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The alarm light went out as the balance indicator now moved slowly back to –.5 and then 0, then 1, and kept rising. This was because the counterweights were so far back. Garry now reeled them in until they were as far forward as they could go.
It brought the LMI needle to 1.2.
This was normal. Cranes are made to lean backward slightly when there is no weight of a load on the front jib, which should, at rest, be about one degree. The main stability comes from the massive concrete base—that’s what holds it upright when there’s no balancing act going on.
“Got it, Danny,” he radioed. “Stable. But I’ll need maintenance. Got to be some counterweight issue.”
“K. I think Will’s off break.”
Garry sat back and sipped his coffee, replaced the cup, listened to the wind. It would be some minutes before the mechanic arrived. To get to the cab from the ground, there was one way and one way only.
You climbed the mast.
But the cab was twenty-two stories above the ground. Which meant at least one, maybe two five-minute rest stops on the way up.
Guys on the site sometimes thought if you were a crane operator you were in lousy shape, sitting on your ass all day long. They forgot about the climb.
With no load to deliver, no hook block to steer carefully to the ground, he could sit back and enjoy the indescribable view. If Garry wanted, he could put a name to what he was looking at: the five boroughs of the city, a huge parcel of New Jersey, a thin band of Westchester, one of Long Island too.
But he wasn’t interested in GPS information.
He was thrilled by the browns and grays and greens and white clouds and the endless blue—every shade far richer and bolder than when viewed by landlocked pedestrians below.
From a young age, Garry had known he wanted to build skyscrapers. That’s what he had made with his Legos. That’s what he had begged his parents to take him to visit, even when his mother and father blanched at the idea of standing on observation decks. He only liked the open ones. “You know,” his father had said, “sometimes people go crazy and throw themselves off the edge of high places. The fear takes them.”
Naw, probably not. There was nothing to fear from heights. The higher he got, the calmer he became. Whether it was rock climbing, mountaineering, or building skyscrapers, heights comforted him.
He was, he told Peggy, “in heaven” when he was far, far above-ground.
Back to baby names.
Kierkegaard, Bashilda …
What would they really pick? Neither wanted a Junior. And they didn’t want any names currently in vogue, which you could find easily in the tiny booklets on the Gristedes checkout lane.
He reached for his coffee cup.
No!
The level had changed again. The front jib was dipping once more.
–.4
A moment later, the duo of warning signs burst on again, and the alarm, which had defaulted back on, blared.
The balance indicator jumped to –1.2.
He hit Transmit. “Dan. She’s moving again. Big-time.”
“Shit. What’s going on?”
“Can’t reel the load any farther. I’m dropping it. Clear the zone. Tell me when.”
“Yeah, okay.”
He couldn’t hear the command from here, but he had a viewthrough the Plexiglas straight down between his legs and saw the workers scatter quickly as the ground foreman told them to get out of the way.
Of course, “dropping” the load didn’t mean that literally—yanking the release and letting the seventeen tons of steel free-fall to the ground. He eased the down lever and the bundle dropped fast. He could see, on his indicators and visually through the Plexiglas, exactly where it was on descent. At about thirty feet above the ground, he braked, and the bundle settled onto the concrete. Maybe some damage.
