The Minnesota Candidate by Nicholas Antinozzi

Dressed in a
bright orange t-shirt and blue jeans, Tom donned his new hardhat.
He couldn’t get into the sight without one and he found that
somehow, the hardhat made him feel more masculine. Carrying the
five white bakery boxes proved to be a challenge, but somehow Tom
made it back to the construction site without dropping them. He set
them down and they were quickly opened and devoured. Tom looked
around for Sam, but he could see no sign of him. Tom’s heart sank
as he checked his watch. He stepped up onto a stack of plywood and
scanned the men that were attacking the white bakery boxes. Sam was
not among them.
    Tom shook his head as he stepped back down onto
the trampled lawn. He walked up to the house and he heard a heated
argument taking place inside. Tom thought he heard Sam’s voice and
he stepped inside to investigate.
    “I’m tellin’ you that there is no way that
header can support that much weight,” growled Sam, standing
toe-to-toe with a man in a red foreman’s hardhat. Tom recognized
the big man, a hardboiled brute with heavily tattooed arms and a
stringy white beard.
    The other man held a blueprint in one hand and
he jabbed his finger at it. “And I’m telling you that this is how
the architect designed it. Sam, I like you, but you’ve got to let
it go. Don’t make me walk you off the job.”
    “This is my cousin’s house,” said Sam, not
giving an inch. “And I’m not movin’ until we get an inspector in
here. Just look at that expanse, we need to double that header
up.”
    Several men had gathered in the large room and
Tom waded through them. “Excuse me,” said Tom, “what seems to be
the problem?”
    “Fat Tommy,” exclaimed Sam, his eyes lighting up
at the sight of him. “Look at this, will ya? Do you think that this
header is safe?”
    Tom didn’t know a header from a hole in the
ground and he shrugged his shoulders. The foreman recognized Tom
and he flung the blueprints in front of him. “You see,” he said,
pointing at a cluster of lines and angles, “that’s the way it was
designed.”
    “And I’m tellin’ ya that it needs to be doubled
up,” said Sam, crossing his arms.
    Tom stared at the blueprints and rubbed his
chin. He had no idea what he was looking at and he prayed someone
would rescue him. Just then, another man waded into the fray.
“What’s going on, here?” he asked. Tom breathed a sigh of relief.
The man was a building inspector for the City of Minneapolis.
    Sam pointed up at a long beam that sat above
them. “That’s the problem,” he said. “If we weren’t going up
another story, that single header would be fine. I know it ain’t
drawn up that way in the plans, but I think that header needs to be
doubled up.”
    The inspector was tall and thin, a gaunt looking
man who might have been an undertaker in another life. He looked up
at the header in question and he pulled a tape measure from his
jacket pocket. He held the end out to Sam. “Hold this on that
edge,” he grunted.
    Sam took the edge and placed it at where the
header met the top of the interior wall. The building inspector
pulled the tape down to the other end and he quickly shook his
head. “That man is right,” he said to the foreman. “And it’s a damn
good thing he caught that when he did. You need to double this
up.”
    Tom thought the foreman was going to blow a
fuse, but he surprised Tom by walking over to Sam and clapping him
on the back. “Good eye, Sam,” he said. “Most guys don’t have the
seeds to stand up to me, but you do. I like that. You just saved us
a lot of time and money. I’ll be talking to the boss about
this.”
    Sam smiled and shook the beefy man’s hand. “I
just call ‘em like I see ‘em. I wasn’t trying to be a pain in the
ass.”
    The foreman smiled, revealing perhaps eight
teeth. He then checked his watch. “It’s seven O’clock,” he
bellowed. “The show is over. Quit loafing around and get to work.
Jackson, you and Sam get going on