Scratch Paper | Compas

compas, photo by me.

I go on my walk every day and watch the compas up on scaffolding, brown construction workers assembling the unfinished guts of a barely conceived apartment building. They hammer and shovel and fit more plywood to the structure like the first puzzle piece of many.

Con ganas, cabrón… Pasame los clavos, huey. Spanish aflutter. And the compas in unison tend to myriad tasks in spite of the cutting November cold. I become a tourist as I walk around the worksite toward my fitbit-mandated ten thousand steps, and for a minute I question if I am anything more than a wandering coconut so far gone he sees his own people as some exotic apparition.

I see my father’s boots stomping on the wet, half-frozen earth, worn by these frenetic construction men. The boots Apá put on at four in the morning before packing his thermos and lunchbox, before his buddies picked him up come carpool time. I heard the boot stomping from the other room, footsteps that jolted me awake at dawn for years and years. My father worked and worked and sometimes he would tell me how the thermometer said -10 in Colorado and how his fingers would go numb on worksites. Apá did all that so I could work in the nice office and watch the compas in winter finish the apartment building across the street. My father’s love is everywhere and even though he is a thousand miles away, I see him every day.

I head back to work because my time has come to return to the office, and a compa walks past me and we lock eyes and I nod and he taps his construction helmet in acknowledgement, and we march our separate ways. And after work I call my Dad.

compa, photo by me.

*To all the compas out there keeping the construction industry afloat in the United States: thank you.

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