The Cell Tower by Mike Bozart - HTML preview

Monday morning, October 21^st, 2013. It is a crisp 39º Fahrenheit (4º Celsius) under a cobalt-blue-sky dawn in midtown Charlotte (NC, USA). Mateo Lopez, a 45-year-old cell-phone tower technician from Nicaragua, has just backed his work van up to an abandoned, small, brick, one-story building off South Kings Drive. He thinks: Won’t be long before this little rathole gets bulldozed. Wonder how much the new apartments will rent for? Ah, mucho dinero, estoy seguro. [‘much money, I am sure’ in Spanish]

He checks his task-assignment printout for the day, gets his tools and climbing gear, and then begins walking on the crumbling, weeds-growing-in-the-cracks asphalt parking lot behind the now-broken-windowed-with-vertical-bars-bent-out-of-parallel-for-crackhead-entry/egress, onetime, low-end saloon (which was previously a tax accountant’s office, and before that a lax acupuncturist’s malpractice).

Once on the other side of the little, dilapidated edifice, Mateo unlocks the padlock on the chain-link-fence gate. He looks upwards, and sees all the way to the top of the 138-foot-tall (42-meter-high), tri-pole, gray cell-phone tower. Well, at least I don’t have to go all the way to the top. Got dizzy last time.

Mateo closes the gate back and relocks it. Soon he has started his ascent. He pauses to notice the inbound commuter traffic stacking up on East 4^th Street at 7:43 AM. There is already a wreck on Interstate 277. All of the cars look like crazy, scurrying, multicolored cockroaches from up here. Yep, un mundo tan loco. [‘such a mad world’ in Spanish]

Four minutes and four seconds later, short-black-haired Mateo is passing around a large, bowl-shaped, white-cowling-covered microwave antenna. Just above it is the lower cell-phone antennae array – the one which needs to be removed and raised due to the forthcoming, adjacent, six-story, upscale apartment complex.

Mateo begins to make notes on the bolt types and nut sizes on his smartphone. His safety lanyard is securely attached to a galvanized cross brace. He looks at the Charlotte skyline. O Charlota, [sic] you have been good to me and my family. María, [his Belizean American wife] Juan [his 7-year-old autism-spectrum-disorder son] and I could have picked a worse American city. Yes, I am going to miss you. Well, maybe so. Ah, who knows?

After getting a total count of all the fastener hardware items, measuring all of the brackets and hole spacing, noting antenna makes and model numbers, and inputting all the cabling data; Mateo, carefully, places his smartphone back into his belt-attached pouch. He then gets his 5’-9” (1.75 meters), emaciated frame comfortably situated on a horizontal steel member and looks northward at the Central Campus of Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC). He muses: María is probably arriving now at CPCC for her first class. Next year she’ll be a medical assistant. The extra income will be of some help, but it won’t be enough for Juan’s mounting bills. No, not even close. We are headed for bankruptcy at this rate. It’s just a matter of time. And, I’m sure that I have advanced esophageal cancer now. All of my symptoms match up with those on that medical website: only consuming very small pieces of food and favoring liquids – I really do prefer liquids and soup now; chronic coughing with blood – all the time it seems; blood in the stool – check; vomiting with blood present – yep; recurring hiccups – just five minutes ago; constant heartburn – I already feel it; hoarse voice – almost seems like I have permanent laryngitis now; loss of weight – think I’ve lost another nine pounds. [four kg] A financial tsunami is growing; it’s going to wipe us out. Completely out. It’s just a matter of time. Just a matter of …

Mateo is startled to see a bald eagle alight on the cell tower, some 33 feet (10 meters) above him. It looks proud and strong. Eleven seconds later, it flies away. I guess that it spotted a rodent below. ‘They say that those birds can spy all the way to China.’ Ah, old redneck Jed, always making such wild exaggerations. Such crazy talk. And, all the cell-phone calls passing through this tower right now.

A gust of wind then whistles through the topmost array of antennae. Well, that’s the ref’s final whistle for me. ‘María, it’s in you and Juan’s best interest. Double indemnity is what the guy from benefits said. If you should die on the job, Mateo, we will pay your spouse double.’ María will get $400,000, instead of $200,000. I really hope that she takes it and Juan to Belize. It’s so much cheaper to live down there.

The wind howls again. Mateo replaces his fall-arrest lanyard’s D-shaped carabiner with another one – one attached to a dangerously frayed polypropylene rope. He then pushes backward with all of his might. The force snaps the damaged rope. He starts falling, Nestea^®-plunge style. Faster. Querido Dios, que sea instantáneo. [Spanish for ‘Dear God, let it be instantaneous.’]

Four years later in a modest, two-bedroom, stucco house on the outskirts of Punta Gorda in Belize, eleven-year-old Juan is bored on a steamy July afternoon. He begins to rummage through a set-aside box from the move, which contains miscellaneous non-essential odds and ends from their old apartment in Charlotte. He pulls a large hand file out, just as his mom enters the small storage room.

“Son, what are you doing now?”

“Mama, this tool is used for scraping. It’s called a file.”

“Yes, that’s right, son. Now, please put it back.”

“Was it dad’s file?”

“Yes, it was. He used it for work.”

“He did?” Juan asked with a puzzled expression.

“Yes, I’m certain that he did. Now, please put it back, son.”

Juan then reached into the box again. He pulled out an opened, cellophane bag of silver carabiners. “I know what these are, too.”

“You do? You are a smart boy, just like your dad was.”

“Mama, these are carabiners; they are used for joining ropes, and for connecting to eyelets, rings, or pegs. I saw them being used by mountain climbers on TV.”

“Yes, I think that you are correct again, dear. Your dad used them while climbing cell towers in Charlotte.”

Juan reached into the light brown, ripped-top-flaps cardboard box again. He retracted a 13-foot-long (four meters) piece of cord. “This is climbing rope. It can also be used in fall-prevention safety systems. I can tell that dad cut it. See how this end looks different from the other one, mama.”

“Ok, son, that’s enough! Put everything back in the box.”

“Tell me the truth, mama; was dad utilizing his fall-safety equipment when he fell?”

“Yes, he was, son. But, something failed; something broke. It was a freak accident – a horrible freak accident.”

“Oh.”