The Watchmaker’s Hand

“I’m going to manual.” He shut off the controller. He’d been riding tower cranes for the past fifteen years, since he signed up with Moynahan Construction, after his stint as an engineer in the army. Digital controls made the job easier and safer, but he’d cut his teeth operating towers by hand, using charts and graphs and a pad attached to his thigh for calculations — and, of course, a needle balance indicator to get the moment just right. He now tugged on the joystick to draw the load trolley closer to center.

Then, switching to the counterweight control, he moved those away from the tower.

His eyes were fixed on the LMI, which still indicated moment imbalance forward.

He moved the weights, totaling a hundred tons, farther back.

This had to achieve moment.

It was impossible for it not to.

But it did not.

Back to the front jib.

He cranked the trolley closer to him. The flanges swung. He’d moved more quickly than he’d meant to.

He was looking at his coffee cup.

The chair — padded, comfortable — did not come factory-equipped with a cup holder. But Garry, an afficionado of any and all brews, had mounted one on the wall — far away from the electronics, of course.

The brown liquid was level; the cup was not.

Another glance at the LMI indicator.

A full –2 percent down in the front.

He worked the trolley control and brought the load of flanges closer yet.

Ah, yes, that did it.

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 aboveground.

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 view through 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.