“I just wondered if I could help ya today, Mr. Elohim.”
“I’ll be needin’ your assistance no more. I cannot associate with someone who associates with … Well, you know who I’m referrin’ to. You have to understand somethin’. We build chimneys and towers and steeples. In essence, we are buildin’ and erectin’ starts to heaven.
“They may not reach there, but they are the start of somethin’ to there. I cannot, in good faith, build with someone who associates with the great antithesis of God Himself. What if one day one of these starts we build together ends up bein’ the first step of the devil’s climb? And all because I allowed evil to build the beginnin’.”
He watched me scratch a scab off my arm until I drew blood. “I really liked steeplejackin’ with ya, Mr. Elohim.”
I remember the first time I stood on a roof with him. A storm had caused damage to the church’s steeple. Of all the roofs I’ve done, that of Breathed’s carpenter church has always been my favorite.
As he assessed the damage to the spire, I sat back on the ledge of the belfry and looked out at Breathed. He came and sat by my side, sighing something like, “Beautiful, ain’t it?”
“Yeah,” I must have said, and probably nodded.
“You can see the top of everything. Well, not everything, but a lot more than other folks ever see. Look there at the top of that tree. Top of that car. Top of that house. Top of that woman’s hat and that man’s head. I never see the tops of most things unless I’m standin’ on a roof.
“It’s funny ’cause the top of my head is the only thing anybody ever sees of me. Folks think when they look at the top of my head, all they’re seein’ is the top of a short man. But they’re really lookin’ down at roofs, trees, hills. I got ’em all right on top of here.” He tapped the top of his head. “I’ll never be a tall man, Fielding, but by God, I’ll never be a short one either. No matter what folks may say.”
“Listen, Mr. Elohim.” I shoved my hands into my pockets as I watched him pick up the tools from the wagon. “I hear ya ’bout the ladders and chimneys and steeples bein’ starts to heaven. But, today, well, today you’re fellin’ a chimney. Right?”
He nodded his head as he examined the end of one of the chisels.
“Then I reckon me helpin’ ya today, for one last time, wouldn’t be so bad, because we’ll be tearin’ the ladder down, stoppin’ the start to heaven and I suppose ’cause of that it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if I helped ya this last time. It’d be like we were tearin’ the start down so the devil couldn’t finish it. That there’s the opposite of wicked work.”
It was a slow coming around, but eventually he did see me as the boy he used to know. How could he not? The way I urged him to with my eyes, with my smile, with my begging, “Please.”
“I suppose there’s no harm in the fellin’.” He handed the chisel to me. “One last time.”
Before we climbed the ladder, we said the little something we always said:
Up I go, up so high,
I pray I do not fall and die.
But if I should, let it be said,
I’m mighty missed, now that I’m dead.
It was a chimney easily removed one brick at a time using the single jacks, small sledgehammers, along with tempered steel chisels. By the time we dismantled the portion of the chimney above the roofline, it was late and Elohim said I should go home, that the remainder of the chimney in the house was work he would do alone.
I picked up my shirt I’d taken off to use as a sweat rag. But I couldn’t go. Not before I knew.
“Why you hate Sal so much, Mr. Elohim?”
He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief as he sat down on the roof. I think he must have gotten sweat in his eyes from the way he blinked.
“Some folks think just ’cause I set her plate at mealtimes, wash her clothes, wear this weddin’ ring that I don’t know my Helen is dead. I know she is. Did you know she was an art historian? Yep, sure was. And in 1956, she went to France, to look at a paintin’. I missed her terribly, probably more than I should’ve.
“One night I had a little too much to drink. I stumbled to the phone and called her hotel room in Paris. A man answered. An American. A nigger.”
He bit his fingernail off and swallowed it before saying, “I could tell that’s what he was. They got a different sound. Sure ain’t the sound of a white man.
“I hung up. Dialed the operator, told her to get the number for God. She never did say nothin’, just laughed. I hung up on her too. It wasn’t God I really wanted anyways. They say if you wanna get things done, you gotta get hold of the devil.
“So I picked up the phone again, but I didn’t dial nothin’, I just waited. The dial tone hummed in my ear, then it crackled and I knew. I knew he had picked up.”