Full Capacity

Something bit him square in the back and his Wolverine boot slipped off the two-by-four. Jason grabbed the nearest vertical beam and steadied himself. "This is for shit!" he grouched, using his free hand to wipe the sweat from his dripping forehead.

"Got a problem?" Brian tried not to look too amused.

Jason shot him a dirty look. "Don’t you ever sweat?"

"Nope." He looked as fresh as when they had started the job four hours earlier. His short dark hair flipped and danced in the humid breeze, unlike Jason’s sandy brown locks that were plastered to his head. Ever since they’d met in high school, Brian had always been the neat one of the pair. Always punctual, always cool under pressure. Brian finished pounding in a nail. "And if you had used the bug spray like I told you to . . . ."

"Yeah, yeah." Jason waved the comment away and squatted down on the beam. The new jeans he was wearing were tight around his muscular legs. He squirmed, then stood back up to pull some slack into his thighs before squatting again.

"Told you not to wear those jeans, too," Brian commented without turning.

Jason shook his head. Brian didn’t miss much. "You know I’m not a morning person," he explained needlessly to his roommate of nine years. It had taken several strong cups of coffee and a hot shower just for him to function that morning. He’d grabbed his only pair of clean pants and pulled them on with his eyes still half-shut. In between loading dishes into the dishwasher and filling the coffee thermos, Brian had babbled something to him about his attire, but he had just ignored him.

"And that yellow T-shirt I told you not to wear is like a homing beacon for bugs." Brian pinched his dry, white shirt between finger and thumb to illustrate proper construction site attire.

"Yes, Mother," Jason retorted with a grin, rolling his eyes. As if on cue, one of the biggest, hungriest looking mosquitoes he had ever seen landed on his left thigh. He refused to swat at it while Brian was looking. Eyes wide, he waited for the inevitable prick of the insect’s proboscis. Salty sweat dripped into his eyes.

"Hey, Brian," he called across the ten foot space between them, "toss me your tape measure, will ya?" He jiggled the hammer hanging at his left hip in the tool belt, hoping to scare away the hungry insect.

"When are you gonna buy your own, cheapskate?" Brian groused good-naturedly. With a lopsided grin, he unclipped the tape measure from his belt and tossed it.

The mosquito pierced through the taut denim and into Jason’s skin. His head snapped down, seeking out the offending pest. He removed his left hand from the head of the hammer and homed in for the overdue swat. The sudden movement brought a fresh flood of stinging sweat into his eyes.

"Hey," Brian called nervously as the tape measure arced at the halfway point. Jason was looking down, not at the toss. His grin pulled into a frown.

Jason’s attention snapped back to the missile speeding toward him as his left hand connected with a satisfying slap against his thigh. Blinking to clear his vision, he stretched out to the right to catch the tape, overcompensated, and lost his balance.

Brian watched with horrific fascination as the tape measure sailed past his friend’s outstretched hand and into the humid air before beginning its descent to the sun-baked ground below. His perception of time slowed. He saw Jason’s expression shift from annoyance to regret to fear as the object whizzed by, as he realized he had reached too far, had done too many things at once. Jason’s panicked brown eyes locked onto those of his best friend across the gap. Then his mouth opened in a silent scream as he fell back off the beam and was gone from sight.

"No!" Brian was at the ladder in two steps, down it in less than ten seconds.

Brian’s gonna kill me for wrecking his tape measure, Jason thought just before he hit the ground.

Brian pushed off the ladder while still three rungs from the bottom and hit the ground running. Several of the other workers had gathered around the figure on the ground. "DO NOT TOUCH HIM!" he thundered as he skidded to a halt, kicking up a cloud of yellow dust. Then, in a quiet, shaky voice, "Don’t touch him. Don’t . . . ." His legs threatened to give way beneath him as he looked down at the crumpled figure.

Jason had twisted during the fall. He landed face-down in the yellow dirt with the left side of his body propped at an unnatural angle on a small pile of two-by-fours. Blood seeped into the ground around his head and spread in a gruesome halo.

"Did anyone call an ambulance?" Brian shouted, his eyes never leaving the still form at his feet. He dropped to his knees as he peeled off his white T-shirt. With great care, he scooped some of the bloody soil away from Jason’s head, then scrunched the shirt into the gap to staunch the flow from a jagged gash in his friend’s forehead. Tears clouded his vision and he blinked hard to clear them away. Later, he told himself, I can get upset later. Right now, I’ve got to hold it together.