The Great Replacement

The Great Replacement The baker, an old Italian man, whispered “I’m sorry.” He had spent his life trying to bring something sweet to the life around him. But that morning all he could taste was the bitter in the words he knew would bring only heartache. When Giuseppe, his apprentice, arrived at dawn he decided it was best to be quick. But as he spoke he felt something in himself sour. “My daughter…she is marrying. Her husband will need work. I cannot keep you both.” “You are replacing me?” Giuseppe asked. The old man watched his young friend tremble with distress, then nodded. He touched Giuseppe’s shoulder but his hand felt heavy and cold. He caught sight of himself in some glass, at the crumble of his own expression, at the disappointment in himself, that he could do such a thing. But what choice did he have? This Depression made even good men cruel. As he stepped away Giuseppe told himself that great things often have bad beginnings. But all he could feel was loss filling the space in his future. Replacing it. And suddenly he knew there was nothing left for him here in Palermo, the only home he had ever known. Nothing except the ache and the echo of unfairness. The world replaces friendship with blood. It takes hold of belonging and replaces it with the unbelonging that only strangers and refugees know. Guisseppe sold all he had and came to this new place thousands of miles from all he knew. America sounded cleaner than New York or Boston. America was a place where life could begin again to replace worry and doubt with hope and sweat. And so it was, that uncertain and brave, Giuseppe and his family came to Georgia in 1930. They were still Italian, still strangers, still outsiders but they belonged now to the great collection of the hopeful and dispossessed that belonged no where else. Replacing the broken promise of home with the unbroken faith of a stranger. And so Giuseppe told everyone that asked that his name was Joe because Joe was American. And because he wanted to be American. Work was sparse but, as always, the hardest jobs remained. The kind that broke mens backs and then their hearts. The kind that reduced them to shovels and sweat. And replaced their dreams to dust and then contempt. But Joe found a shovel job digging footers and pouring foundations. It did not much matter that he could not speak but a few words of English. He spoke the language of sweat and like the men around him his hope and fatigue felt genuine and so true. Joe rose early and stood at the site waiting for dawn because he knew how jobs could sometimes disappear in the dark. He wanted to prove his devotion not just to a paycheck but to building something in this place of new life. The year before a Wyoming farm boy had left home when his father was forced to sell to Easterners and their banks. He followed what work there was to Georgia and settled in the town hoping his roofing skills might finally find a home for him. He had an easy smile and as long as the work lasted was a welcome part of the crew. But he hated outsiders, like the ones that replaced his daddy on his family’s land. So when Joe hired on, he saw him as one of the substitutes that forces their way in where they don’t belong. One of the other kind of people that steal jobs and change towns and force men like him up into the wind. And though each dawn Joe was always the first at each site, all Wyoming saw was a thief. A taker. ‘Ignorant Guinea…Dago…why don’t you go back where you’re from son…don’t speak a word of English...good for nothing but a shovel and a ditch.’ It went on that way until Wyoming, hungover from too much of a Saturday night, crawled up on a roof one Monday morning. Near noon he passed out from the hooch and the heat, slid down the backside of a second story and about broke his leg. It swole up, turned purple and then yellow from a busted blood vessel. But knowing there was a line of men waiting on his job, he dragged himself to work the next day. The crew chief stared at the dirt and listened hard. “I’m a fast healer boss,” Wyoming said. “Good as new by next week.” The crew chief’s eyes grew hard and his voice cold. “Damn you. I mean I know it aint right. But you put me in a tight spot. I fall behind and it’s my ass on the line looking for work.” He sighed and then let the cold in his voice break off into the daily threat a boss learns to say early. That being in charge has no friends and no master but the clock, that he was just another kind of slave whispering about not enough. Not enough good men and not enough time, whispering it to another shape up day laborer who was worried about not enough rent or not enough food. “Don’t care about the leg none as long as you get them shingles in place on time. Don’t care how. Only that it gets done. Otherwise I got to get someone else." He looked away and spat. "Don’t want to…but dammit boy you done it to yourself and it's not like I don’t have a line from here to kingdom come of somebody elses with two good legs.” Joe stood nearby listening hard to the sound of the words he did not understand. But the threat in them was unmistakable. Wyoming stared at the unshingled section two stories up and then at the stranger. “What you looking at guinea? Suppose you want to replace me…take my job.” Wyoming stepped toward the ladder, gritted his teeth and started up a rung. He let out a grunt that became a howl that swallowed itself. Then he fell back away clutching the swollen leg trying to strangle the pain with his hands. The crew, just finishing for the day, stepped off the site into the street.They clamored into pickup trucks with windows down, the wind cooling their faces as they drove toward home where cold water and welcome darkness waited. Soon the site was empty except for a Wyoming farm boy staring at the unfinished roof like it was a pink slip and Joe, the baker. The no good immigrant ditch digger. The taker, the thief who stole jobs and towns and lives from the people they belonged to. Joe stepped forward, reached down and took the hammer and nails in hand. He picked up a shingle and held it pointing to the roof. Then he stepped toward the ladder and began to climb. He was afraid of heights. But he saw that same inconsolable remorse in the farm boy that he had seen in his own eyes. He held out the hammer and the shingle as if to say “Show me.” Wyoming stared at the ditch digger. And when he was sure he understood what this man was offering, felt his face, bent in contempt, break and fill with shame. He took the hammer and the shingle. "Like this,” he said. Joe unsteadily climbed the ladder, crept out onto the roof and as his teacher below showed him, began to replace the battered worn out shingles. They worked until they could no longer see each other. The sound of the hammer in the dark and the voice of the farm boy calling instruction to the immigrant who had climbed to a place where he could not help but be seen for who he was. The next morning the crew chief looked at the roof, then at the limping farm boy. He turned, stared at the Italian ditch digger, and shook his head at the foolishness of kindness. About how it crawls up high above the hard dirt and the breaks of bone and fortune. As unmistakable as dawn. Each night Joe and Wyoming waited until the crew had gone then worked together hammering into the dark, building something like a roof, between them. By late July the farm boy’s leg began to heal. The yellow and purple of the broken blood dried and his skin slowly turned pink again. And each man continued as though there was not a miracle of sacrifice that passed between them. The ditch digger stood again and again in the predawn dark waiting to shovel away doubt. And the roofer high above hammered away at Worry and Time and the growing certainty that he had been wrong about this migrant. But once or twice a day, he would look down at the baker that had somehow managed to dig past his anger and replace it with respect. One day in August as the site deserted Joe turned toward home. His shoulders were stooped and his arms heavy. His eyes studied the ground. He walked with the bearing of a man that believed his fatigue was sign of strength. Wyoming had an ancient Chevy, with a rusted flatbed that he treated like an old dog. It had only so many miles left but he was too loyal to ever put her down. As he turned out onto the street he saw Joe, pulled alongside, reached over and threw open the passenger door. Joe stared at the driver, uncertain at the offer. But the farm boy waved at him to get in and the baker unsteadily climbed up into the seat and gently closed the door. “Roll down that window. Nothing like the wind after 10 hours of sweat,” Wyoming said. “This was my daddy’s. Second engine and it leaks oil, but dammit I’ll drive her until the rims fall off.’ Joe looked around and leaned toward the open window and felt the wind begin to blow away the days’s dust. The two men rode along in silence, feeling the effortless glide of rubber on road and listening to the engine growl and bark. “Listen partner,” Wyoming finally said. “Something been eating at me.” He slowed at a red light and listened to the engine shift down into neutral and tick. He stared straight ahead but his voice became unsure, like there was a question at the bottom that he was trying to spit out of him. Spit out because it didn’t taste like anything he ever knew. And it worried him, this new thing that had shattered his certainty and left him with only doubt. “Why would you do that…all of that overtime…all of that work… for the likes of me?” He half turned and stared for a long moment like he was trying to see into the man beside him. ”Why would you do all that for a stranger. For some fool that treated you like I done?” Joe shrugged the way a man without words sometimes does. He looked down at the floorboard and then the dirt on his hands. Then he turned and looked up into the roofer’s face and held out his hands. Wyoming looked at them then up into the ditch digger’s eyes. Into the memory of loss and the stain of old wound that waited there. And the farm boy understood. He understood the inarticulate eloquence of kindness. The language that men without words speak with hammers and nails. With sweat and with sacrifice. And something like an unspoken vow, crossed over from the Italian immigrant who had known unfairness and trouble to a Wyoming farm boy that had known trouble and unfairness. The light changed and the old dog of a truck grunted and limped away through the streets. Wyoming pulled over when Joe pointed out the rental. Joe's son was playing in the yard and his wife stood and smiled. Joe opened the door and began to step out but the roofer reached over and touched his elbow. And the Wyoming farm boy, whose future had been replaced by trouble, whose resentment had been replaced with gratitude, began to speak and heard his voice crack. “Thank you," he quietly said. “Thank you.” Joe closed the door and the old Chevy dropped into drive and slide out and away. Like it knew the way home. WLM