The power went out in the middle of a call between Jim and his boss. One second they were talking about which columns in Jim’s spreadsheet were redundant; the next the lights were out, and the bubbly, underwater chimes of the call trying to reconnect poured from his laptop speakers.
Jim called his boss back on the phone.
“Hey, Jeff. Yeah, no, it was on my end. The power went out. It’s crazy, right? Not a cloud in sight today. No, I can’t tell if it’s out at the neighbors’ too; it’s too light out. Sure, no problem. I’ll let you know when I’m back up and running. Yeah, I understand. If it looks like it will be a while I’ll go to the library or something. Okay. Bye.”
It was gloomy in the basement. Jim didn’t want to wait around—in that gloom—just to be ready to dive back into his work, so he went upstairs and out the front door.
The power to his house had yet to go out due to natural causes. The last time was because a car slammed into a lamppost at 2 a.m. It was nobody he knew. The time before that, a garbage truck that emptied the dumpster in the church parking lot had driven away with its arms up, pulling down the lines that connected his block to the grid.
Jim walked toward those lines in the hope that he might find the reason for the outage. He heard the linemen before he saw them.
They were speaking loudly about the task at hand, their voices carrying through the clear September air. As he rounded the corner, Jim could see two men atop the pole across the street. Each man relaxed back into his harness and spurs. Belts, heavy with tools, hung around their waists.
“Paul just doesn’t give a shit,” said one man with a close-cropped beard and blue flannel shirt. He lowered a bucket of equipment down to ground by rope.
“He told Jenkins that he was going to take a job with PG&E if he doesn’t cut it.”
The other man shook his head and laughed.
In a service truck parked at the nearby curb, two more men sat with the windows down, listening to the radio.
Jim stood there for a few seconds. The men were already working on it; the power would be back on soon, he figured. He walked back home.
Nearing his house, Jim came upon a neighbor walking in the other direction. Jim couldn’t remember his name, but he knew that the man also worked remotely in the house at the opposite corner of the block. He was an ugly man, and whenever the two exchanged waves as one or the other drove by, Jim was always taken aback; like he was seeing him for the first time, everytime.
“Is your power out too?”
The neighbor was surprised to hear the question and he looked at Jim with one eye, while the other pointed in a different direction.
“Yes,” he said.
Jim gestured over his shoulder.
“I was just back there. They’ve got a crew working on it. I’m not sure what the problem was, but they seem to have gotten to it quick.”
The neighbor smiled with blocky white teeth that stuck out as if yearning to be free of his mouth.
“Did you ask them when they would be done?”
“No.”
Jim’s response elicited a look of frustration, and his neighbor walked on.
“Have a good day.”
Jim went inside and leashed his dog. They went out on their usual lunchtime circuit. It was a bit earlier than usual, but the dog didn’t mind.
“Did I ask when they would be done?” Jim said to himself in a mocking tone. “What good would that do? They’ll be done when they’re done.”
The neighborhood was quiet, and they didn’t pass another soul that wasn’t comfortably cocooned in a car. They walked past the church, through the new housing development that was nearly all filled in, and then out to the main road that bordered the neighborhood to the west.
Nearing home, Jim turned half a block early to walk past the place where the linemen were working. Drawing near, he found the two men still in the truck, but they had been joined by the others who had been working.
They stood around the open driver’s side window, relaxed and laughing.
The conversation paused as Jim walked by. One of the men locked eyes with him and smiled. They nodded to each other and said good morning.
The laughter started up again as Jim turned the final corner.
“I tell you, if the power is still off, I’m just taking the rest of the day off. Screw the client. They’ll be just fine if I get them their document a couple hours late tomorrow. I’m not driving all the way to the library for them. Maybe I look for another job with my free time. Maybe I go mow lawns for the parks department.”
At home, Jim the dog around to the backyard and let him drink from the bowl on the patio. Then he took him inside.
The power was on.
A nice slice of life. Well written!
cozy, someohw.