The building had been in production for months—months of excavation and blasting, pouring concrete, and welding steel. Now at eight stories it loomed above most of its section of Little Rock. It would grow still higher.

As the workers creating the basic structure kept it rising, other crews moved in behind them. The masons kept their brick veneer moving up. Further down, deep in the building’s innards, partition work and such had gotten under way. At any given time half a dozen different crews were at work, trying to stay out of each other’s ways.

The crane operators kept busy. One devoted himself largely to swinging loads of bricks and mud up to the masons’ current level. The masonry foreman noted with satisfaction that this operator clearly knew what he was doing. On the last job they had had a novice who had swung loads around so excessively he had once showered the crew with bricks. Somehow nobody had been seriously hurt. After that everybody had cleared well out any time a load came up.

The men weren’t totally happy this cool spring morning, though. They had been told that they must fasten down some temporary plywood before they could build one section of wall. This was work for carpenters, not masons. Somehow it had been handed to them, though. The foreman went to check how this was going.

He saw that J.P. was screwing down a sheet of plywood right now, using a power screw gun. It looked to the foreman that he was keeping his hand awfully close to the screw after he got it started…. With a whir and a little screech of metal twisting through wood J.P. ran the screw home.

When he pulled his hands back from the newly-embedded screw, one of them did not come. J.P. had screwed his glove down to the wood with his hand still in it! He tugged and could not get the glove loose. He studied the problem for a moment. He could not get his hand out of the glove with it like it was. Nor could he adjust the controls on the screw gun to reverse it.

“Dale,” J.P. called to the man beside him, in his slow, calm drawl. “Would you reach over here and back this off for me?”

Dale took the screw gun from J.P.’s hand, reversed it, and ran the screw back out far enough for J.P. to free himself. The foreman and others nearby watched in amusement.

“You sounded awful calm about that,” one observed.

“Well Preacher”—the man who had spoken was known as “Preacher” because he pastored a church on Sundays—“if you hadn’t of been here, I might’ve said something else!”

With this little comedy over, the masons finished with the plywood and got back to their normal morning job of erecting speed leads and pulling lines to guide their work. Soon they had received the first of the day’s batches of mortar and got to work sticking bricks in the walls. The laborers moved in and out among them with tongs and shovels, keeping the boards stocked with bricks and mud. The air on the masons’ level rang with the rattle of bricks set into place on material boards, the wet plop of fresh mortar deposited on a mortar board, the slice and scrape of trowels.

At mid-morning they stopped and took their break, smoked and ate a snack, got a drink, and set back to work until lunchtime. At lunch some of the laborers piled into a car and ran to a nearby fast-food place. The masons mostly sat around the construction site and ate the lunches they had brought from home. Some listened to music on their portable radios or tape players. Mostly it was country and western, though Preacher preferred recordings of Mozart and other composers of an earlier age.

After lunch they climbed back up to the working level. By now the day had warmed up a bit. Jackets had come off earlier. A few men rolled up their sleeves. The overcast sky kept the day from growing too hot.
Preacher, one of the fastest and most experienced men on the job, had run a bit ahead of the men around him again and decided to knock off long enough for a smoke. He strolled over to the western side of the building and looked out over as much of the hilly city as he could see. It seemed to him that the light had gotten dimmer lately. Above the more distant hills and buildings to the southwest he saw a black, ugly mass of clouds.

He had to tell somebody about this. Preacher looked around for the foreman and walked briskly over to him. “Marvin, it looks like we’ve got a storm coming.”

“Let me go see.” The foreman strode off toward the western side of the building. He returned moments later, alarmed.

“Everybody listen up!” he called to the workmen on the level. “Throw away the mortar, cover up the bricks, and get downstairs! We’re going to have a thunderstorm on top of us any minute now!”

Nobody argued with the boss’s urgent tone. They knew that the building stood atop a hill, exposed to the weather. It had no windows in place. A storm would sweep right through the place. They did not want to be inside upstairs when it hit.

Frantically they covered bricks with plastic sheeting, disposed of mortar, rounded up tools and stowed them in boxes. The sky grew darker by the moment as they worked. They felt the wind picking up. Thunder rumbled not far away.

Their last-minute tasks done as well as possible, they raced downstairs and out of the building toward any shelter they could find. Preacher was one of the last men out. The wind and rain hit with great violence even as he ran across the barren working ground around the building.

He looked back at the building. Through the driving raindrops he saw sheets of plywood trying to blow loose upstairs in the wind. Debris began sailing down in his general direction.

He stepped behind a tree. Three other men were already trying to shelter behind it. They glanced up and saw a four-by-eight sheet of plywood come unattached and tumble through the air toward them. It struck the ground only a couple of yards away.

Preacher now observed the temporary construction office nearby. He led the others in a run for it. As they reached the door, a hand threw it open for them. Preacher noticed as he ran inside that one of his fellow runners was Marvin the foreman.

They had only just crowded inside the office when the worst of the rain broke. Sheets of it drove against the office shed. The temporary building shook violently with every gust. They heard several heavy booms of thunder.

“Man, I am glad we got in all right!” somebody said.

“Hope everybody else made it to safety okay,” said Preacher.

“Amen!” Marvin added. He peered into the chaos of wind and rain. “I can’t see if there’s anybody still out there or not.”

After a few minutes the wind and rain slowed to a mere downpour. Marvin continued staring through the window. Suddenly he grinned. He nudged Preacher and pointed.

“I want you to look at J.P. out there!”

Preacher followed Marvin’s gesturing finger. In the dim light he could just make out J.P. crouching beside a pallet of bricks. He had pulled out the end of the plastic sheeting that covered the bricks and stretched it over himself to keep the rain away.

“He looks like a squirrel hiding under a leaf!” Marvin chuckled. A couple of others came to the window to see the sight.

After a little while the rain slackened almost to a stop. Almost—not quite. The clouds promised more rain to come. J.P. abandoned his rudimentary shelter for the construction office.

Marvin led an inspection of the construction site. The damage did not seem too serious. One or two sheets of plywood had come loose. A window on the cab of a crane had cracked. Some bricks and other odds and ends had fallen from the upper levels. None of the men had been injured.

“Looks like we got us a mess,” Dale commented, fresh from taking shelter in his pickup.

“Could have been a lot worse,” Marvin said. “I think the Lord was looking after us.” He checked his watch. “It’s about an hour and a half until quitting time. I don’t think we’re going to get anything else done today. Let’s run up and get those last few courses raked out and we’ll head home.”

He got no arguments from anyone there.