Black Creek Crossing Read Free Page A

belligerence in his eyes made him think better of it. Picking up the pneumatic rivet gun, he moved to the point where the two pieces of framing met at a ninety-degree angle, and used his left hand to try to line up the matching holes in the two components. Bud Grimes’s piece held steady, but the framing Marty Sullivan was trying to steady kept wavering back and forth.
    “Jeez, Marty, how’m I s’posed to—”
    “Just shoot the damn thing,” Marty growled. “What kind of dumb mother—”
    There was a sharp explosive sound as Winkowski pulled the trigger of the rivet gun, followed by a scream of pain as Bud Grimes let go of the framing he was holding and clutched at his left bicep. As the framing crashed against the fence that stood between the foundation and the sidewalk beyond, Marty Sullivan took a step to one side, lost his balance, then tumbled to the ground, the metal framing falling on top of him. He struggled for a moment, but the prefabricated structure was too heavy. “Someone get this damn thing off me!” he yelled as the rest of the construction crew came racing over.
    “The hell with Sullivan,” Winkowski shouted. “It was his fault! Someone get the first-aid kit for Bud.”
    Bud Grimes had sunk down onto a stack of framing, his face ashen, his left sleeve crimson with blood, despite the fact that his right hand was still clamped over the wound. Someone started toward the site office when the door of the Airstream opened and Jerry O’Donnell charged out with the first-aid kit.
    “What happened?” he asked as he shouldered through the men crowded around Bud Grimes. He crouched down and opened the first-aid kit as Winkowski began to explain, then began cutting away the sleeve of Grimes’s shirt.
    “Get this goddamn crap offa me!” Marty Sullivan howled, and finally two men picked up the enormous piece of prefab steel and tossed it aside. “I coulda been killed!” Marty complained, starting to get up. But then he dropped back down to the concrete. “Jeez—I think my back’s hurt.”
    Jerry O’Donnell barely glanced at him. “Someone call an ambulance,” he said. “Grimes needs to go to the hospital.”
    “I’m okay,” Grimes complained, but his pale face was damp with a sheen of sweat. “Just put a bandage on it and—” His words abruptly died as he tried to move his injured arm and an agonizing pain shot through it.
    “You’re not okay,” O’Donnell replied. “Whatever went in there didn’t come back out.”
    “It was a rivet,” Winkowski repeated. “Just as I pulled the trigger, Sullivan—”
    “It wasn’t my fault,” Marty bawled. “An’ if anybody needs an ambulance, it’s me. My back’s—”
    O’Donnell wheeled around to face him, his eyes hard, his expression tight. “Your back’s fine, Sullivan,” he said. “But if you want, I’ll sure have you taken to the hospital. And I’ll have ’em test your blood for alcohol while you’re there.”
    Without thinking about it, Marty Sullivan was on his feet, towering over the foreman, his fists clenched, his face only inches from O’Donnell’s.
    But rather than backing away, O’Donnell was smiling at him. “Still want an ambulance?” he asked quietly. When Sullivan made no reply, he said, “The way I see it, you might just want to be quitting, Sullivan.” The other man’s brows furrowed uncertainly. “Or would you prefer me to fire you?”
    “You can’t fire me,” Sullivan began, his voice still truculent, but less belligerent than a few moments earlier. “We got a union that says—”
    Again, O’Donnell didn’t let him finish. “You got a union that says you can drink on the job?”
    “I never—” Sullivan began.
    “How dumb do you think I am, Sullivan?” O’Donnell said. “You think I can’t smell the stink on your breath?”
    Sullivan lurched back a step, and O’Donnell moved closer.
    “You think everyone on this job doesn’t know what’s in that thermos of yours?” He shook his