The Flagger

By Paul Smith

I’ve had lots of flaggers. Not in the Biblical sense. They just worked for me. Red George did, though, and that led to problems for him and her. Flaggers are like laborers. They’re in the same union. Flaggers make a tad less. The work is not hard, but it can be dangerous with all the loony drivers we have around here. And flaggers are usually minorities, women minorities. A woman minority hire is what we call a ‘two-fer’, she counts twice in the minority hiring records contractors have to keep. So I’ve seen quite a few. On Biesterfield and its new ramps to I290 we had the Austin sisters. They were two-fers, both a little stocky, but authoritative. The Austins knew how to flag.

There is a right way and a wrong way to flag traffic around construction work. Say you have one-way traffic with one side stopping and the other going and then switching. The flaggers work in unison. The first thing a flagger must do is make eye contact with the driver she is stopping. Shy flaggers never cut it. After she makes eye contact the flagger must wiggle the stop paddle back and forth to further get the driver’s attention. Finally she uses her other hand palm down like she’s petting a dog and brings it down low to further emphasize that the driver must slow down and stop. That is the right way.

The wrong way is anything other than that.

I’ve had many flaggers. Besides the Austin sisters, we get what we call ‘political prisoners’ – folks who know Car 1 and just got out of jail. Some of these characters don’t know squat but they know something more important – Car 1. So they have a job waiting for them when they get out of the pen. They usually last a day or two. Another kind of political prisoner was the cute looking gal in Lululemons driving a Mustang convertible when I ran the North-South Tollway  project in Woodridge. She didn’t even bring a stop paddle and I had to show her what to do. She was acquainted with Car 7, Car 1’s son. She lasted a day as well.

But there are others who have made a life of this – desperate, poorly educated gals struggling (usually all alone) trying to get through life and with kids. And this is a lousy way of making a living, crummy to begin with, and compounded into further dreariness by the way road contractors use their people. Just about everyone, labors, operators, truck drivers, some mechanics, have to call Dispatch every morning to see where they go. Car 8 (Car 7’s brother) writes up a new line-up every day to keep all his favorites working. Some days lots of people get re-routed to a job different than the day before. Sometimes they call in and don’t get sent anywhere. I don’t do this being a superintendent. For the others, it stinks.

The one flagger who really stood out was Josephina, who not only lived in Lawndale, not only had two kids, but also had no car, and she would take public transportation to jobs all over the city. I met her at Touhy & Wolf, leaning against my trailer at six in the morning.

“You did what?” I asked.

“Took Metra, then a couple of buses,” she said eagerly. “I can’t be late.”

Josephina was tall, wiry, wearing Carhartts even though it was July, an orange safety vest, and she brought her own STOP paddle. She was serious.

“You take buses and trains to these jobs?” I asked.

“Yeah. Rohlwing Road, Elmhurst, Dan Ryan, Eisenhower – I get around.”

From that point on I refused to think that anything about my job was difficult.

“How come no car?”

“It’s a long story,” she said, smiling. “And I have a favor.”

“What?” We’d just met.

“Ask for me tomorrow, so I know I’ll come back here. I like you.”

We’d just met. “Dispatch will send you to wherever. I have no say.”

“Please, will you try? I know how it is. If you put in a good word for me, I’d appreciate it. Nobody else has, so far.”

Josephina was dark, blacker than Kevin Garnett. When I looked at her, there were two tiny white eyes staring back at me. The rest of her reminded me of Heart Of Darkness. I did not know Josephina, but I felt I could trace her history back to West Africa, across the Atlantic, to a plantation down South, to the tenements and false hope of Chicago to Touhy & Wolf here in Des Plaines, standing before me with her own STOP paddle as the July morning began to suffocate us.

I watched her that morning. Toby and Al and I were busy grading a right-turn lane and she was in front of us, waving people onto the left side of a lane of barricades. This wasn’t where two flaggers worked together, just her and an arrow board and the RCA’s. She was fearless. One guy tried to cut around her and she stepped right in front of him and banged his hood with her paddle. After that she wagged her finger. Dikembe Mutombo would have been proud.

After our shift she asked, “Well, do I come back?” We needed someone the next day.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

She made some severe eye contact and nodded. On my way home she was walking east on Touhy as I made my way home driving. I slowed down in the semi-heavy rush hour traffic. I rolled down my window. “You want a ride?” I yelled.

She just waved me off and kept walking, not even looking. She knew it was me.

Later I talked to Lombardo in Dispatch. “You want that bitch back?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see what Car 8 says. You know who she is, right?”

“No.”

“Gotta go!”

So she was someone. Who among the operators, laborers and truck drivers was actually Someone? There weren’t many in this huge faceless mob that built and rebuilt our roads. There was teamster Joe Rago, who had a ‘jumper’ jump in front of his semi at Highland Avenue. Death by dump truck. Larry Mariani was Someone because every Christmas he produced home-made Chianti for Car 5’s holiday party. The mechanic known as ‘Irish’ was famous for his reply over the radio to Sammy 3 when asked what piece of equipment he was working on around noon – ‘Well, Sammay, right now I’m working on a ham sammich.’ Those were Somebodies. I would have liked to be a Somebody.

Who was she?

She came back the next day. At the end of our shift, she asked. “Can I come back here tomorrow?” We did need someone.

“I’ll try,” I said.

“When you try, you get it done. I like you.” She took off walking. Twenty minutes later as I drove home on Touhy, I saw her making her way to a PACE bus stop. I didn’t bother waving.

“OK,” I asked Lombardo, “Who is she?”

A moment of silence prevailed. “You remember Red George, right?”

“Sure, my old boss.”

“And you remember the problem he had?”

Red George had had a flagger problem working on I-290. Because he lived in Johnsburg and the days were long, the Company got him a motel room in Elmhurst, miles closer to his job. The rest is history. Thomas Jefferson had that kind of problem, but at his time there was no EEO, no minority requirements, no Affirmative Action. Things were simpler.

“So she’s the one. Lawsuit, everything. What’s she doing back here?”

“Union sent her. We could lay her off.”

“And?”

“And I told Car 8, who said we have to be very careful. We means you, get it?’

I thought a minute.

“Get it? Or do I have Car 8 talk to you?”

“Got it.”

She was late the next day, showing up at eight o’clock. I had Al flag for me and Toby. Al could flag, use the shovel and string line all at once. He was invaluable. For me, he was a Someone. So was Toby. Once you get established, the rules eased up a bit. Toby and Al were mine.

“What’s up?” I asked when she appeared. She wasn’t exactly running down Wolf Road, but it was close.

“METRA train had an accident,” she breathed. “Things were all messed up..” She was still wearing her Carhartts and the sun was up. The sweat was from the heat or nervousness. She had her paddle.

“Go take over for Al,” We got back to grading our turn lane.

There is a double standard here. We like to brag about how the truth is our friend, etc. etc., because we are so important and have this awesome responsibility that we cannot tell lies because we are building our country’s roads, which requires coordination and truthfulness and putting our fate in the hands of others around us, so we cannot lie about how many laborers or trucks we need, when we think we will finish our task so the next crew can start, how hard it’s raining where we are at because even though we don’t want to call off work due to weather, if we screw up and call out everyone and there’s a downpour, we’re stuck with all these bodies and their darned show-up time. So the truth matters, he said importantly. But, in a bind, we lie.

And being not just a standard-bearer for truth, but also one of its most ardent seekers, I consulted the news that evening, scouring the TV stations and even stopping to get a late newspaper, where there was no mention of a METRA accident.

So the next day I asked Josephina, “What about this METRA train accident? Not on the news, Josephina.”

Her eyes turned away from mine. “There was no accident. My daughter was feeling sick so I took her to my cousin’s place in Auburn-Gresham. I missed my train.” She looked at her feet.

“You have to level with me. With everyone!”

She would not look up. “I was on time today.”

“Yes. I know.”

The next week was very hectic. We had to put a deep sewer line across the intersection of Touhy & Wolf. It meant laying the pipe halfway across Touhy and then putting fill on it, compacting the fill, then asphalt, then rerouting traffic on that and doing the other half of Touhy the same way. We were fully interacting with traffic. It had to be tightly coordinated and truthful. My chest went all the way out. We got a second flagger named Denise. A worldly-wise gal with an authoritative left hand and a chip on her shoulder. I liked her immediately.

At noon, Denise asked me, “You know who she is, right?”

“I know.”

“You best be careful, boss.” A car tried to sneak by. “Hey, asshole, I said STOP!”

Bang!

He stopped.

When the day was over everyone gathered at the trailer for a few beers, something prohibited but done all the time whenever a big task was accomplished. We had buried three hundred feet of ten foot diameter concrete pipe through heavy traffic, put down temporary asphalt so traffic would run on top of it, all in twelve hours. All of us, the sewer crew, the blade guy, Toby and Al, the flaggers all had a few and nearly threw our shoulders out patting ourselves on the back. Then we headed home.

It was like old times the next day. No Josephine at seven o’clock. Her paddle sat in the trailer. There was no other flagger today. I grabbed it and went out to Touhy to work on pavement removal. We had one lane shut down with an arrow board. Trucks would be coming and going and needed a flagger to help them get in and out of traffic. Right now I was the flagger. I thought about calling Dispatch and asking for a backup, but waited.

We had a huge backhoe ripping out pavement on Westbound Touhy now that the sewer line was in. Not only did the hoe have guts, but it was turbocharged and was prone to huge plumes of black smoke when the operator really ripped into the pavement and got a bucketful. So I hesitate to say the smoke distracted me, but the smoke distracted me and so did the back and forth between our operator Luigi and whatever truck driver parked under his bucket. Luigi was like most of us, not in favor of too many instructions, especially from truck drivers who wanted to ‘help’ him as Luigi loaded their trucks. They would climb up alongside the trailer and try to spot each bucket for Luigi, since an overloaded truck could result in overload tickets and possible time off. So, yes, fucking right I was distracted, distracted enough so that I was looking the wrong way when a car wheeled around me and slammed into a truck pulling out as smoke plumed into the early morning air along with shouts of “Hey dumb asshole’ from Luigi’s Sicilian mouth as I hoped the dumb asshole part was directed at the truck driver or the car but certainly not me.

And when Des Plaines police showed up, I was the flagger of record.

But of course I was not because I lied.

“Who, then?” the policeman we knew as Shiny Shoes asked.

“Her name is Josephine.”

“Where is Josephine?”

“She’s distraught. I’ll get her.” And I went to the trailer, where of course she was not, and then came back.

“No big deal,” said Shiny Shoes. “Just sign here. Your problem, not mine.”

It was my problem. Josephine showed up around eight.

“Well?” I asked. The heat under my collar built up just like the traffic on Touhy.  

The one thing about lying is that you have to do it in a way that resembles the truth. I have a theory about lying that goes like this: Good liars know how to lie and don’t get caught. They acquire the reputation of honest men. Honest men are sometimes caught with their pants down and have to make up stuff at a moment’s notice and are not good at it. They get to be known as liars. One should remember to ‘get your stories’ straight’ when more than one person is involved in misinformation.

I forgot that part.

“METRA was late this time. Really! They were.” She took the paddle from me and hugged it to her chest. There was another cough of black smoke from our huge Koehring backhoe and the undercurrent of Luigi hurling Mediterranean insults at the truck driver beneath his bucket.

“Go,” I said. She could have the stupid paddle.

A day later I had a meeting with Car 8. It was Friday. It was my first Friday meeting at Hillside and I’d been there six years. Something was up. When I drove my Company pickup there, Josephina was waiting in the parking lot. When she saw me, her face sort of dropped.

“I get it now,” she said. “Seeing car 8?”

I nodded. We went in through the shop/garage, past Sammy 3’s domain of motor fluids – recycled engine oil, ATF, brake fluid, steering fluid. Tires were everywhere in stacks. Air wrenches hammered. Somewhere in back Sammy 3 could be heard, yelling. Josephina and I mounted the wooden steps up to the main building, passed Linda’s office and went into where Car 8 waited. He had a wood-paneled office with wood blinds on the windows. The late afternoon sun created a very peaceful environment, almost as if its occupant had nothing to do with pavement getting torn apart, trucks squealing their brakes, motorists cursing us. Plus, it was air-conditioned past the point of refreshment. It was just plain cold. Car 8 drove a Crown Vic. I was in it once. Its air conditioner was turned way down just like his office.

He sat behind a massive wood desk. “You know what this is about, right?” Car 8 had a youthful, earnest face that belied the fact he’d been in the field for ten years running his father’s projects. He was all business, and waited for someone to speak.

“It’s about that accident.”

“To begin with, yes,” he nodded. “What the hell happened?”

“I wasn’t there,” Josephina said. “No matter what any stupid paper says, I was not there.”

Car 8 looked at me. “You said she was flagging. Why weren’t you there, Jo?”

“I was late. My daughter was sick.”

Back to me. “I was trying to cover for her.”

“You was not. You jest couldn’t flag, that’s all.”

Car 8’s head swiveled from her to me. “You two should have at least got your stories straight.” He looked straight ahead at Josephine. “We can’t keep you, Jo. You were late twice.”

Then he looked at me. “Can’t keep you, either. You should have fired her the first time she didn’t show up. We do thank you for your service, though. Keys?”

That was it. I turned in my truck keys and went out to the garage where one of Sammy 3’s flunkies waited, slouching against a dusty pile of truck tires. He nodded when he saw me.

Josephina and I stepped out of the shadows and din of the garage as the sun blazed. “This ain’t so bad,” she said. “I can take the 305 on Roosevelt to Pulaski, then the 53A south. It ain’t bad.’ She turned to me and made eye contact the first time this afternoon. “You can take the 307 on Harlem to North Avenue. After that, I don’t know. I know you live somewhere North. I seen you twice going east on Touhy.”

I nodded to Sammy 3’s apprentice mechanic back in the semi-darkness of the garage and he walked my way. He was my ride home.

“Good-bye, Jo,” I said.

“Good-bye,” she said. “I liked you to begin with, but then, you changed.” She turned her back to me and started hoofing it to Roosevelt Road.

Josephina, who once liked me, who listened to me, had remembered to do the one thing I told her to do, the one thing that had nothing to do with flagging, and everything to do with everything else. She told the truth. She told the truth after changing her tardiness tale from METRA to her sick daughter, if that’s what actually happened. She said in spite of what anybody else might say, in spite of what the Des Plaines police report said, she had not been there for the accident with the black smoke, the turbocharged Koehring 1066 backhoe, with Luigi waving and cursing, with me holding a stop paddle looking the wrong way. And, on the second try, I also spoke the truth.

Some wise guy once said the truth will set you free. Another wise guy had theories about what the truth was and wasn’t. Philosophers go into detail.

I have never heard of an out-of-work philosopher. I was not going to be a Somebody. I never was.

Paul Smith is a civil engineer who has worked in the construction racket for many years. He has traveled all over the place and met lots of people. Some have enriched his life. Others made him wish he or they were all dead. He likes writing poetry and fiction. He also likes Newcastle Brown Ale. If you see him, buy him one. His poetry and fiction have been published in Convergence, Missouri Review, Literary Orphans and other lit mags.