Leaving the people watching to the people-watchers

Last night I slept with my nose jammed in Isabellephant’s armpit.

When I woke up this morning, I was cautious about removing it from that nook. The synthetic fur in my nostrils served as an air filter. Since Monday, a bulldozer has been puffing motor oil exhaust through my window while it digs up the street outside. I lifted my stuffed elephant’s limb and sniffed a couple of times. For the first time all week, it seemed that toxic fumes had not permeated my bedroom.

I had not been spared in the way of toxic sounds, however. A different machine has woken me up every morning. A four-foot circular blade attached to a pushcart sliced through the pavement. A jackhammer, ridden like a pogo stick by a short man wearing orange from head to toe, pulverized a strip of concrete to create a messy channel straight through the intersection. A bulldozer pawed at huge scraps of gravel, nudging them into piles and then scooping them into a dump truck.

In a dream, that sound manifested as a dinosaur chomping on concrete and then digesting its meal—amplified.

This morning, I thought I heard my roommate loading or emptying the dishwasher, but given the early hour and our mutual aversion to kitchen-based chores, I knew that was unlikely. I got out of bed and, relieved that diesel fumes hadn’t gone to my head and made me woozy, I went to the window. One of the orange men was using a sledgehammer to clank stakes around the perimeter of a road plate. It covered up one segment of the channel and allowed a path for pedestrians along one side of the street, though traffic was blocked off in all directions.

Across the street and a few doors down from the corner, two women stood talking, one on the inside of the gate and one on the outside. They were both dressed in dark cotton pants and button-down shirts in light denim. They both had an elbow propped on the railing. Their blue jean shoulders nudged against each other and they chatted as they watched the commotion of mechanics and demolition.

“Goodness, my word, all that noise!” their faces seemed to say. “My word!”

A boy with a red book bag and red Chucks ran down the sidewalk in front of them, swinging his arms straight forward and back. At the corner, he nearly knocked over the blockade before he managed to stop. He gaped into the trench before him.

“Uhhhmm, Mom!” he called, and then spun around to yell, “the sidewalk’s closed!”

“Just go around; you are going to school!” The patriarch of the orange men held up a florescent flag on a stick to indicate the pathway on the other side of the street. The boy kept big eyes on the bulldozer over his shoulder as he passed. His mother plugged both ears with her thumbs.

A runner with a Vizsla on a leash tried to hurry past the noise, but the dog shied before stepping on the metal plank. The owner tugged on the leash and jogged forward for encouragement. The dog jumped up, lifting all four paws off the ground at once. She scrambled about a pace and a half in midair and landed again at a full gallop, now tugging her human companion along.

“Did you see that? My word!”

The guy with the sledgehammer had an audience. Two of his own crew members gathered to watch him drive the last few stakes. One of them stepped forward and stomped his feet on a few as if to make sure that their heads were flush with the surface. This amused the other guy; he imitated the dance with a sort of sideways running man.

“My word!”

This is the kind of stuff I usually miss because I’m looking at old J.Crew catalogs or exfoliating or emptying the dishwasher or sleeping with my nose jammed in Isabellephant’s armpit.

I can’t say I won’t be happy to have that extra five minutes of sleep back when the noisy project on the street is finished.