The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Oh boy! That looks great!”
“Heya, Bill.”
“Hey, Tanner.”
“Mornin’, Slippers.”
“Hi Bill, you’re just in time. We finished the wire job five minutes ago, and I need you as a witness.”
“Witness? Usually I’m your alibi.”
“Cut the crap for a second. Everybody outside.”
“Here, Bossman, sit down on the steps.”
“Bill, crap cut was the sign.”
“I see.”
“Boys. It’s now or never. Everyone knows my thoughts. This job ain’t normal. I’m not doing a normal thing here.”
“Say that again.”
“Bill. Crap. Listen. I’ve talked with all of you about this, but we’ve never discussed it. Tanner knows it’s a thing, but other than that, you two have had just mentions and dictators. So let me explain it all the way. I have hired a lot of guys – Bill here was one of them. I’ve hired a lot of guys over the years. There have been times I hired in an established hierarchy, and times when I’ve hired for cash, and nearly everything in between. I need to build Stefanie a home; we’re probably going to get a general contractor for the house.”
“Why don’t you build it yourself?”
“Bill, hush. Right now it’s general contractor.”
“I assume Stef won’t let you.”
“Bill’s special shit stir ingredient, assumption.”
“Bill, I need a witness not deposition questions. Even with the GC, I still have to build the roads, build the workshop, build the solar, and now that Chris found rock all the way down the easement, I need a whole lot of solar.”
“Gahhllee, don’t forget the dam.”
“Yeah, the dam. And even with a GC, I gotta save a little money somewhere, or none of it happens. So I gotta dig the house seat.”
“So you hang it on Rusty, Tanner and me and save a buck while you’re at it.”
“I doubt I’ll save a buck, but I’ll spend slower.”
“Cheap. Just won’t hire and pay up.”
“Cody, have I done something to offend you?”
“Just you want git land, get some local kids do the work, and all the while you got so much money…”
“Slow down…”
“No, you rich dudes is all the same…”
“Cody. Stop! Right now. You don’t need this, but Tanner and me do. We want it.”
“Bro, this a sucker game.”
“Wait. All of you. It’s not a sucker game, Cody – whatever the whole freight of that word means to you. It’s a play for control. You’re right, I could hire a dirt team, and they come in and I pay the tab, and the house gets built, and I’m all set. But this isn’t that. Dirt crews – all of them – work the same way. They come, they get a plan, and they clear cut any place they plan to go. They cut it all, all at once, and they get out. And that comes at a price, and you’re right the price is probably much higher than you for the same product, a moonscape holler only the rats will continue living in. But I’m not buying that product. I’m buying one bucket at a time, fix part of one thing and then move off of it to the thing the broken part was holding up, and I finish the broken thing, then I go fix the next priority. One day cutting trees and the next day not putting in the road that I cut for, but spreading the previous day’s mulch somewhere else because now that I have the mulch, I can make it a cleaner shed yard, less mud caked to the floor and frozen there, dust getting sucked in by the inverter. One day I’ll dig a hole and store the dirt in the temporary place while I clear the trees from the permanent and install the septic, then I’ll move the dirt - - - You can’t pay a company for that. Unless you create the company. And I’ll tell you another thing, you little shit, one thing is sure. Nobody else is picking you for their team with an attitude like that. And us, we didn’t even make you fill out the application that is sure to be the very bane of your whole fucked up existence because you got a list of bad job references to filter through, main search category, which is most likely to say the least bad shit when they answer for the references phone call. So the company that I would have hired, that company isn’t hiring you, anyway, so you might as well take this gig, or you get zero. Zero, Cody, which, as you already clocked and blocked, is the answer to this morning’s word problem. Zero is what Cody will get of this two year build that comes with some guys to trust you and count on you and that you can count on for once. Men that need you rather than spend all their time proving that you need them.”
“And for once you sit there at the pause, got your mouth clamped shut, and nobody else spoke either, so I’ll finish this. The business is the thing. But I don’t have the strength to start a new one anymore these days. So I’m doing the second best thing. I can’t work a payroll account, and I can’t work the phones. I sure can’t work the human resources office.”
“That’s a fact.”
“Shut up, Bill… Good one though. I can’t do those things anymore because I have other things going on. I can hire a company though, and I can pay an invoice, and I can make sure that money is right every week. And you guys can learn how to do what I no longer have the energy for.”
“So, if it’s a sucker game like Cody says, where’s the sucker?”
“I ain’t said sucker game like that.”
“Those were your literal words.”
“I guess I’m asking the question he’s saying; how could it go wrong?”
“That’s a good question, Tanner. I don’t think it can go wrong. I need you men – but Cody, I was looking for someone when I found you, and I can sure find another one at the Weigles waiting in line for backer. But that stranger would fill the need and do nothing for the want. I could advertise this business all day long on Facebook, and the driveway wouldn’t be long enough for the applicants to line up single file. The need is easy, Cody. I can fill that chasm with a tea spoon in each man’s hand. What I cannot fill is the want. I need men to build this place, and I want them to be you.”
“You just don’t want to search no more.”
“You won’t be won, Cody. I’m fine with that. But I’m going to say it again. This business is the job. The bid is twenty bucks an hour, and your belly won’t wait for your wisdom. So, you work, you get paid. Hell, the law states that even if you don’t work, you get paid as long as you’re employed, you get paid. This makes that even stronger. If you’re a partner, and the company gets bid money on a properly formatted and performed invoice, that money is yours, and there’s no firing possible.”
“Yeah right. Listen to that, Cody. Pedro literally fired you for doing exacly what yer doin right now.”
“Fuck you, Bro. Yer the one fired me.”
“And yer the one hired me on here.”
“Alright, guys, listen. We can’t derail the facts with old…”
“I ain’t derail nothin. Rusty actin like he decided, and other day, he just as much a no as me.”
“Cody, yer so full of shit…”
“Stop! Stop now. Cody’s in. He’s just fighting to save face now. We won him on the pay structure.”
“Whar you git that from?”
“You said it yourself. You defined the firing, and it showed your betrayal, and when you said it, you showed what I was saying, and that makes you say yes. You can’t get fired now, and let’s face it the pay is better than you deserve.”
“It’s not you tells me what I’m worth.”
“Cody, you best prefer it’s me because I’m paying above market for a man that the market has rejected a dozen times already. You can’t name a job you didn’t quit or get fired from.”
“You act like you know. I ain’t told you my work his…”
“Cody, you’re a twenty-two year old man with a baby at the house, came to work eight days before her first Christmas with a weekend’s notice, you’ve fought me every step of the way - a man trying to do nothing more than pay you for work the man needs done.”
“You the rich man look down the poor. I ain’t fight you. I fight you put words in my mouth, tell me I’m say I’s in. I ain’t said that, but here you is assuming – I thought assumption’s Bill’s game.”
“You’re hearing two messages, Cody. I did say both of them, but you’re pretending the only one I said is that you’re low, and you’re adding that I say I’m high. And, if I actually had said that I’m high, you would be right to point it out. But I didn’t. I said you are low, and your worth is high, and you’re cutting yourself with your own bullshit, just like I been saying all along.”
“Twistin words.”
“No, Cody, twisting the clock. You’re in, and you saved face. You’re good. Nobody here thinks you backed down easy to the Yankee. You showed him. Now, please allow me to talk to everyone else – because even if you take forty thousand dollars a year out of your own kid’s open mouth by not closing yours, these men got groceries to buy and they have the same next thirty years of work staring them in the face that you have, and they are no less concerned than you are about the stability of the idea.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Um, I won’t pile on, Cody, but he is right. I want this. And I’ll put a finer point on it than he did. You do too is proved by you didn’t leave. You’re stand there and you save face, but you didn’t leave. Your doubt earned answers I wanted to hear, but I still have questions. Like, it’s a partnership, fine, but who does all the work?”
“Now that’s a question I can answer straight. You all do the work. You’re a three man team, and you might think to divide the labor to the strengths, and the skeptic, the pragmatist, and the dreamer all have a separate path, but none of you is just one of those. All of you are the executive officer, the vice, and the treasurer. You’re too new not to.”
“Nice parable, but right now I’m the one running hours and invoicing and taxes and payroll and insurance and all that on the side. And that’s all after I’ve already done the same work all day that everyone else has done and gone home from.”
“It’s not Wizard of Oz, Tanner. Every Tin Man gets the straw, and you all need to have all nine names, pinhead.”
“Oh boy! Parable to fairy tale. He used to do this shit to me all the time too.”
“Bill shut up.”
“Nope. The boy don’t see it, and you won’t answer straight. So I will. I’m standing here thinking, if he would have found this three man master plan ten years ago when I was the one in your shoes, it would have been perfect. Instead, Slippers over here tip toed all over my learning by trips and hazards. This time I see he’s got it all figured out. I wish I had that version. And finally, I’d line up in that driveway all over again even without it, but with this plan, I almost want to start over.”
“Now that’s a Google review. And thanks, Bill. And thanks for getting me on track. Tanner is asking who does the work. The answer is all of you. You take turns. Tanner has handled the books and the bullshit through the last two weeks with you guys, and for three weeks with his own paperwork too. Once you’re all logged as one, you pass the books, and you teach the ways to the next man. He handles it for a few weeks, and then the next. And that way you all get basic knowledge in the most basic business function, paying the bills.”
“Yeah, I have a question. I got three open mouths in my own nest already, and who works the books settled, what I need to know is where’s the book money come from?”
“There’s the beauty of it all. My way takes time, a lot of time. I got a two year job here if we move our asses. The invoices are pegged to site hours. The invoice flows through on payday from the company to the members, and you all divvy according to how you decide. You can keep the hours peg, or you can divide equally, but that’s a decision for the officers.”
“I guess we’ll vote on that.”
“Okay, you little shits, this is it. If you’re staying, join hands with your partners - - - join hands. Do you, Rusty, take Tanner and Cody to be your lawfully wedded partners?”
“I do.”
“Do you, Tanner, take Rusty and Cody to be your lawfully wedded partners?”
“I do.”
“Do you, Cody, take Tanner and Rusty to be your lawfully wedded partners?”
“I do.”
“I told you so. Now, Tanner call Deno. He’s expecting a lunch invite to meet with everyone and do the amendments and such. Take him someplace nice. Stock and Barrel. Here’s my card.”