August in the Mind

By Nick Taddeo

Tony Antonelli develops a strong and immediate antagonism to a newcomer who arrives at his work place. Without provocation he attacks the man but is held back by fellow workers.

Seeking to understand the cause of his actions, he follows a baffling memory, first physically and then internally, chasing the shadows of memory until he reaches a medieval town in central Italy.

On the steps of an ancient Duomo, he survives a traumatic experience which helps him comprehend his actions. When he returns home, a surprise occurrence is waiting.

An original and creative exploration of one of the many things we know so little about.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Foremost Press
• Release date: Dec 28, 2009
• ISBN: 9781936154371

Nick Taddeo

Nick Taddeo lives in Pasadena, California, and is the author of five novels. I served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and returned with a strong desire to get back into the flow where I could make my own choices and seek opportunities to live a full life. I believe I've captured a great deal of that struggle in The Afghan Tiger. _______________________ My first experience with making wine came when I was about ten or eleven. I helped my father press what he called Michigan and California grapes in our cellar. Breathing the strong aroma issuing from the fermented must and taking a few sips of the purple juice caused me to stagger around half intoxicated until I could get out for some fresh air. I didn't know at the time I would develop such a strong interest in the process and the people involved. Pouring from any bottle brings an endless variety of tastes depending on the winemaker, the soil, the climate and forever, the grape. So out of this interest I have managed to write two novels, Night Wine and Anna's Passion, and yet I go on studying the subject and tasting the wines. _______________________ My love of animals has been one of life-long interest. When I was a youngster and first saw a caged lion pacing back and forth in a tiny cell at the Detroit Zoo, I knew something was wrong. I couldn't let go of that image. Even today, I run because a sense of unrestricted movement connects me to the freedom which a wild animal needs to survive. For the novel Tinnemaha Creek, I camped, hiked, and studied the Eastern Sierras, consulted with Native Americans, farmers, ranchers, and wildlife specialists to raise my awareness of the dilemma which confronts both humans and wildlife struggling for survival in that beautiful tumultuous slice of the American West.

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AUGUST IN THE MIND

Nick Taddeo

Published by ActionTales.com, an imprint of Foremost Press

at Smashwords

Copyright 2002 Nick Taddeo

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ONE

Inner Drift

The work elevator jerked twice and then slowly lifted Tony upward through the steel and concrete skeleton of an unfinished building. Through the grille each floor sliced downward across his view. At the twenty-second story, the iron cage chattered to an abrupt stop. Tony stepped off the elevator onto a steel beam. He could see far out into the early morning haze. Below loomed hazardous open spaces.

Before moving out he paused, wondering if he could still balance on narrow spans high above the earth. Not since his college days had he walked the steel girders of a building in progress. Knowing that too much thinking could trip him into disaster, he forced himself to concentrate on the job to be done.

Moving forward, steady, keeping relaxed, he had to step over a welder’s bucket. As he did, his trailing leg caught the handle sending the bucket off into space. He snapped his arms outward to regain balance. Steel clanged against steel as the bucket fell. It hit a cross-brace, spun, slammed into a girder. Tony realized he was not alone when, two floors below, the bucket narrowly missed the head of another man.

Tony saw the fellow look up, saw him walking a beam, though he seemed to creep along, stoop-shouldered, with both arms far out for balance ready to grab the girder under him. As the man approached the elevator shaft, Tony moved along the upper beam and shouted, Hey, wait! Wait up!

At that moment Tony had one clear look at the man’s face. What he saw he could not like. The face was one he had seen only in a bad dream. Frightened eyes stared at him out of deep sockets. The face issued a greyish-green pallor as though the owner had lived his life in dark shadows. Tony tried to move closer, but when the elevator reached his floor, the person slid the door open and jumped in without responding.

Tony could not imagine why the man was in the building nor why the man reminded him of a dream he did not want to recall.

He shook his head to drive away, at least temporarily, those thoughts and then advanced along the beam to further examine the construction. Welding at various joints appeared solid, but he noted that tools and materials had been abandoned wherever the workers finished the day’s labor. As he shifted carefully about the interior of the structure, he reflected on why his supervisors had assigned him this inspection task. He didn’t mind. In fact, he sensed a return of self-assured calm. The change away from the drafting table came as a relief, and he relished a physical challenge to the body he exercised to keep in good condition.

Tony followed the steel pathways from one area of the building to another. At one point he stopped when he found a sharp chisel which he used to scratch his name, Tony Antonelli, into the blackened steel. He smiled because he knew his name would remain there even after the structure had been covered, the building lived in, and his own time had come and gone.

* * *

After inspecting the integrity of the diagonal cross braces and supporting steel members, Tony felt satisfied that the building was emerging according to plans. Walking along the outside beam until he reached the elevator shaft, he pushed the button bringing the lift back up. He then descended in the shaky iron cage. From his vantage point through the bars, he saw a security guard and the stoop-shouldered man leaving the grounds. Several crew members drove onto the site in their small import pickups and throw-away sedans.

Leaving the elevator he walked a few yards across the dirt to a mobile crane. It had been parked without the hydraulic outriggers extended, a dangerous inattention to detail. He’d seen a crane that had toppled over on its side. Something had better be done about these workers. He went first to his car, removed the hard hat he was wearing, and combed his hair back by running fingers through the grey-speckled dark mass. After changing work boots for loafers and slipping on a sports jacket, he approached three blue-shirted men who were standing near the structure.

One of you the job foreman?

He ain’t here yet, the shortest one responded.

Who’s the crane operator?

Not us. A worker with a blond pigtail confronted him. You sure ask a lot of questions. You’re not union. Who the hell are you?

Just doing a job.

The fellow came right up to his face. You want us to do a job on you?

Tony looked up at the blond who was taller and much heavier. Instead of backing off, he cocked his head to one side. Only three of you?

The shortest one grabbed his fellow worker’s arm. C’mon, J-J, don’t start nothing. We can’t lose this here job.

We don’t need the hassle.

Aww, he just asked a couple questions.

Tony still faced the man. Don’t you have work to do?

We’ll get to it when we’re ready. J-J stiffened up.

The third man, a stocky Latino, grabbed his tool box, Let’s go to work better. I don’t fight mornings, just with my wife. Then the short one motioned for his friend to come with him. J-J expelled a blast of air through his nostrils at Tony and reluctantly backed off. I’d like to get you off the job one of these days.

Tony watched the men disappear into the skeleton building. He circled the entire structure, examining the machinery and scattered stock piles of steel and concrete slabs as he moved. Aware that the foreman had still not arrived, Tony had no choice but to leave.

Conrad Olson called him into his glass cubicle the moment he entered the office. Well, Antonelli, what’d you find out there on the site? Anything inherently wrong with the structure or the building design?

No, as far as I can determine the building is rising according to plan.

Why are they so far behind then? We’re approaching cost overages on that one.

Well, I found the workmanship is sound, but the crew is sloppy. They leave equipment around, sometimes in dangerous locations.

There’ve been no accidents, so that wouldn’t explain the delay.

No, but I learned the job foreman doesn’t arrive on time. Some of the workers seemed hostile, maybe worried, but they wouldn’t speak against him. I think the first thing you might do is have a talk with the person in charge. He needs to put discipline in the men and probably himself.

Thanks. Good job. That’ll be all for now.

Tony poured himself a cup of coffee and returned to his drafting table. He stirred the coffee with a pencil as he studied an unfinished drawing, then put the lead point in his mouth before he realized what he was doing. Achh, he said and wiped his mouth with a shirt sleeve to get rid of the taste. Months of work lay ahead before this building would insinuate its form into the sky. However, not even the stoutest caffeine could overcome his reluctance to continue the work. The routine of years, working as an ordinary draftsman when he was a trained structural engineer, frustrated him into resistance. Hoping the added responsibility of this morning’s earlier effort might lead to more than risk taking, he pushed his paper cup of steaming coffee away from the drawing and sharpened another pencil into a dagger-fine point.

He glanced up from his drawing when a stoop-shouldered man walked into the office. Everyone had been expecting a new worker, so that was no surprise. The surprise came when Tony recognized him as the same grey-faced man who was up on the building this morning. Seeing the newcomer up close excited an alarm in Tony’s nervous system, and he would never be the same again. The face reminded him of a long forgotten antagonism. Though he did not know the man, had never seen him before this morning, Tony experienced a keen urgency to defend himself, to strike out before being attacked.

As he closed his eyes to resist, a dark dream-like figure emerged from the silent reserve of his memory. The shadow figure was a man he thought he should recognize yet wanted to avoid.

Before he could do either, Conrad Olson called Tony back into the office. Well, Antonelli, something I think you’ve been waiting for. We have a job offer for you. Of course, it’ll mean a transfer to our Phoenix office, but you’ll begin there in the engineering department. Interested?

Yes, definitely. That is what I’ve been wanting all along. But you know this would involve moving my family, so I’ll have to talk it over with my wife first.

Don’t you make the decisions?

Yes, but you’ve met Danae. For the sake of family harmony, I’ll have to discuss it with her before I give you a final answer.

Talk it over if you must, but don’t take too long.

Tony realized he shouldn’t hesitate, but he knew also how strong-willed Danae could be and how impossible it would be to convince her of something that she wouldn’t embrace.

Mulling over these thoughts Tony returned once again to his slanted drafting table. However, the new man was still there; and seeing the outline of his head and back hunched over a drawing unsettled him all over again. Tony attempted to distance himself from his feelings, to study the person objectively . . . if that was possible. The man appeared slight and unassuming. About forty, his hair was already thin and colorless brown, his eyes dark shifty holes, his skin pale.

One of his colleagues brought the man over to meet Tony. The fellow walked with a stooped posture that made him appear old, as though decaying before his time. The sight should have brought on feelings of concern or at least sympathy from Tony, who was usually willing to make friends. But when introduced to Thomas Gagetta, an abhorrence which bordered on fear welled up from deep within Tony’s being. He wouldn’t speak to the man and not only would he not shake his hand, he pulled a fist back in a defensive gesture and came close to striking him on the mouth.

What’s wrong? The man backed away, puzzled.

Tony’s jaws muscled out as he bit down hard, fighting to restrain hostility. He stared the man away. If several centuries of civilization had not tempered him into a self-controlled human, he might have taken the T-square and buried it in the fellow’s balding head.

Tony closed his eyes to rest a sharp pain that had stabbed his right eye. When he did so he saw again the shadow figure appear, but it would not make itself clear. He opened his eyes only to see once more the office where he labored from eight to five. It was a uniformly modern room, clean, sterile, predictable, in a six-floor building on Temple Street close to the Music Center near downtown Los Angeles. A regular though prosaic arrangement: three rows of slanted drafting tables, four to a row, facing a glassed-in office where the immediate supervisor, Conrad Olson, sat talking on the phone pretending not to watch the technicians in his charge, and now the new one already sitting behind a drafting board, Thomas Gagetta. Tony attempted to direct his concentration on the drawing in front of him, but all day his thoughts constantly returned to Gagetta.

That afternoon, Tony drove home through the crowded city traffic, twice almost ramming a car in front of him because he couldn’t hold his attention on what he was doing.

At home he kicked off his shoes and pulled on a comfortable sweatshirt, then walked slowly into the kitchen where his wife was preparing a meal. Containing his thoughts for a few moments, he decided he’d better talk before he exploded.

There’s a new man who started at work today. Danae didn’t respond immediately, so he hesitated before going on, but he still remained facing her about to burst at his seams.

Finally she said, I’ve got to get dinner ready. Can’t it wait?

In spite of her disinterest he said, I can’t stand him. I want to smash him in the face.

Danae didn’t turn away from her business of cooking. But Tony stood there trying to penetrate her area of awareness. He desperately needed to tell someone who would listen. His wife merely glanced at him as she lifted a big pot off the stove and carried it with padded gloves to the sink.

Did you hear what I said? Tony asked.

She removed the gloves and with the back of her wrist brushed some of the red hair away from her eyes. You want to smash someone?

Not just someone.

Danae returned to what she was doing at the sink. You know you’ve really changed. What happened to the light-hearted, good-looking guy I married?

Tony looked at her and moaned. He could have asked, What happened to the slim-hipped, fun-loving girl I married? but he refrained. However, he noticed that she remained an attractive woman, though her figure was giving way to the pull of pastries and gravity. Scotch, Irish, and English heritage showed in strawberry blonde hair and a fair creamy complexion, so did a quick temper and occasional wit.

Look, Tony said, I know I can be obstinate and sometimes irritating to you, but something happened today. I can’t explain it, and I don’t know what to do.

Okay, did this person do anything to upset you?

No, Tony answered calmly enough. I never spoke with him, and he didn’t have a chance to speak to me.

Well, did he do something you didn’t like?

No. That’s not really the point.

Did you know him from before, from college or the army or somewhere?

No. I’ve already told you: he’s new at the office and new to me.

She turned away from her work at the sink to face him. Well, if he didn’t say anything or do anything, I don’t see why you’re so upset by him.

I don’t understand it myself. Then ramming his fist against the air he said, I don’t know why, but I detest him, I loathe him. If it’s possible, I hate everything about his being.

You usually like people when you first meet them, she said, not fully listening to him. Are you afraid he’s going to get your job?

No! Damn it. That has nothing to do with this. Tony realized he had not thought about the new job offer all day. He walked about the kitchen, took a couple of deep breaths, and then plunged into this other matter.

I almost forgot. There is something else I have to talk with you about. You know what I’ve been saying all along about the work I’m doing? It’s not right for me. I don’t design the buildings; I don’t build them. I just do the hack work for the architects. They get the credit, and I lose my eyesight. But there is a chance that I might get promoted. Are you hearing me now? This means we would have to move to Phoenix.

You’re confusing me. You’ve gone from hating a stranger to moving to Phoenix. Can’t we just have a peaceful dinner and forget all this?

Damn! I knew this was the wrong time to bring up my job offer. Look, I would begin in Phoenix as a structural engineer for which I am qualified.

Well, what about your music? Why don’t you do something with that?

My music! Talk about coming off the wall. What kind of tactic is that?

If you’re not happy, I thought you might look for a different kind of a job. You play very well.

Oh, I play a little guitar all right. I play at it, and fair sounds come out; but I know I’m no real musician. I appreciate music too well to destroy it with my limited talent.

I enjoy hearing you play.

Yes, but would you pay to hear me? She tried to answer him, but he silenced her with an open-handed gesture drawn between them. At least let us be honest.

It’s honest for me to say that I don’t want to move to Phoenix.

Tony dropped his head and shook it from side to side. You know, at this point I really don’t want to talk about moving either. I’m much more concerned about the other thing that happened to me during the day. I’m trying to tell you that I don’t like the reaction I had.

Why don’t you just go up to the man and talk to him? Maybe you two can work it out.

No, you don’t understand. He has nothing to do with it.

But you’ve been saying . . .

Look, he has everything to do with it, of course; but I mean the man has nothing personally to do with this feeling that has come over me. I might even like the guy because he doesn’t come on too strong or anything.

Why don’t you give him a chance?

It has nothing to do with that. You simply will not take the trouble to understand.

As far as I’m concerned you’re just irrational.

You think I don’t know that! I wanted to smash him in the face. I still do. Tony paused and then asked, desperately hoping for a fragment of insight, Does the name Thomas Gagetta mean anything to you?

No. Why should it? Do you want dinner? I’m going to call the kids.

Tony ate dinner, but he didn’t taste any of the food. His son, Tim, a handsome little boy of nine, rambled on about the day’s experiences. Tony was not able to focus on any of it. Later the boy tried to wrestle with his father as he usually did, but Tony didn’t respond. He merely patted his son on the shoulder and sat quietly in a comfortable chair.

Finally the boy sensed his father’s mood, so he went to his little sister for entertainment. They found some old dominoes, carefully set them upright in lines that curved around and came back on themselves, like circumlocutions in space, and then knocked one over and followed the movement around to its beginning. That brought on an outpouring of laughter from the six-year-old girl.

Tim kept looking over at his father trying to figure out what was wrong. The boy only knew that in the world of adults there were many strange occurrences. He wondered if when he grew up whether he would be carrying some of those same problems that weighed on his father.

Little Tina, his playful sister, grabbed a handful of dominoes and poured them over her brother’s head to regain his attention. The boy wrestled her to the floor with the girl emitting squeals and laughter.

Antonelli’s mood did not break that evening, that night, or the next morning. Driving to work he sensed a mild case of the shakes coming on. He hadn’t felt this tight since he was chosen to give a speech at old man Bogg’s retirement dinner. But that was another thing entirely. He resented the man who was responsible for locking him into a job that was going nowhere. So in his peroration he handled that with some biting twists of humor about Bogg’s