall,” he said.
He spared me further embarrassment by pointing to a machine that looked like a sawed-off shotgun with a long blade at the end. William had used it the day before. The blade cut like a handsaw on speed.
“You ever used one before?” Todd asked.
“No.”
He plugged the saw into an extension cord and gave me a fifteen-second crash course. Seemed simple enough. I grabbed the saw and the extension cord and followed Todd through the kitchen door into the house. The family that owned the property had moved out during the remodel. In the hallway, Todd pulled down a collapsible ladder using a string hanging from the ceiling. I followed him up the rungs into the attic. A single bulb attached to one of the rafters provided a dull light. Though it was still early morning, the temperature already bordered on hot and the air, suffocating. I could only imagine how hot the attic would get in the heat of the day and how difficult it would be to breathe.
Todd moved to the pitch of the roof, which was only about five feet in height and required that we hunch over. “You tear out the insulation,” he said. The insulation looked like pink cotton candy with a brown paper backing stapled between the roof joists. “Then you punch a hole in the shingles using the crowbar. Once you’ve removed the insulation and knocked off the shingles and tar paper, you can use the Sawzall to cut the one-by-four slats, then the roof joists. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said, realizing I wasn’t just removing the shingles but the entire roof.
“Don’t kill yourself or cut off a finger. I’m not bonded, and I don’t have health insurance.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant or what to say, so I just said, “Okay.”
“Get it done by the end of tomorrow. I have a dumpster coming midmorning and I don’t want to pay to keep it another day,” Todd said. “Everything gets thrown in the dumpster.”
That was it. Those were my instructions. On-the-job training, I guess.
Years later, as a lawyer representing Monsanto, which produced a spray-on asbestos fire retardant, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the harm asbestos could do to the human body, including mesothelioma, a cancer that causes the lungs to lose elasticity and the person to suffocate. Experts say the disease could be caused by a single asbestos fiber inhaled into the lungs. I didn’t know this back in 1979, but given the year and the age of the house, I would worry that the insulation in the attic was asbestos, and I never took a deposition of a dying former asbestos worker without thinking of that hot summer day in the attic of that home in Burlingame. I feared I might someday sit in that same chair answering the same questions.