The Mole

The boy flapped and dropped the scaffolding pole when he fell, before he hit a stanchion, rebounded onto the rusting spiked fence which impaled his chest and separated the new-build office block from the scrubland of railway track. Then he sobbed and cried for his mum and was silent.

 Joe with his shiny bald head, big nose and barrel chest had been up above him, hand still outstretched, waiting for the boy to fling the pole up to him. Heels of his workie boots tied with string, splay-footed, and thick with muck on the horizontal bars of the scaffolding frame. His back against the vertical pole, body braced, under a donkey jacket and thick tartan shirt open at the neck to let his thick body breathe out sweat and keep out the strong wind and rain.  Scaffolding tubes parallel to the wall running away from him, and others meeting it at a ninety-degree angle. Child’s play to him. Locking the frame into place, securing it. He had been a scaffolder for donkey years before the boy was born. Fling up the vertical flag pole. Batter into place, lock and load. Hand-over-hand the frame went up quick and true. He’d a few close calls. They all did.

Below him Huey was already scrambling monkey-like down the frame. He was a wee guy with squinting grey eyes and a face born for mourning. A wool hat was knitted to his head and a fag was never far away from his mouth. It slowed him to a wheeze. Working for Gardiner for years—on-and-off—he didn’t have any papers, but he’d been doing the job so long it was as simple to him as picking at his arse. He was on the ground in minutes. Scrambling through the miry clay to where Gardiner was standing, trying to lift and hold the boy off the spikes.

Gardiner was nearly seventy, but he never stopped, until now. He paid his men cash and drove his men hard for it, but he worked harder. Jug ears, leaning forward, his ungainly legs eating up the ground as he carried the scaffolding tubes from the truck. He never stumbled, a rhythm to his steps, he danced round muck and stone and he set the pace. His piercing dark eyes flashed when a man failed to keep up.

The Mole, Gardiner called the boy, he was about fifteen, and he’d a soft spot for him. The name stuck, because of his pale washed out blinking eye and long nose, and the way he sniffed the air with a sense of uncertainty.  Gardiner might have seen something of The Mole in himself. He too had started working at an even earlier age collecting ginger bottle and had never stopped. The Mole hung onto Gardiner’s every word and the boss even brought in an extra cheese sandwich for the boy. He didn’t talk much and didn’t cost much and Gardiner liked that too. He tried to work as hard as Gardiner and that had been his downfall.  

Gardiner had stepped onto the first bar of the scaffolding holding two poles. The first pole he’d held up with arm extended until Huey was ready. Then he tossed it into the air, like a caber, until Huey plucked it out of mid-air and took it into his hands. The Mole was an intermediary, middle man. The safe berth. Simply, hand-over-hand.  Because they were going six storeys for an office block, the Mole passed the scaffolding tube from Huey to Joe. The wet tube had slipped from the Mole’s hand and he’d tried to catch it and toppled, sideways.  

‘Phone a fuckin’ ambulance,’ Gardiner told Huey, he blinked tears from his eyes and smudge his cheeks with muck as he wiped his cheeks with the back of his large hands.

‘I’ve no got a fuckin’ phone.’

Huey leaned into his boss’s shoulder and tried to help, but his foot slipped in the mud and he nudged him and they both tumbled down the slope and the boy’s body fell onto the spike. His eyes open looking at them. Even when the scrambled up, covered in muck they knew it was pointless. The Mole wasn’t moving.

Joe held a hand out to stop them from slipping down the slope again. He pawed the ground, edging backwards like a horse, so he too wouldn’t be pulled to the ground.

They stood in a horseshoe shape in the mire, supporting each other, and Gardiner plucked the boy’s body from the spikes as easily as he positioned a baton of wood.

‘Dunno, if you’re meant to dae that,’ Joe sniffed, he’d tears in his eyes too. He tore off his jacket because Gardiner was searching for a place to put him down and he didn’t want to leave him lying in the muck. He kicked at a stone, picked another plank of wood from the muck and plonked his jacket on top of it and laid it parallel with the other one. ‘Maybe, you’re meant to leave him there for fireman to cut the spikes away with an oxyacetylene torch or something.’

‘He’s deid,’ Huey had a fag in his mouth, but it was unlit. He wiggled it about in his mouth. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another workman running towards them wearing a bright yellow safety hat and high-viz vest and behind him another. He pulled the fag from his mouth and held it in his right hand and tilted his head to the street as if listening for sirens as he told Gardiner. ‘I’ve got to go. I cannae be here when the ambulance arrives and the bizzies start askin’ questions.  I’m no’ meant to be here. I’m meant to have a fuckin’ bad back.’

He held a hand up as he walked away, pulling his hood up and over his head and lighting his fag. ‘Sorry!’ he shouted into the wind and rain.

Joe shook his head. Gardiner was kneeling in the mud, patting the boy’s chest.

‘You’ll be alright,’ Gardiner was telling the boy. ‘You’ll be alright, son. I promise.’

The crowd of bystanders was nearly upon them. Joe rubbed the crown his bald head and the back of his thick neck. ‘I need to go tae,’ he told Gardiner. ‘She’s no’ that well and I’m no meant to be there. You know how it is, wae the housing and that?’

He walked away quickly.

‘Whit happened?’ said the first of the hard hats.

‘No sure,’ Joe avoided his gaze and kept walking.

The guy in the hard hat behind him, caught his eye and asked Joe, ‘Wheren’t you one of the scaffolders?’

‘Nah,’ said Joe, ‘Just passing and seen the guy falling.’

He recognised one of the gaffers coming, a middle-aged pen-pusher playing at being a builder, all bright colours and high-viz vest immaculate, trotting in shiny steel toe caps off road and out of breath through the muck towards them. He took a breather beside them.

‘What happened?’ the pen-pusher asked, looking from one hard hat to another and settling his gaze on Joe.

‘Dunno,’ said Joe. ‘Just passing.’

The pen pusher frowned and looked at him sideways and looked at Joe’s clogged and miry boots.

The smaller guy in the hard hat spoke out of the side of his mouth. ‘He fell fae the scaffolding onto the fence.’

‘Poor cunt,’ said the taller of the two hard hats. ‘You phone an ambulance?’ he asked, no one in particular, but meaning Joe.

‘Nah,’ Joe shook him off. ‘Got to go. But I think he’s deid anyways.’ He took a step away and slipped a little in the mud.

The pen pusher grabbed at his tartan shirt, whether to steady him or hold him back. ‘You cannot leave the scene of an accident,’ he said.

 Joe shoved his arm away and the pen pusher fell on his arse into the muck. ‘Don’t put another hand on me, or I’ll put one on yeh. Cunts like you make me fuckin’ sick. I’m invisible mate. I don’t exist.'