The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Good mornin’, boys.”
“You slept here last night.”
“Yup.”
“When did you come back?”
“We saw some dirtbike riders on the camera, and I started back just in case they needed to barry something.”
“Cold enough fer ya, bossman?”
“It’s no picnic.”
“Make your Marriott reservation yet?”
“Nope. A little cold won’t kill nobody.”
“Yeah, right. What’s today’s upset?”
“Upset? You mean work?”
“Don’t you have the closing?”
“I do. 10:30 downtown. We got three splits today. I called Southeast Drainage, and they’re delivering seven sticks of fifteen-inch culvert pipe. That’s a hundred and forty feet. While we’re waiting, I want Tanner and Devin clamping panels to that frame we started yesterday. You and Cody start post hammering the base sticks that we gathered out of the cuts. Same measurements as the first rack.”
“I’m meeting Stef for breakfast downtown.”
“She’s driving all the way downtown from Wear’s Valley?”
“Wears? No. I drove up solo last night. She stayed in Hardin Valley, and she’s toting her things up to Karen’s in Wear’s Valley after the closing.”
“So, um, me and Devin on the solar panels and these guys start the other two racks. Do you want me to work on the battery?”
“No. I have to be here for that. It’s not the exact same architecture as the four-battery bank. We need a combiner bus and some other things. I’ll be back by noon or so, and we can get to it then.”
“If we finish this before you get back, do you want the wire run?” “That’s fine. Use all the wire. Cut each roll in half. That will be four runs.”
“We’re only using three though, right?” “Yes, but if that’s not enough, we don’t want to start over. It’ll get harder and harder to pull new wire into that conduit, so we future proof it now.”
“Future proofin’ wasted waar.”
“Are you counting my money again?”
“Naw, juss sayin’ you already said you’s gonna move that shed, so that mean this waar won’t be long enough when you do. You have to scrap this, then, plan to lose money.”
“Okay, Cody. I’ll play along, but you have to do the same. Can’t keep coming at me like all my life’s a personal insult to you.”
“I…”
“Nope. It’s my turn still. Home Depot’s got eight gauge wire on sale this week, two-hundred if you buy at least two rolls. I bought four rolls. Yes, it will go to a scrap pile when I move the shed, but I’m a long-game man, and I know one thing above all others, markets. I know the highest best use doctrine applies to everything. By the time I scrap that copper, which today weighs one-hundred-twenty pounds, copper will be big high. I’ll get at least seven-hundred-twenty dollars for it at scrap when scrap price is six bucks.”
“Scrap ain’t never been six bucks.”
“Well, Cody, again. I know markets. And I know that market drivers dictate copper is about to take off.”
“What market drivers?”
“There hasn’t been a new copper mine in years because copper mining isn’t profitable, which means that more than seventy percent of the copper mined today is secondary product from higher value ores. It’s waste. And many of those primary mines these days are hyper specializing to maximize profitability, so the companies that are not receiving subsidies to intentionally set aside the copper are not doing so. Furthermore, many mines are mining out. And that’s the supply side. Best of all is the demand side projections are off the charts. All the talk these days are data centers. So, supply is about to half, and demand is going to skyrocket. Six dollars is conservative. I may even make money on this wire that I bought at a discount yesterday.”
“You don’t know none of that.”
“Cody, I do. And I’ll sweeten it too with more stuff I know. You know today’s spot price, maybe, but you know it because you get your wire at the plier point of desperation, and all that wire that I had Tanner – not you – pack up from Hardin Valley has been sitting around as much as a year. For me, that wire is like that junk yard down the road. I’ll sell the stuff when the stuff hits its highest value. For now a couple hundred pounds sit in the electrical trailer down there, and these will add to it, and by the time my price target hits, it will be near a thousand pounds, rather than the fifty bucks at a time that you muster.”
“You act like you know me.”
“Cody. It’s public record. You stole wire that weighed twenty-pounds, but they charged you for ten thousand dollars in property damage. It’s right there in the documents. Your restitution is ten thousand dollars. Unpaid to date, I might add.”
“All the same. Think they know ever thing.”
“Not all the same, Cody. I’m the first of the kind. You have done everything in your power to make me act out against you, and unlike everyone else that did fire you, I keep trying to use your asshole behavior as teaching moments. You’re rude, insubordinate, you commit crimes on my property, a cop’s property. You broke the computer. You intentionally attack my trees with the excavator. You steal from me by punching in from your house. I literally caught you in the equipment yard casing my response to your bring-Deddy-to-day-off-work-day. You have massive debt, which is every employer’s threat, and you have a theft record in bold ink. I gave you money for a driver’s license almost forty days ago, and a recording of our personal conversation that you show around to your friends, and I cannot imagine any good cause for showing it other than as some twisted-facts campaign because there is no account of that recorded conversation where you didn’t lose. So, you can say that I don’t know you, you know that I do. The unknown here is that you don’t know me. I believe that even in the face of all this, you’re an intelligent person, and I have every reason to hold out hope for you. Now go work. Closing time.”
“So, that’s it. We sold our home.”
“Is it time for the victory lap yet?”
“You earned it, but I only have time for lunch, and I gotta get back to the valley.”
“The old valley.”
“The good valley.”
“It’s the good valley. And we’ll build right next to it. Our own valley.”
“Going back home to build our own home.”
“We just sold my first real home.”
“And I’m going back to my second real home.”
“That’s wild swings.”
“Wild ones.”
“Past has to be prologue, but prologue is not prediction.”
“Prediction is folly.”
“I predict follies ahead.”
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
(Sometimes here, sometimes there, and sometimes with people who uncontrollably disliked me.)