Don't splash the wall. Don't splash the men.

Good friend of mine, a mason of very great talent, is stacking the bricks around a million dollar home out in the county.  The neighborhood is thick, green and lush with arbor vitae, chemically treated lawns and  young moms making a sport of stroller pushing.  In-ground pools, underground electrical hookups, service vans in the driveways.  The job is on a corner lot, carpenters and plumbers inside, masons out.  Some of the masons enjoy spectating the sport of stroller pushing.  The owner of the place is a doughy Italian straight out of a mob movie, track suit, accent and everything.  He even knows something about masonry, (brick face and stucco!) just enough to make himself a nuisance.  The brick on this job are all 12" which is like the tall-boy or pounder or 16-ouncer of brick.  The bond (that's a mason's word for the pattern the bricks make)  is a very attractive pairing of sorts that suits the longer brick.  The corners should start with common 8" bricks but the doughy Italian insisted on 12's, no one knows why, except he is buying the bricks.

Up until the day I arrived, the laborers, not to say craftsmen, were some Amish boys.  They were referred to as round-hat wearing mother-fuckers because they did not possess the same skill as their English counterparts and were costing the job time.  I found this curious as it seemed to me one of the stereotypes for the sect (among others less pleasant) was that they were artisans or at least handy.  "Maybe with barns or something.  This here is a house with electricity," it was explained.  The Amish had committed fireable lapses in performance, but their father owned the hydraulic scaffold.  They were not present this day, which is one of the reasons I was.

A mason tender is sorta like a valet but not so well dressed.  The tender does all the tasks that will keep the mason on the wall, plying his craft.  The most important rules are: don't splash the wall.  Don't splash the men.  These can be distilled into the tender's commandment:  don't splash.  Other tasks include carrying stacks and stacks and stacks of bricks.  A stack of 12"s goes about 90 lbs., shoveling mortar (masons call it mud) into the work trays.  A shovel  of mud probably goes 40 lbs but takes about twice that force to remove from a big tub of it.  Pick this up, move it over there.  Cutting bricks on a giant masonry chop saw.  Because my buddy's working speed is about twice that of a hard, fast worker, he sets his chop saw up on the ground so that to use it you have to kneel in front of it like you're making a prayer.  You are actually, to keep your fingers.  Every time I prayed to the chop saw, someone from another crew would come up and watch, adding to my anxiety over ruining a 12 inch brick.  When the saw spun down they'd give me some instructions regarding the job site.  I said okay a lot and laughed coarsely when they said shit like "havin' fun yet?" or asked me if I'd seen the woman with the stroller.

The other thing a mason tender does is take guff from masons.  Guff for standing around, for mixing the mud too wet, for mixing the mud too dry, for not mixing the mud, for letting the mud boxes get too low, for filling the mud boxes too high.  It doesn't really matter if these offenses are actually committed, the tender takes guff for them anyway.  The upside is you get to hear stories about the working life of masons:  The time there was no work.  The time so-and-so's fingers got cut off by the scissor lift.  The time dude had a bucket of sand dropped on him from three stories.  The time there was no work anywhere.  When the boss fell off scaffold.  The new guy had his wall section torn out brick by brick by the foreman.  Once when no one had any work and we rode our motorcycles to the union hall in the rain. The time a line of fifty dollar bills was clothes-pinned to the the top of the wall, waiting for a crew to brick their way up and claim them.  The day we did 800 brick.  900 brick.  Put up a Target warehouse in 10 days.

I wish had a skill nobler than taking guff.  A trade, I mean.  I'm always a little ashamed at myself around  men that do high-skill physical work.  Like I'm wearing silk underthings and someone's bound to find out.  I offered to run the mixer and make up a new batch of mud. (why the boxes were low, for pete's sake)  Sand, mortar, water.  I've made waffles before.  The mason gave it some thought, said maybe next time, he didn't want to risk jamming the mixer.  would've called him a dick if I wasn't so damn impressed by the way they use a trowel.   I pointed out the stoller babe making another lap and earned a couple points.

Four- five hours tops.  Dirty, hungry, happy that I did not embarrass myself.  No more than usual anyway.  My buddy asked me what I had lined up for the rest of the day.  A wave of shame splashed over me.  I'd planned on going to the gym, but it sounded so callow, puerile, silly in my head.  "Exercise," I said. "You know, fake work."