Free Waiting for Joe by Sandra Birdsell Page A

Hat Joe will get something to eat, and he’ll call Alfred.
    Within minutes of Joe taking the wheel Keith begins to talk. He’s round in the face and pink-skinned, his hair falling in slick curls across his forehead. Although he appears to be in his early forties, he looks prepubescent. Pouches of breast fat jiggle beneath his T-shirt, his arms and face are hairless. He carries his spare tire below his belt, on his hips and lower stomach, like a woman.
    He’s a contractor, specializing in home and business renovations, he says. He’s heading for Red Deer to put togethera work crew in order to replace a flat roof on a house. He goes on to say that flat roofs aren’t architecturally logical, although he allows that certain styles of buildings are enhanced by one. Flat roofs constructed in the sixties and earlier have asphalt roofing, which means there are seams and the roof is never entirely waterproof. People don’t maintain a flat roof in the way they should and he sometimes finds moss and good size trees growing on them. “I’ve found lots of dead squirrels, and there was this cat once, it was like beef jerky, fried and dried out by the heat.” He’d found a woman’s diamond earring and wondered how it got up there. “I didn’t ask, if you know what I mean,” he says with a wink.
    Joe doubts that Keith is really a contractor. He lacks the quiet self-assurance, the forbearance coupled with healthy skepticism that most professional contractors possess, which comes from years of being caught between the intransigence of tradesmen and the unrealistic demands of clients.
    Keith says he resurfaces a flat roof with a synthetic compound that becomes a seamless membrane. The back of the van is loaded with gallons of the stuff, which explains why it pulls to one side.
    “This is my right-hand man,” Keith says, finally getting around to introducing the boy, whose name is Bryce, the son of a friend.
    “Howdy,” Joe says and receives a mumbled reply. He’s thinking Bryce ought to be in school. “He’s young,” Joe says.
    “He’s old enough,” Keith replies in a way that warns Joe away from the topic, and for minutes they don’t talk, the silence filled by the back-and-forth chatter of a call-in show on the radio.
    “Are you hungry, punk?” Keith asks the boy, the question tossed over his shoulder with mock toughness.
    Bryce’s reply is drowned out by the radio and engine noise. Joe takes Bryce in through the rearview mirror. The kid must be about fourteen, fifteen, given the hint of fine dark hair above his top lip. There’s an evasiveness about him that reminds Joe of Steve at the same age.
    Joe rounds a sweeping curve and the highway straightens out in front of them and stretches for miles, flat and mesmerizing. The hills lie behind him on the horizon now, thin and dark blue, like a murmur of thunder. On either side of the highway the fields are shorn and silver, hung faintly with mist that softens the bleakness of spring.
    Keith rummages in a gym bag on the floor and comes up with a bag of taco chips, tears it open and jams it into the console between the seats.
    “Help yourself,” he says gruffly, in a way that suggests his generosity makes him uncomfortable.
    “Thanks,” Joe says. “Maybe later.”
    Bryce darts forward and claws up a handful.
    “Hey buddy, how about leaving some for us?” Keith says and although he’s spoken in a teasing manner, Bryce releases most of the chips into the bag.
    “Sorry,” he mutters and sinks back into the seat.
    Joe takes another good look at him in the mirror, his long and narrow face and turned-down mouth, the adolescent moustache like a smudge of dirt making him look younger than he likely is. Impassive.
    “You can have my share. Me and taco chips have never agreed,” Joe says to Bryce.
    “No thanks,” he says.
    “Don’t be a prick,” Keith tells Bryce, again in a jesting tone. “Kids,” he says to Joe out of the side of his mouth, as though Joe