The Last Thought of a Beating Heart

One

Friday, July 12th

Alexander Wilcott gazed out the window watching the heat waves rising from the broken and beaten pavement. Pasture Bluff had been in a insufferable heatwave and so far has been unforgiving and sweltering. The cloudless sky was allowing the sun free reign of terrorizing everything it touched and made it miserable to breathe. The weatherman on the morning news report had been less than encouraging with the lack of cooling down in the forecast for the foreseeable future. The first chance of possible change in the weather pattern could be in the next week, if the pattern holds. The only problem was the unpredictability of the weather. Cold winters and blistering summers were a downside of working in the city. This city was more than overpowering at times, but all things a person has to take the good with the bad. It was the nature of the beast. Six more weeks of work and the project would be complete along with a long vacation ahead of them.

The wind blowing off the small lake was the only thing keeping the crew sane from the heat. It seemed the heat wave was never going to end, even though fans brought in to circulate the heat made cooler heat. In all fairness, being two weeks ahead on the job meant the crew could take the rest of the day off and enjoy the weekend. The thought was cycling through Alexander's mind as the sweat beaded down his forehead into his eyes; but as the supervisor and head contractor, he was allowed him to make such decisions. Given the circumstances, he decided it wouldn't hurt to give his exhausted crew some much-needed time off from the heat.

"Hey Bill, go tell the guys to come down to the ground floor; we need to have a meeting." Shouted Alexander over the noise of the whirling fans.

"Sure, thing Boss." Bill started spreading the message over the handheld walkie-talkies.

Alexander waited as his crew gathered around. He noticed the tired and exhausted faces as they walked up and gathered around. Twelve plus hours a day for the past two months had taken a toll on them. They had worked through the hottest part of the year because the building was opening in December. Many of his crew had traveled from different states to work with him, and he was grateful to have such a loyal group of workers. It had been hard enough finding a good crew since the area was riddled with stereotypes and a whole host of exploitation of local workers in the corporate world.

As the last few of his crew wondered in, Alexander began to talk. "We have worked our asses off for the past two months getting this built. We are two weeks ahead of schedule and I think in this scorching heat we should take the rest of the day off and enjoy our weekend. I am going to stick around and make notes on what needs finished so as of now you are free to leave. Remember we'll be back here first thing Monday morning to keep the ball rolling."

The men shouted their goodbyes as they gathered their tools and began leaving the work site. Alexander began his daily check of the building. He kept notes on the progress of the worksite and items still needing completion. He was good at his work, and it showed. He had been doing this for what seemed like forever but in reality, it was only a few years. He monitored every building that had ever gone up under his supervision. He reminded himself it was to cover his ass in case something went wrong, but others believed he was so cocky that he kept them as a trophy. Some had called him obsessive, but he only thought it was being thorough. He couldn't afford to become sloppy and lazy. This was his passion in life. The whole process of brought him a rush in life he couldn't replace with anything else.

The last of his crew should have left by the time he had reached the top floor. The building had stories ten stories of identical floor plans, of course he always believed that these were the hardest to build because each floor had a mirror image. To the common person they were replicas of each other, but to him they were separate projects with identical ideas, and he loved it. He glanced down at his notes, and they were short considering the time spent walking around the site, but he had no doubt this was his best crew yet and the job never became boring.