Plaquemines Parish : We Do It For Love
Chris Sheard
Then Bill came strolling by, drinking. Everybody else on site was sleeping. Bill was drinking. Some people volunteer to build shit or fix shit. Some like drinking and really if you break it down the two are not that different as far as how much they get accomplished, especially in a place like Buras. When everything around you is shit it’s best not to kill yourself trying to turn it into pouperie, so you know, have a beer. It’s not that Bill didn’t work. Some days he was out there busting ass with the best of them and he was usually reliable for at least some dish washing or cutting onions for dinner. It’s just it got to when you saw him you expected the man to have a beer in his hand. I mean how many people come to change the world with a 32 pack of bud light cans.
photo by Eduardo Mayén
So I’m drinking my piss coffee and Bill’s drinking his piss beer and the sky is dancing with light and sound above us. And we’re quiet, we’re real quiet and I’m glad because after the night I had most conversation could have easily fucked up my mood. But Bill was cool. He didn’t say anything. We just sat there watching the sky. Every few seconds it would light up, then go dark again for a moment. Then, building a little, as if insecure and considering it first, the light would rise and flash again. It was truly an incredible sight. And sitting there I felt in my chest an overwhelming calm. Life was right there. Like the sky was saying “you don’t know, and it’s okay because I do and it will be okay. Everything will be okay, just go slow, be easy. But I’ll be there. Remember.”
And then, both of us still looking straight ahead, Bill said:
-You know what that is?
And I’m thinking: Oh shit here it comes. What do you got Bill? What is it?
-Do you know what that is?
No Bill, you drunk bastard I do not. What the fuck is it?
-That’s God dreaming.
...You mother fucker! The dumbest, drunkest fucking person in this fucking nut-house of drunk lunatics trying to serve burnt hot dogs to crazy edge of the fucking world southerners and the dumbest and drunkest of them all says the most beautiful fucking thing I heard my entire time there. God damn it Bill! God damn it, you said the perfect thing at the perfect time. That was absolute poetry. You captured the moment perfectly. Have another Bud Light. And then Bill wandered off to sleep.
At 5:30 Matt was up and like every other morning, we said next to nothing, cracked 200 eggs into a big steel pan, fried sausage and bacon, made toast and got it out on the table. We got the morning’s work done and were off, with the pick-up truck loaded while the sun was still half-way to work.
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