How long have I been in the job? Not long, five decades and change; exceeded my life expectancy long ago but they don’t give you a medal for it! If people know one thing about me it’s that I’m the man for this job, and yes perhaps I take a certain pride in that. How did I hear about it? In the paper? Let’s see: no. I can’t read, after all. No, it was probably the same way you found out about your job. It’s the last day of school and teacher retrieves a book about towers and storage facilities. Here’s one I forgot to teach you earlier, he winks. They’re all here in this book (although the book should not be considered exhaustive). Different teacher from normal, actually, but these things may happen on the last day of school. Here's how to recognise different types of buildings. Look here, into the book: this is the house of god; this, a house of grain; here’s a library, where books like me live. He’s doing the voice of the book now! I can’t get enough of this guy. This is what’s called a tower. In this type, well you’ll probably find grain there too. It’s a grain tower—different way of storing grain. These white ones with the red rings around them are for water. An easy way to remember that is because it’s like the red rings they chuck ya when you’re drowning in...? That’s right, water. And this one on the last page, well observe the narrow stem flaring to an inverse conical summit and a flat roof, and the rosy pink complexion; that means what you have there is a crab tower. When they get them out of the sea, that’s where they get put, declawed and deshelled, all stalks removed, just the freshest and finest crabmeat. Did you know if you put it in a tower like this it actually gets more tasty over time? Another fact about this kind of tower is that there’s a hatch in the top that’s open at all times, where you can get inside. These types of towers—crab towers—are rare, but there’s actually one nearby. You may have seen it on your way to and from school.
Years later, (some of) these words (most of them) are burned on my brain. I remember them almost to the exclusion of all others. My classmates shook my hand and said so long, thanks for all the memories, but I was too preoccupied to shake hands. I could feel new connections forming in my brain. It was splitting like a baked potato and the butter of this new idea was melting into the fluff. When I had finished thinking about it, everyone had gone home. The tower was on my way back—I walked past it every day.
The rest is history. Lacking a way to reach the hatch, I stood around near the tower’s base waiting to see if something would happen. Perhaps a ladder might come to light. Why not a hot air balloon while we’re dreaming. At this point a man emerged from the undergrowth who I’d never seen before in my life. God strike me down, I have told a lie. I had seen him a few hours earlier. It was teacher, from school. The replacement teacher, not the real teacher. The rest is history. Teacher asked me if I’d had any luck getting crab meat out of the tower, and commiserated with me when I said no. I might have an alternative opportunity for you if you’re interested, he said. I’m listening, I said. He described this job I have now, and the way he talked about it made it sound pretty easy. How little I knew! He explained to me that I would need a job now that I had finished school, and it occurred to me that he was right. I couldn’t get at the crab meat, which left me short on options. Sign me up please, Teacher. He told me I started work in the morning, now go and enjoy your last day as a school boy. This is an important day for you, and at the end of this day you will put away childish things and become a man once and for all.
It's easy being a man. All I do is stand by the road in the rich part of town with Habib, with my arms by my sides, and together we look after the tower. Habib sits on an upturned bucket next to a table, and on the table is nothing. At the end of the day, two men come in a saloon car and take my report, which is that everything has gone fine today. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with my arms by my sides, and if that’s true for me, I think Habib must wake up in the night to find that he’s sitting down, because he sits on the upturned bucket for even longer every day than I stand still. Habib is not the man who stood near me at the tower that day—I never saw that man again. Habib is someone else, who sits on an upturned bucket while I stand guard. He and I know each other quite well, and we’ve seen each other through some crazy times. The craziest thing about the times has been their duration and lack of incident.
Habib is a companionable sort, a sitter on upturned buckets, a wearer of a brown gilet. He cultivates a fan of catlike whiskers under his nose, and eyes as close to closed as possible. I think he might get paid more than me but he refuses to discuss salaries as a matter of company policy. We do discuss other things though—often tall tales of what we get up to in our spare time. He has various anecdotes about going bowling or having a BBQ that he sometimes says are not real. He’ll preface the story like that: oh, you know, this is not real, but I went to the beach last week and met a man who knew my mother. Once, when he was telling a story just like that, a lightbulb went off in my head. But Habib, I said, we spend every hour of the day together, right here. Are you telling me you went to the beach in the dark? I already said it wasn’t real, he said.
Maybe he’s right. The life of the body and the life of the mind are not totally separable, but the life of the mind must take priority. The nature of his role here is difficult to ascertain. He sits on the upturned bucket and almost never moves. I stand guard at all times, and if I take a break to make water, he remains seated. I suppose at such times he could conceivably be fulfilling a guarding function except for the times when he comes with me to make water. It seems more likely that his role is to keep me company, which he does very well. He’s not a big talker but then neither am I. I think I could do this job without companionship but I’m glad I don’t have to. Ah Habib! Faithful brown gilet Habib. Sometimes called Rich Habib because he once won a thousand shillings on a scratchcard thrown from a moving car. Refuses to admit fault for anything Habib. First and foremost among colleagues.
Other men I see every day:
My fifty year working relationship with Habib was brought to a close when four lug nuts failed at once and the back left wheel of a jeep came off at 70mph and struck him in the face. One moment I was standing there scanning the horizon, and the next minute I was still standing there but Habib was behind me somewhere dead in the undergrowth and the bucket was spinning on its rim like a coin. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to turn around. I stood there all day facing in the other direction while measures were taken and pronouncements were made behind me. When the men in the van came at the end of the day I issued my first unfavourable report, consisting of the preceding sentences. When I finally turned around Habib’s body was gone. All that was left was the bucket, the wheel and a patch of flattened grass. I came back the next morning as usual. The tyre had been prised off the wheel and taken away to be turned into rubber shoes. Habib was walking in the land of the dead, where he would walk for the rest of time, already too far away to even remember what our life together was like. I felt a great sorrow hung around my neck. Over eighteen thousand times in my life had I said goodbye to Habib—one too few.
For a week I couldn’t bring myself to turn around and see the circle of barren earth where the upturned bucket had sat in the grass for fifty years. At my age, if you don’t use it you lose it, so that’s why I can’t look behind me anymore. I was half expecting a replacement Habib. I spent several days imagining what they might be like, what I would call them, and if we would get on well. Habib 2, if he was open to it, would be called Blessing, so I would remember not to take him for granted. If he was open to it, we could spend time together outside work. A replacement was not forthcoming.
Left alone, I went to seed. I grew my fingernails out but they immediately folded back on themselves to form huge blunt spirals that lay on the backs of my fingers. My beard burst and drooped over my puckered chest. The upper reaches of the tower were occluded by the same mist I saw when I looked in the mirror. Only Habib’s face was visible now, growing slowly more youthful and immobile as his journey in the moist realms of death stretched into two years, seven years, twelve.
The teacher returned with much fanfare, bearing a conical hat full of fruit, professing not to have met me but then why leave the fruit under my care? I added it to the ever-growing itinerary of things to look after—first the tower, now this fruit. Some mistake, I thought. If Habib was still here we could divide the labour, one job per man. Bring back Habib, that’s what I say! But no one to say it to.
Well, unlike crabmeat, fruit rots, no matter how carefully you watch it, and as one journey ends it stretches, and as it stretches it becomes another journey in its own right. In retrospect, borders between territories are invisible if they exist at all, and there is no difference between one place and the next. For a while, you think you’re on a journey, and then that journey ends without ending and you realise you’re still travelling, your feet already numb and calloused, and now I have some extra weight that they’ve pinned to my chest, weighing me down as I follow doggedly Habib’s deep stone footsteps full of rainwater. They do give you a medal for it after all!
Tim Harding is a stonemason, osteopath and comedy journalist based in London, UK. There's much more where this came from.