A Chance Meeting

Tom Upton had been working in construction for five years before the housing market caused most construction companies to begin to pull back on staffing. Even with five years in, Tom was the least senior builder and had been let go two months prior. Luckily for him, this spring in Chicago started to warm up quickly and he was contracted out on repair jobs to fill the paycheck gap. Today, Tom was fixing the loose steps on a building in the Lakeview neighborhood. He often wondered why the neighborhood was called Lakeview as most of the neighborhood was at least a mile from a even clear view of the lake.


He wondered this as he unloaded the tools and materials from his van and dropped them in bunches in the front yard of a small brick building with 3019 stamped next to the front door. Most of these buildings in the neighborhood have all concrete and brick front steps, but 3019 was an older conversion building. The condo association was being cheap at the last minute after the interior's renovations wrecked the association's initial budget. Tom was getting a lot of these calls and it was making his construction income loss a moot point at home. He had looked at his two year old son, Brett, and known he had no time to waste. His wife was working night shifts on the emergency room nursing staff and was fighting exhaustion to take care of their son while Tom worked days.


The previous night, Ellen had left him to put Brett to bed when he heard his son coughing. Knowing his wife, Tom brought Brett a glass of water to avoid double dosing him if Ellen had already given him something. Eight loud crying coughing fits throughout the night left Tom slightly ragged, but with a deadline on the new steps he did not have much choice on a sick day for himself.



Tom had been framing the new steps and front porch for a week and was finally ready to begin nail down the steps. He spent twenty minutes fighting with the air compressor before fighting with the nail gun for another ten. Once the compressor started whirring at a loud volume, Tom could barely hear as the nail gun fired each nail into the steps he had placed face down on the framing. After two steps, he set the gun down on the step and walked to grab the next set of boards. He turned around with a new step in each hand in time to see the man drop flat to the sidewalk and watch two more nails fire into the tree across the sidewalk.



Tom dove to the compressor and slapped the switch to the off position before his addled mind remembered that the switch only turned of the motor to continue compressing the air, but the air in the compressor tank was still flowing to the nail gun. Swearing ferociously, Tom ripped the air hose from the compressor cutting the air from the nail gun and sending the neighborhood eerily quiet. He lay flat on the ground for a moment before remembering why he had dove in the first place.



Tom stood and brushed the dirt from the front of his pants as he cautiously walked to the front gate. Two feet from the fence, Tom could see the man lying face down on the sidewalk. Tom could feel the blood drain from his head and fought the urge to faint. Crouching to the ground, Tom placed his head between his knees in time for thoughts of what would happen to his family if he had accidentally killed a man working a contract job on a house. He would never get hired again. His wife would have to work even more to pay the mortgage payments. He saw himself in front of a court of law with a jury shaking their heads disapprovingly at him having already convicted him.



His lawyer placing a hand on his shoulder tries to comfort him multiple times. Each comforting phrase ends with the dead man having a different family obligation and job to judge the affect it would have on him.



"I'm sorry, Tom. They couldn't bare to have an unmarried convenience store clerk die with no repercussions."

"I'm sorry, Tom. They couldn't bare to have a married police officer die with no repercussions."

"I'm sorry, Tom. They couldn't bare to have a married firefighter with kids die with no repercussions."

"I'm sorry, Tom. They couldn't bare to have a single father supporting three kids and five foster children while working three jobs to support them die with no repercussions. Maybe if you had tried to help him, they would have had mercy on you."



Tom's brain finally reconnected and he realized the man could still be alive. Running down the sidewalk between 3019 and 3017 to his truck parked behind the building, Tom hurried to get his cell phone and call 911. After a minute connecting, Tom babbled frightened to the operator that it was an accident. The nail gun was misfiring. The compressor was too loud. How could he have known it was firing with that noise?



The operator calmed him and asked Tom if the man was still breathing. Did he have a pulse? Where did the nail strike him? Tom did not know the answer to these questions. He hadn't even checked. Rushing back to the front sidewalk, Tom slid to a stop slamming his hip into the fence as he breathlessly tried to express his surprise to the operator. He swore the man had fallen and the nails had continued to fly afterwards. He had assumed the man was hit, but the only thing he could see from the property were the nails in the tree. There was no man on the sidewalk. Tom sighed deeply and apologized for frightening himself and wasting the operator's time. He hung the phone up and slid it into his tool belt, swapping the phone for his claw hammer.



Tom pushed the front gate open and crossed the sidewalk to the tree and began yanking nails from the oak tree. The first three nails came out easily, but the fourth and fifth nails were secure in the tree. On a vicious tug at the fifth one, the claw hammer came free and clanged to the sidewalk behind Tom. Shaking his head, Tom walked to the hammer and crouched to pick it up before seeing the spot next to the hammer. A small red pool of blood and a few fingers of a hand print was next it. A hand print in blood, Tom now realized the man was real, but who would walk away after that? Tom scratched his head furiously before deciding there was nothing he could do at this point and went back to working on the nail gun.