The Builder
This is the fourth installment in an anthology series, all taking place in the fictitious Between. Read Chapter 1, here. Read Chapter 2, here. Read Chapter 3, here. Read Chapter 5, here. Read Chapter 6, here.
Alex Stapleton may be the most consistently “happy” person in the Between.
In fact, he has been erased more than anyone throughout all of time.
And it always happens the exact same way.
At some point, Al — looking for something to do — will take it upon himself to fill up the empty spaces of the Between with houses. And he does.
Honestly, the fact that he gets the materials to keep building so many is what keeps the rumors that there is actually someone running this place alive and well.
See, Al built every ready-made home that Jack, June, Sarah and every other resident of the Between squat in. The design of each house is a carbon copy of one he had helped his father make back in the 1950s.
Al’s father, Raymond, wasn’t a very open man. He was your traditional close-but-far parent of the Greatest Generation and those before it.
Al got to know by his father’s looks whether or not he was going to catch a beating later in the day for something he did. And Al grew to be an expert in reading his father’s face.
He knew when he had a long day. He knew when he was in a good mood. He knew when he felt lost. He knew when he was sad.
He just knew his father.
Until one day when he was 15, his father surprised him.
Ray was a builder with a small crew, constructing houses during the post-World War II boom of families and children that would become known as the Baby Boomer generation. Ray didn’t even need much of anything as far as a plan anymore. He remembered every piece he needed, every spot and exactly where everything should go after building the same design over and over.
He could have done it on his own if given just a little more time. But he had started thinking about posterity. He started thinking about the day where his body wouldn’t allow him to do the work anymore.
In reality, that day would come about three years after Al was out of high school. The last nail in the foundation of a home would be the same for Ray’s life, his heart seizing and ceasing to feel anything ever again.
But, on this particular day when his son was still in ninth grade, Ray allowed Al to come to work with him for the first time. Al nearly pissed himself when Ray told him, “Be ready to go by the time I finish my coffee, and you can tag along.”
Al felt like he was going to burst, but he tried to be like his father and be more stoic about showing it.
However, Ray knew. He could hear him running around his room like a cat with a sack on its head. He didn’t mind.
Instead of just making him observe, Ray even put Al to work. He treated him like he was one of the crew. And Ray was a hard boss.
But his son was an even harder worker.
Watching him that day, Ray felt like he had done right by Al. He knew then that his son — whatever came of him in the future — would be okay on his own. Ray had done his job well. And he knew there was something he should say, now that he could. Now that he knew his son was set on the right path without resistance.
On the drive home, Al tried to act as if he wasn’t tired from the day’s work, like his muscles didn’t ache, like this was the kind of work that he belonged doing. He wanted his father to see that he was like him.
Meanwhile, Ray just looked off at the road ahead of them, whistling along to a song in his head until they pulled in front of their own home.
There, Ray stopped whistling, and grabbed Al’s shoulder gently to get his attention as Al started to open his door.
“Listen, son,” Ray said, his voice even a little foreign to himself. “You’re a good kid, and I’m proud of the man you’re shaping up to be.”
That would have been enough on its own, but as Ray popped open his own door, he looked away from Al, straight ahead and added one more thing — something he’d never heard from his father and had always wanted to tell his own son, but never felt ready to before.
“I love you, son.”
Al would become a regular on his father’s crew after that. Ray would make his son his protege and show him the trade, both how to be a worker and how to be a boss. Most importantly, he taught his son how to be fair and to have pride in his work.
Later, when Ray died of a heart attack on the job, Al committed to keeping the business going. And he did, up until his own death — which, again, saw him following in the footsteps of his father.
However, now — long after Ray has been gone and even after Al himself has died — the memory of that first day at work with his father still exists as this re-emerging light that even the Between can’t snuff out.
Every time Al finishes a home, that memory floods back into his mind. And for one moment, he’s back in his father’s truck, hearing his father tell him the words he’d wanted to hear from him all of his life to that point.
And as pride and happiness wash over him thinking about how much he’s grown into a man like his father and how Ray would be so proud of the work that his son’s hands can do now, he cracks a smile.
“I love you, too, Dad.”
Then, he freezes.
Sometimes it lasts a few seconds or a few minutes. But eventually, he shakes his head like someone trying to get out of a daydream they’re locked in. And he stares at the house he just built as if it’s the first time he’s ever seen it.
He runs his hands along the wood. He notes the design of it.
He takes it all in: the paint, the spacing of everything, the windows, the doors — everything.
To him, it’s a thing of beauty.
“Dad would have built something like this,” he says to himself with a sense of pride in who his father was.
Then, he turns around and walks back to the house he now spends most of his time in, passing through street after street of homes he’ll never remember he built that now shelter other residents of the Between he’ll never remember he’s met.
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