Weathering Salem by Nathan Dragon

I usually tell people I don’t know well that my job is roofs and walls. I also tell people this when I, rightly or wrongly, assume that they don’t know what weather is. As I type weatheringa red line appeared under the word, indicating that the program I used to write it didn’t know what it was either. I didn’t explain that I usually crawl, crouch, and squirm around the attic, shutting out the air; or knee walls, air insulators; or in a crawl space, airtight. In other words, spraying spray foam in a small, dirty space. Sometimes I explained that I was climbing ladders—ranging from sixteen feet to thirty-two feet and, sometimes, but rarely, forty feet—drilling holes in the walls between each bay, from the outside, under the walls that had been removed to reveal the house casing. Sometimes holes have to be drilled in the house—drill and blow out the inside—because of asbestos or because there’s a roof on the third or fourth floor that sticks out from a roof that’s too steep. Sometimes I mix up job jargon—strategy, rafter, buttons, fasteners, beam. Something like foam could mean spray foam or foam board, it all depends on the context. Mine is usually covered in dust, mold, and mouse droppings, through knee walls, attics, crawl spaces. These are all considered unskilled jobs.

Once holes are drilled into the walls, or the attic is prepared, the necessary space is filled with cellulose, a type of insulation made from a material like shredded newspaper. As I opened the bag to put it in the blower machine (versus into the truck to transport it), I thought: What history or literature is being blown into these walls? Omitted returns? My book? My friend’s book, my enemy’s book? Sometimes you can catch a few words from a grocery store brochure—FROZEN LASAGNA MEALS $6.99.

It’s Salem, Massachusetts, and it’s October, two-shirt weather right now. An estimated two million people will visit our small town this month to see the history (witch trials) and haunted houses and dress up and walk around, which can make it difficult to get back to the workshop at the end of the day. This is the fourth or fifth time I’ve worked at my uncle’s house—R. and D.’s—the weatherizing company and my longest tenure for them. I didn’t plan it this way, but we had a baby due in December and we moved back so we could care for him at the same hospital where we gave birth and lost our first son a year and a half ago. We’re trying to figure out how to live here but with how expensive it gets, this is what works for now. Rents are higher than in New York City. You can’t buy a house for less than half a million. I always wanted to raise my children in Salem. There’s nothing like growing near the sea.

Driving to and from the job site: golden retrievers chase fallen leaves in the park next to pipes painted pink with cartoon faces of sea monsters. I saw a sign for SWEET BILLY Chimney Sweep and a sign of falling Dunks. People in Mass call Dunkin’ “Dunks.” Dunkin’ is a stupid rebrand. A man rides a motorbike with a frame on it. Crowds were already at every corner. The bridal party is dressed as witches, one is dressed in white. Every day-business sells its parking spots at night. Second bridal party. Bird or bird shadow across from the Four Points Hotel in Lynnfield. I think Lynnfield. Stuck in traffic, listening to our favorite songs—“HIGHJACK (right back)” by A$AP Rocky, or a cover of Silver Jews’ “Friday Night Fever,” or some songs by a pop-punk band my friend Aleks liked called Dear Maryanne—and thinking about the job, took away the fear of going into an attic full of moldy Rockwool sheets beneath the fiberglass surface, sweating in our Tyvek suits. The better you insulate it, the hotter it gets in there.

***

I put my time card into the machine and it said “6:44”. Go see R. and D. They tell me which crew I’m on. With Alex. I love working with Aleks. He has more experience than me, so he is always showing me tips and tricks. But he was late again, so I walked around the shop yard. There were a dozen of us, maybe six box trucks, one roof truck, and one dump truck. Some people sat in the back of several box trucks to take inventory, avoiding the cold. Anyone standing in the group is laughing or complaining about someone they worked with last week. My uncles and the crew—a couple of brothers, the guys from California, the Salem guys—they were all characters, they all had big personalities, everyone was telling jokes they’d just learned or retelling jokes they’d already told. They called me nephew. There are bad moods, there are also good ones. We all walked around with each other, the bricklayer we shared the yard with, L at Terex moving pallets and eating microwave hamburgers. I helped load the truck with insulation. I looked up Aleks list to see what we needed in the truck. We load cellulose today? How many sheets of foam board? Spray foam case? Masks, Tyvek suits, trash bags? Slabs, wood? Aneudy helped me. He’s probably the coolest twenty-two year old kid I know. I like to say to him and Aleks—posing because I’m the oldest—when I’m hurting, when we’re all hurting: “I’ll tell you what, guys: Don’t grow old.”

The days of this week have been long. A life lived on I-95 and in strangers’ attics. Today was a big job—second and third floor walls, the attic, four tricky knee walls.

Once Aleks stopped, I told him he was seeing me today and I couldn’t find the turbine vent we needed. We double checked the list and got in the truck and went to Market Basket for coffee and breakfast, then to the hardware store to vent. The traffic was crazy, because the store was in Salem and it was October. We arrived at a blue-gray house in the suburbs of Boston. From the outside it doesn’t seem like a bad job, but we’ve learned. We slowly got out of the truck to get ready. Lay down tarpaulin, plastic. Grab a hardware store bucket equipped with a utility knife, foam gun, trash bag, and extra mask. Sealed the air and pulled out the Rockwool sheets—16 full fifty-gallon trash bags. Finish spray foaming the long top plate and one gable end. So much heat creeping in. Itching everywhere, paranoid about inhaling mold and fiberglass even through a mask. Somehow wet and dry. We took a break, attached the insulation hose, pulled it through the window and up through the attic hatch.

I lay on plywood in the attic while cellulose descended on top of me. My back feels good lying down like this. And I inhale the clean, chemical smell of my mask, but part of me still cringes. I don’t want dust to stick to me. A minute later I let it happen. Fine chunks of grayish-brown dust from all the pulp floated down and landed on my face, chest, stomach. It sticks to you and looks like patchy fleece and dryer lint. Like you’re a dog with mange. I held the insulation hose, sometimes loosening it, sometimes pulling it back, so that Aleks could maneuver around the smaller areas of the attic, around the collar and air handler, and along where the roof slope met the ceiling joists below us.

Aleks ate his lunch in a cellulose cupboard attached to the back of a box truck, lounging on a large, brick-like bag of cellulose. The same bag I would put in a blower (Dave Krendl’s Cool Machine, and I love that’s the brand name) soon. Today, I lay in my toolbox at lunch, in a client’s driveway, with both t-shirts on, trying to soak up the sun. The lunch cooler is like my pillow, only slightly higher than my toolbox.

As I put the Tyvek suit back on, an eagle flew overhead. Then a small hairy woodpecker in the pine tree above me. There weren’t as many woodpeckers this fall and I watched them. Flashes and stacks—forget it, I like flashes. My sister sent me a video of a downy bird in the trees behind her house yesterday. We will isolate the house next month. Nice to see woodpeckers, hawks, hawks, ospreys doing their respective activities. Seagulls in the Market Basket parking lot. The last week of September, Aleks and I saw a pair of eagles when we returned to the shop. One with a rat in its paws, its partner following behind. Before we pack up, Aleks needs to install the turbine vent. I climbed onto the roof to give it some, flat, caulking. I listened to seagulls that sounded like dogs on some roads. As I descended the stairs, I looked up and saw another eagle.

Nathan Dragon is an author, educator, and weather engineer. He is a writer The Champion Is Here And frequent contributor Annual AFTERNOON. With his wife, Raegan Bird, he is the co-founder and editor of the publishing project Blue Settings.