What it's like to be a man

The barricades aren't up the way LutherTrapp likes them, a perimeter, but it's Saturday morning, a real scorcher, and the pebbled tar is already raked down, so he signals Stevie to start the steamroller anyway. It is at this moment that Trapp spots someone marching toward him, a little white guy with slicked back hair and a great tomatoey nose, like that comedian, Durante. A second fellow trails behind him, bigger but tentative.

Trapp would like to ignore them, to proceed. But the pair of them are in the street now and legally he needs the area cleared. So he's going to have to deal with them. Patiently. Calmly. He doesn't need any citizen reports on this, his last job for the DOT, the sole task between him and retirement, a neat row of mornings with his new wife, Dorothy, and shady afternoons watching his azaleas just sit there.

Trapp nods to the pair and waves to Stevie, who scowls, then lets the machine drop down into idle. The men have their arms across their chests. "It's not the ends," the little guy is saying. "It's the process. They send these workers out here without any notice." He's looking at his friend, but speaking loud enough for the words to carry.

Trapp glances down at the glimmering tar. It won't keep long. He clears his throat.

"Because if it's one thing I don't need," the little guy is saying, "it's a bunch of machines banging around, lousing up my Saturday." He steps forward and Trapp notices how short he is, barely five and a half feet.

"Gentlemen," Trapp says. "How are you this morning?"

The little guy shakes his head. "We were doing okay until that machine of yours scared the bejesus out of us. What the hell do you feed that thing, refried beans?"

The jutting chest reminds Trapp of a staff sergeant, but he can't help thinking of this fellow as a comic figure. It's the Durante nose, the loud shirt with its floppy collar. Trapp keeps expecting him to execute a little Vaudeville sidestep. Ha-cha-cha-cha.

"Pretty loud, huh? Sorry about that. Thing is, we gotta pave down to the corner. Shouldn't take anymore than a couple hours. But we are going to need you to clear the area." He is pleased to have this gray drizzle of words to fall back on. "If you gentleman wouldn't mind moving onto the sidewalk?"

"You're really going to run that thing down our little street?"

"Like I said, only take a couple hours."

Trapp wants to tell the guy that it could have been worse. He and Stevie are actually an hour ahead of schedule. He shoveled the gravel this morning with the energy of a man half his age, thinking all the while about Dot, how she'll rub his shoulders down with liniment. But Trapp knows better than to jostle the situation. So he just stands there, staring at the script above the pocket of the little guy's shirt: Jimbo's Bait Shop. He can't see this guy working at a bait shop. Hands too soft. Must be from some vacation.

"It's Saturday," the Jimbo guy says. "Why in the world would your supervisor choose to send you out on a Saturday?"

"Traffic patterns."

The truth is, Trapp made the assignment himself, arranged it with the district office so he could finish up his quota without running into next week. Special exception granted on behalf of his azaleas.

Jimbo shakes his head again. "I don't get it. You people. I mean, someone calls in to bitch about a pothole and they send out an entire orchestra. On Saturday morning. Nice way for the state to do business, huh Elliot?"

The big man nods slightly, fiddles with the icon on his shirt, a golf club.

For a moment, Trapp' s gaze settles on the Florida room that fronts the home behind Jimbo. It looks so cool: potted palms and a gold ceiling fan and two fancy cloth deck chairs of the sort Trapp has eyed for months at Walmart. A lovely place. Trapp imagines the peace Jimbo must feel settling into one of the chairs, his wife beside him, a glass of iced tea, the sports section.

But Jimbo is still out here, in the street, wagging his head and index finger in unison. His voice has a sighing intonation. "When did all this get started?"

Trapp can feel his palms dampening the inside his gloves. Three years ago, before he made supervisor, when he was still what the office boys called a tar dog, Trapp worked bare-handed. He had the calluses then, across the top of his palm. But Dot cut the rinds of dead skin away, the very morning after they made love for the first time. "Not going to have any man scuffing me up," she told him.

Jimbo turns to his friend, Elliot. "You got your cell?" he says. "If this guy can't answer a simple question--"

"The surveyors were out last week," Trapp says.

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

Trapp takes a half step backward.

Most of the time, it's the wives who send their men out. The whole thing is just a performance, some vestige of the homestead days. The men puff their chests up and mouth their complaints. Then they shrug to their wives and go back to their golf courses or whatnot. With this guy, though, there's something deeper, a kind of eager rage.