"Get in the hole for fuck's sake, Mark. It's not going to get any bigger." Bart insists, gesturing to the access port leading into the crawlspace. "We're just running a few lines of PEX. It'll take us like two hours tops if you stop pissing around."
I groan, putting my hoodie on and moving towards the hole. The access port to the trailer's crawlspace is tiny, just barely large enough for me to squeeze my hips through. "Okay, okay, I'm going in." I mutter, lying down on the ground and squirming my way into the darkness. The floor of the crawl drops a few inches, affording a meager amount of breathing space, but it's still incredibly difficult to maneuver in any way. I toil for a moment to roll onto my back, my shoulders pressing into the dirt floor as well as the joists above my head as I turn. Flopping onto my back, I'm greeted by a beefy giant house spider crawling slowly across the floor joists in front of my face. I slide my arm up slowly and goad the creature onto the cuff of my hoodie by nudging its spindly back legs ever so gently with my finger. I move the spider far down the joist and deposit it back on the wood, away from where it might fall on my face. "Sorry, buddy. Need this spot for a bit."
Outside, Bart peeks into the hole and squints his eyes. "What're you doin in there, kid?"
I reach my hand toward the opening and gesture for him to pass me the materials. "Spider needed to be moved. He was vibing in the exact spot where we need to run the pipe. You can hand me the clips and the hammer now, by the way."
Bart shakes his head and rolls his eyes before stuffing a couple bags of j-hooks through the port. "Just smash the damn thing and move on." He stands up and I see his legs recede in the direction of the work van. I assume that he's probably grabbing another cig and get to work hanging the hooks. The cramped space doesn't allow me enough room to swing the hammer properly, forcing me to turn it sideways and swing it only a few inches. I breath in a little too fast and inhale a large cloud of dust knocked loose by the hammer impacts, eliciting a coughing fit during which a slightly too forceful lurch slams my forehead into the joists above me. I hiss at the pain, rubbing my forehead briefly before returning to my task.
When I originally started working for Bart, I'd developed a glorified image of blue-collar guys in my head for some reason. With many friends of my father being tradesmen of different backgrounds, I'd always admired their grit and commitment to providing for their families as well as doing quality work. That image was dashed my first month working for Bart. I'd had pretty tough jobs in the past, with my landscaping job consisting mostly of weeding planting beds and digging trenches in the hot sun, but working for Bart was my first time experiencing the feeling of a truly grueling nine to five. I should've expected it, but finding out the hard way that my job was basically to do all the shitty work (pun intended) for Bart was a revelation hard to come to grips with.
From week one, I was the guy carrying toilets and water heaters up and down stairs, squeezing into all the smallest crawl spaces, and snaking all the plugged sewer lines. Lying face up under some old lady's shitty trailer with mouse shit rubbing into the fabric of my hoodie wasn't half as glamorous as I'd expected my life as a plumber's helper to be, and I hadn't been expecting glamor. It doesn't help that Bart, a sixty-something hard-ass chain-smoker, is about as pleasant as a boot to the balls and never passes up an opportunity to make me feel like an effeminate bitch over the smallest things.
I take my sweet time pounding the hooks into the floor-joists, thinking up a myriad of witty responses to most of Bart's most recent jabs over the last week, none of which would ever be levied against him in spoken form of course. Bart's footsteps return swiftly, and my intuition tells me he's slightly peeved about something. I speed up my efforts as he approaches the access port and kneels down to it.
"Did you move my smokes?" He glares into the hole at me, his dark form silhouetted ominously by the sunlight behind him.
"What? Why would I move your cigarettes?" My expression is marked with confusion, but Bart still seems suspicious of me despite my insistence as well as my lack of motivation for such an act.
"I'm making a run to the gas station for more. Make sure all those hooks are nailed in securely and lined up right before I get back. If you put them in crooked, I'll make you do the whole fuckin thing again. I'm sick of having to redo your fuckups." He stands up and starts back toward the van. "Be back in thirty."
I roll my eyes and lay my head back against the dirt as he starts the van and drives off, leaving me alone stuffed into a hole under a house. I pick up the hammer and prepare to drive the next hook into the floor joist, when a rustling sound stops me dead. I bend my body so I can peer into the darkness of the crawl space beneath my feet, scanning the space for some type of animal. I've been stuck in a crawl space with a racoon before and that shit did not end well for either of us.
All the way on the other side of the crawl, tucked away in the corner, a mass of shadowy fur unfurls itself slowly. My eyes widen with surprise and terror as I take in the size of the animal. Is it a bear? It's gotta be a bear! It's way too big to be a racoon or a possum! I pull out my phone and quickly turn on the flashlight, shining it directly at the animal as I wiggle toward the sunlight.