[Welcome, Suburban Guerilla readers!]

It’s raining. I think of the song, “Summer Wind,” as sung by the brainy kid Martin on The Simpsons after he’s been de-pantsed.

Summer rain sticks to everything. A year ago we would bungee down all the tarps we had on everything. The moment the sun came out, we’d tent the tarps up. As long as everything was on the ground it was only annoying. Once the bale walls were up, though, the tarps had to come down, then go back up, then come down, and back up.

We have too many very large blue tarps, several medium-sized white tarps, and some black plastic. I try to re-use, but plastic will rot in the sun, not to completely gone but only to completely useless. But we do the best we can, mindful that the goal of the house we are building is that after we are both dead, the structures can be demolished and every part recycled. With the exception of some plastic window sill pans and plumbing, we have so far succeeded. Except for the tarps.

The only person who hates the tarps more than me and the fab GF is our carpenter, Ryan. Mostly because the three of us would have to set them up and take them down and set them up and take them down ad nauseum. It was the only time the fab GF and I would bicker (my fault mostly) and it made him uncomfortable.

Late August last year we set blocking from the top plate of the bale walls to the cupola so we could hang the tarps. And about that time Ryan got MRSA.

He thought he had just banged his knee into some lumber and it would be fine in a couple days. Then it swelled. Then he showed up with his eyes glassy and face flushed. Obviously he had a fever. He finally went to the doctor when he realized he couldn’t pick up three 2x12s at the same time without getting dizzy.

He had surgery the next day.

The day after that he pulled up on his motorcycle (he said it hurt less on the bike than in his truck) and limped over to where I was building rafter assemblies. His calf was twice the size it should have been, with the skin taut and shiny. He said he had to work. He had no insurance, the medication he had to take cost three hundred dollars, he had child support, and he had to pay rent on his new place. He had a new place because the second day he’d come to work for us, he’d gone home to find all his shit strewn across the front yard. That’s how he found out his girlfriend just wasn’t into him anymore.

There was no way he was going to work in the summer sun with stitches, fever, and major infection. He gave me a half-hearted argument because he felt like crap and I knew he felt like crap and the best thing he could do was heal up.
We knew about MRSA. Ryan’s case was complicated in that he’d broken his foot earlier in the summer and that hadn’t completely healed. That’s how we got to hire him in the first place. He’d been a lead carpenter on the light rail project when he got tagged by an SUV heading south on I-405. He actually mimed the whole thing for us one afternoon and it was hysterical. He said he was able to dogpaddle along the side of the SUV once it knocked his front wheel. The driver turned, got one look at Ryan’s helmeted face, and then took the next exit.

When the SUV turned, Ryan flew forward. He knew his bike was skidding right along beneath him and the trick was going to be landing without hitting it or cracking his head on the pavement. He managed half of it---if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet, I never would have met him.

He was wearing protective gear, so when he hit the concrete he managed to roll, smashing only his foot. As soon as he could, he jumped to his feet and tore across three lanes of traffic. He said that was the most terrifying part of the whole thing. The crash he could handle, the landing he could handle, missing the bike he could handle, but if he got hit by an oncoming car, he would be dead before he heard the splat.

The SUV that hit him never came back.

Ryan managed to get the bike out of traffic and pushed it four miles to the work site. When he parked the bike, he realized he couldn’t move his foot properly. A buddy drove him to the ER, where he was given pain meds and an open cast.

You can’t wear open boots on a union worksite and Ryan lost his job. And that’s how he came to work for us, wearing the cast. He’d be up on the catwalks gimping around and hitting shit with his hammer. Then one day I heard a crash. His open cast was lying dented but unbroken on the concrete. He was sick of wearing it.

But now he had MRSA. And if MRSA got into his bones, something serious would become life threatening. At minimum he'd lose his foot.

He was out two weeks. During that time, tarps up, tarps down, tarps up, tarps down, bicker bicker bicker. It rained several times. Two leaks on the bale walls I saber sawed out the wet straw and fanned till they were dry. I built all the rafter assemblies and leaned them against the walls all the way around the house. Ryan’s first day back, we got most of the rafter assemblies up. I tried to help place the 4x12 hip rafters, but he shooed me away and I watched him cut a compound 45-degree cut on each side of the rafter with his circular saw. We got the roof on and dried in before the real rain came. Then he and I did most of the interior framing, including an angled barrel arch in the entryway.

His tools are here. So is his motorcycle. His helmet, with a massive dent in it from the crash last summer, is also here.

Ryan is not here. Ryan is in jail.

He did something stupid. We bailed him out (that's how I know that bailbondsmen have good pens), told him go back to his union gig, raise some bank, and hire a good lawyer. He didn’t. His public defender sort of missed a deadline. Ryan missed a court date. Bench warrant, sweep, into the pokey he goes. Three to five months. We send him books every week. He’s hoping to get a regular job so he can get work release and see his three-year-old son.

He will not leave the state because of his boy. Ryan’s mom abandoned him when he was ten, his older brother raised him till he was fourteen, and then he lived with his alcoholic father. Ryan got his first construction job when he was sixteen. He got his union card three months after he started. He got his GED when he was twenty-one. His son was born when he was twenty-six.

He’s a good dad. Or he tries to be. His little boy has been here several times and always wants to work. His favorite job is cleaning things up. He will sweep, pick up blocks of wood and throw them in the wheelbarrow, and drag a magnet over the floor to pick up stray nails. This is not five minutes of play---he will work for hours if you let him. He hasn’t seen his dad for over a month, though his dad is constantly mailing him pictures and letters.

The fab GF and I have talked about how we both know The Guy Who Left. The guy who gives up on his kids and himself. He gives up finding a place in the world and teaching his children how to do that and just disappears. What holds Ryan here (other than the lovely blue jumpsuit, bars, and armed guards) is his little boy. That he wants to be a father to his son is good and a source of hope in a time when hope is a ten-cent word but you can’t buy shit for a dime.

He writes us funny letters with every word misspelled and the meaning crystal clear---sometimes the only chance you get is the one that is forced on you. Ryan is trying so hard to be the man he never had in his own life. So he sits in jail figuring out how to do that.

Ryan’s motorcycle is sitting out in the rain. I should go throw a tarp over it.