Light Lifting by Alexander Macleod Page A

it.
    All of us looked up at the same time because it was strange to have a customer talking right to us. But here was this lady and she was calling him Robert. He smiled at her.
    â€œYes, it’s me,” he said. “How are you?”
    â€œOh, I’m good, I’m good,” she said. “Just coming back from the school. Getting ready for the new year. Lots of preparation to do, you know.” She had a bag full of papers.
    â€œThis is it for you, right?” she said. “You’ll be graduating this year.”
    â€œYes,” Robbie said. “This is it. One year left.”
    In the back of my head I always knew that Robbie and most of the other kids who worked with us were still only in high school, but I never really thought about it before. It threw me a bit, seeing him talk to that lady about graduating and school sports teams and calculus classes. I looked over at JC and then at Tom. I thought about JC saying his prayers at night and how Tom and I would go home and cook ourselves a dinner and then sit there in front of the TV and watch a ball game. For me, it’d been like that for so long, I think I stopped wondering about how it could be different for anybody else. Robbie was probably seventeen years old. What did a kid like that do when he went home? You could spend all this time working with a guy and still be totally different inside. I thought about how we were all stuck, all of us put in our places. I thought about how your life could be like a brick and how it was hard to move it once you got settled into the same place for a couple years.
    â€œSo this is your summer job, then,” the lady said.
    She looked at us and smiled and then she said to JC – like she was joking with him – “I hope you fellas aren’t working him too hard. Robert is one of the best. You take care of him, okay?”
    â€œWe will,” JC said quickly. He talked in that same over-keen way that people use when they’re trying to impress their teachers. “We’ll take care of him.”
    She went into her house and then five minutes later she came out with a big pitcher of lemonade for all of us.
    â€œRobert,” she said. “When you have your break, why don’t you come inside for a bite of lunch?”
    He stopped for a second, but it wasn’t like he needed to think about it. Everything that came out of that boy’s mouth came out natural.
    â€œThanks,” he said. “But I can only come if we all go.”
    She was a little surprised, but she was quick on her feet and she rolled right along with it.
    â€œOh of course, of course,” she said. “That’s what I meant. There’s room for all of you.”
    And that’s how it happened. Robbie and me and JC and Tom ended up sitting around the kitchen table with this old lady. Eating her tuna fish sandwiches with the crusts cut off and the Oreo cookies and the big glasses of milk. JC got down on his knees and said grace beside the table. He thanked God for the food and for bringing us all together and for keeping us healthy. And the lady kept filling up our glasses and bringing more cookies. Every once in a while, Robbie and I would glance back at each other smiling our heads off. Tom just sat there, completely quiet. I think he was wishing for his little red cooler. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. Quite the scene. We were like the opposite of one big happy family.
    ON THE LAST FRIDAY that Robbie worked with us, we all decided to quit early. We’d been going like mad for nearly three months, six or seven days a week, and Garlatti decided that we could take the half-day. So we knocked off right at twelve noon and we decided that we’d take Robbie out for lunch because we didn’t know when we were going to see him again. He was starting school again the next week.
    â€œIf you ever need a job, we got one for you,” Tom said. It was probably the only