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By David Alexander
“Pride goes before a fall, and a haughty spirit before destruction.” (Proverbs 16:18)
Surprise was the order of the day when A-hong learned that his cousin Siao-fu wouldn’t come to work because he broke his ankle the night before, but he wasn’t particularly sorry.
Lo’s Construction Company mainly contracted with the government to replace roadside drains in Nantou County. The jobs required little skill and a minimum of equipment. The company owned a pair of backhoes, a “Bobcat” scoop loader and one blue truck. The concrete forms, barriers, orange traffic cones and tools were mostly secondhand. Everything else was rented on a daily basis. The genius of the company lay in the crew because of the way they worked together.
Uncle Lo hired A-hong fresh from the youth jail as a favor to his sister. Lo’s wife, Su-mei, was opposed. Their only son, Siao-Fu, who was the same age as A-hong, was taking a course that would lead to a career as a technician. His mother planned for him to transfer to a famous engineering school and, eventually, take over the family business. She didn’t want her husband’s “worthless nephew” to get anywhere near her precious Siao-Fu.
Lo’s sister, Ya-ya, lived in Taichung City. After dropping out of high school she worked several jobs; a conductor on a tour bus, then a betel nut beauty, then a KTV hostess, and, for a short time, a stripper. Unable to identify A-hong’s father, Ya-ya raised her son alone. When she approached Lo about employing A-hong, she was working as a street sweeper. Not very high class, but steady and secure.
A-hong landed in youth jail because of an accumulation of small infractions and the eventual unwillingness of the school authorities to put up with him any longer. They didn’t just throw him out of school but saw to it that he was put into a place where the consequences of indiscipline would be clear. He was sentenced to 14 months for participating in a gang fight when he was 17. When news of his arrest, conviction and sentence spread through the Lo family, Su-mei responded with the Taiwanese equivalent of the English proverb about the apple not falling far from the tree.
After 8 months of incarceration, A-hong turned 18. He had been well behaved enough to be eligible for probation if he could find and hold a job. Ya-ya took a day off work and rode the bus to Nantou where she begged her brother for this favor. He agreed, but he set a few conditions: A-hong would be the lowest paid member of the crew, would get the dirtiest jobs, would live in a shed in the equipment yard, and would continue beyond his first month only if the rest of the crew approved. Ya-ya agreed. So did A-hong.
Su-mei was the picture of consternation. She was afraid that Siao-fu would learn bad habits from his infamous cousin. This reaction fit her character; she liked things to be ‘nice’. Her lifestyle was shaped by the House Beautiful type magazines that she bought regularly. Though her son studied at a mediocre vocational school, she bragged about his class ranking whenever she could. Mainly she spoke of his potential to “go far”, and dropped hints of study in China, Australia or the United States.
Siao-fu himself thought more about partying and basketball. Though he was ostensibly in his final year of school, he was actually almost a full semester behind because of classes he had failed. Su-mei and Siao-fu tried to hide this from Lo. They thought they had him fooled, but Lo had learned about his son’s performance from members of his crew whose children attended the same school.
During summer and winter breaks Siao-fu was expected to work with his father. Not eager to hang around with his father before the crew arrived, he arranged to go to work alone by motorbike. He arrived late most days. At work he would meander around with a broom or a clipboard. When A-hong moved into the shed, Uncle Lo arranged for him to eat at a breakfast place nearby every morning and at a self-service cafeteria across the road every evening. The owners of the places were told to keep a tab, which Lo would pay at the end of the month. At noon A-hong was given a box-lunch. Records were kept and the amounts were deducted from his pay.
The crew welcomed A-hong and he soon fit in. After schools let out for summer Siao-Fu began to show up in the morning. Lo had known that his son wasn’t going to graduate on time. Siao-Fu and his mother cooked up a story about unfair teachers and payoffs to explain why Siao-Fu had to return to school for another semester.
Su-mei had always told Siao-fu that if he didn’t look out he could end up as worthless as his cousin A-hong. Now that the two youths were destined to work on the same crew she intensified her put-downs of her nephew. On the first morning, Siao-Fu came to work ten minutes late. He immediately approached his cousin and made a remark about school in contrast to jail. A-hong shrugged it off and went back to tying bailing wire around wooden forms while standing knee-deep in mud.
Long ago construction crews in Taiwan began using concrete jersey barriers to protect holes and ditches from accidental vehicular intrusions. These heavy barriers, painted bright yellow, proved their usefulness. As time went on drivers became accustomed to the shape and color and learned to avoid them. So eventually, cheaper and more convenient hollow substitutes made of recycled plastic became the standard. Though they can be filled with water, most plastic jersey barriers used by construction crews today are empty. A line of them tied together with bailing wire can fence off a ditch. But a line of empty plastic jersey barriers is easily blown over by a strong wind.
A grouchy fellow who lived on the road where Lo’s Construction was rebuilding drains watched the work with a gimlet eye. He phoned the Bureau of Public Construction with complaints daily. Sometimes he would call the police in the middle of the night if sections of barriers had fallen over. He would give them Lo’s cellphone number and they would call him to rectify matters.
Lo had come to trust A-hong. After a few midnight wakeups, he gave the phone and keys for the company truck to the teenager. At 2 o’clock one morning the phone woke A-hong. He drove to the site and rearranged the barriers, which had fallen over even though there had been no wind.
The next morning, Su-mei noted that there had been no midnight call. That was how she learned that A-hong was now trusted and equipped. Though she was pleased that her own son had not been sent out in the dark, she was miffed that he had not been so “honored”. But she was afraid that, had Siao-fu been given the task, he would have refused to do the dirty work that routinely fell to his cousin. Then she recalled that when she and Lo had gone to bed the night before, Siao-fu had not yet come home.
At work that day Siao-Fu was especially aggressive towards A-hong. Other crew members told him to back off. They felt more closely connected to the bastard son of a street sweeper than to the rich kid bastard who happened to be their boss’ son.
Toppled barriers and midnight trips occurred for the next three nights, including Saturday and Sunday. On Monday work ran late and the crew left before the site had been properly cleaned up. A-hong stayed behind to set up the barriers. By this time he had learned how to use the “Bobcat” and had the key. He noticed that one piece of plastic barrier had deteriorated so badly that it no longer even symbolized protection. In a narrow lane he spied an abandoned section of concrete barrier. The side exposed to the weather was dirty and faded but the other was still bright yellow. Using the “Bobcat”, he maneuvered it into the gap in the middle of the plastic wall and tied them together with bailing wire.
No calls disturbed him that night. When he arrived at work in the morning the wall was undisturbed, but the people who lived on the street told him that there had been real excitement in the middle of the night. An ambulance had picked up and taken “the other young one from the crew” to the hospital. They told him that the company boss had set up the plastic barriers that had been kicked over when the “young one” sped down the line on his motorbike with his right foot stuck out to scatter them.
Surprise was the order of the day when A-hong learned that his cousin wouldn’t come to work because he had broken his ankle the night before, but he wasn’t particularly sorry.
David Alexander is the International Students' Advisor at Tainan Theological College and Seminary.
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