Chapter 8 - The Concrete Cathedral
The industrial yard on the east side of Houston, bordering the ship channel, did not appear on any glossy real estate listings.
It was twelve acres of compacted crushed limestone, surrounded by an eight-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Towering cranes stood like dormant steel dinosaurs against the grey morning sky. Mountains of precast concrete culverts, rusted steel sheet piling, and yellow Caterpillar excavators occupied the acreage.
A faded metal sign hung over the gate:
*REEVES HEAVY CIVIL CORP. — EST. 1984.*
Brandon stood across the two-lane access road, his breath pluming in the cool February fog.
He was wearing a faded denim shirt and a pair of dark jeans he had purchased at a nearby Walmart that morning for thirty-six dollars. The Italian loafers were gone, replaced by a pair of heavy, steel-toed work boots that felt stiff and alien on his feet. He had walked three miles from the bus stop on Industrial Boulevard. His shins ached, and his blistered heels burned with every step, but he hadn't stopped.
He had no right to be here. Marcus Vance had made that abundantly clear.
Yet, as Brandon watched the diesel flatbeds rumble through the gate, loaded with timber and bridge girders, he realized this was the only place in the world that held the answer to what he had become.
He crossed the road, his boots crunching on the gravel.
At the main security shack, a man with a thick white mustache and a Reeves Civil hard hat stepped out, holding a clipboard.
"Can I help you, son?" the man asked, squinting through the dust. Then his eyes widened, the pencil in his hand freezing. "Wait a damn minute. Brandon?"
Brandon stopped five feet from the gate. "Hello, Joe."
Joe Morales had been Franklin Reeves’s head superintendent since before Brandon was born. When Brandon was seven, Joe had given him rides in the cab of a front-end loader. When Brandon graduated from college, Joe had stood at the back of the auditorium, wearing his only good Sunday suit, clapping with hands that looked like scarred tree bark.
Joe didn't smile. The warmth that had always been present in the older man’s weathered face was completely gone, replaced by a wall of hard, unforgiving granite.
"You need to turn around," Joe said quietly.
"Joe, please. I just need to see him. Just for five minutes."
"He ain't here," Joe said, not blinking. "And even if he was, you think I'd let you through that gate? After what you did?"
The shame hit Brandon like a physical blow. "He told you?"
"Franklin didn't have to tell me a damn thing," Joe replied, stepping forward until he was right at the fence line. "I’ve worked for that man for forty-two years. When he walked into the yard yesterday morning at seven-thirty with his eye swollen shut and butterflies holding his cheek together, he told the safety director he tripped over a cable on the dock." Joe spat onto the limestone. "Franklin protected you. Even after you treated him like a dog in the street, he wouldn't let the boys on the yard know what kind of bastard he raised."
Brandon’s knees felt weak. "Joe..."
"You think this money just grew out of the dirt, don't you?" Joe’s voice shook with an old man’s contained rage. "You think that fancy school you went to, that big house you strutted around in, came from some magic bank? Let me tell you something, you little piece of shit. In nineteen-ninety-four, when the Katy Freeway contract nearly bankrupted this company, Franklin didn't take a paycheck for fourteen months. He remortgaged his house three times so my kids and the boys on the crew had health insurance. He slept on a cot in that office over there three nights a week while you were at summer camp in Maine."
Every word felt like a nail driven into Brandon’s skull.
"I didn't know," Brandon whispered, tears burning his eyes.
"Because he didn't want you to know!" Joe snarled, his fist slamming against the chain-link fence, making the metal shudder. "He wanted you to have a clean life! He didn't want you smelling like diesel fuel and joint compound your whole damn life! He wanted a gentleman for a son! And what did you give him? You gave him thirty punches because he gave you a thirty-year-old watch!"
"I want to work," Brandon choked out.
Joe stared at him, utterly dumbfounded. "What did you say?"
"I want to work," Brandon repeated, looking down at his stiff, cheap boots. "I don't have anywhere else to go, Joe. I don't have a job. Blackwood fired me. Amber left me. The house is gone. The cars are gone. I have three thousand dollars left. I don't want his money. I don't want an office. Just give me a shovel."
Joe laughed, a dry, barking sound devoid of humor. "A shovel? You? You wouldn't last thirty minutes on a pour, Brandon. You’d pass out before the first chute cleared."
"Try me," Brandon said, looking up, his eyes bloodshot, his voice steadying through the misery. "Put me on the worst crew you have. Don't pay me from his account. Pay me what you pay the day-labor hands out of the hiring hall. If I quit, you never have to look at my face again."
Joe Morales stared at Brandon for a long, agonizing minute. He looked at the soft hands, the Walmart work shirt, the raw desperation in the younger man's eyes.
"Franklin finds out I hired you, he might fire me," Joe said.
"He won't find out," Brandon said. "I'll take the night shift. Bridge demo. Drainage. Whatever nobody else wants."
Joe took off his hard hat, rubbed his bald head with the back of his forearm, and spat again.
"Crew Four," Joe muttered, turning toward the yard. "Interstate 610 expansion near Meyerland. Seven o'clock tonight. You report to Hector. You tell him your name is Bran. You don't use your last name. You touch a phone, you complain about the heat, or you miss one damn shift, and I will personally throw your ass in the ship channel. You understand me?"
"Yes, Joe," Brandon whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Thank you."
May you like
"Don't thank me," Joe said, walking back into the security shack without looking back. "I ain't doing this for you. I’m doing this because maybe—just maybe—there’s a drop of Franklin’s blood left inside you that ain't completely rotten. Now get the hell off my gate."
***
