The bucket eclipses the windshield.
"Middle," Gavin says. "Hinge speed is low."
He edges another hair left so the swing's radius is longer to his right and shorter to his left. The bucket's teeth blur, then slow where the linkage changes travel into leverage. He loads the left tire against a plate edge so the suspension is already coiled for a finger of bounce.
"Ready lift," Madison says, pipe wrench braced under the A-pillar trim in case the rope rides high.
"Bar set," Rick says, towel bar jammed under the hood's inner rib, lying to gravity with steel.
The bucket arrives in a black crescent, teeth streaked with old cement. Gavin touches the plate seam with the left tire and rides the seam like a curb—ssss—buying a breath of compress. He kisses the bucket's heel with the bumper, not the teeth—the rounded part near the pins that forgives more than it bites. Rubber and steel argue; the nose squats a finger. The hoodline dock rope sings but holds.
"Under," Rick says.
"Through," Gavin answers, steering for the bucket's hinge as if it were a doorway cut out of moving night. Teeth skate the glass an inch high, scrape the roof seam with a shriek that tastes like pennies, and throw bright dust.
"Clear?" Madison asks, not moving her eyes from the rope.
"Clear enough," Gavin says.
Behind, the strap team yanks too late. Nylon hisses at empty air where their bumper was and whips itself into a cone, then slaps a cone down like a crown.
The excavator operator over-corrects again. The bucket drops and hooks the plate edge, snatching the whole machine half a foot toward them before the boom cylinder checks it with a grunt. The operator panics, jabs stick and pedal, and the cab slews the other way. The bucket climbs just enough to kiss their roof with one tooth that files the gutter and lets go.
"Line okay," Madison reports. "Fuzzed but good."
"Keep left," Rick says. "Plates seam bad right."
Gavin keeps curb-braille in his ear—ssss—and threads the rest of the corridor while the machine's bucket swings back across empty lane, like a cat still pawing where a bird used to be.
"Ahead—crane hook," Madison warns. A small mobile crane on the right shoulder holds a dangling bundle of rebar mat, sway-tied but lazy. The bundle hangs across head height into their lane, a ribbed shadow shifting in wind.
"Header and seam," Gavin says. "Windows two. Fingers in." He lists the van left a finger, puts the A-pillar where the mats will rub, and holds a dead-straight line. The rebar combs the header with a tinny chorus and peels paint from the roof seam like old tape. The dock rope hum climbs and then steadies. They spit the bundle, and it swings away to find no lesson.
"Smell," Rick says. "Tar."
A hot kettle sits abandoned near an orange barrel—tar lipping and smoking. Someone's long-handled mop lies across it like a flag at half-staff. Heat reaches through the glass like a hand. The windshield's spiderweb catches it, turns the world into a swimming pool.
"Eyes," Madison says.
"I have edges," Gavin answers. Edges are truth; centers are lies.
A forklift noses out from a lumber yard gate with a pallet of pavers riding high. The operator sees them, freezes, then decides to be a wall by doing nothing.
"Top heavy," Rick says.
"Make it untrue," Gavin says. He shoulders the pallet's corner with the bumper—gentle violence—and the stack tips. Pavers spill like teeth onto the oily concrete ahead, making a field of traction where there was a slick. The forklift driver swears a small suburban oath and backs into invisibility.
"Cable next," Madison says. "I hear it."
She's right. A taut steel line runs low from a ladder rack to a jersey barrier stub like a trap someone meant for ankles and forgot cars have throats. It's at bumper height and humming with excited physics.
"Let the bumper eat it," Gavin says. He squares the nose and keeps the curb tone so the line hits dead center where steel can take a bite. The cable slaps the bumper, hops, and skates the hood lip toward the dock rope's angle.
"Lift," Madison says, already wedging the wrench under the A-pillar trim. The cable rides the wrench's neck, kisses the header, then pops to the roof seam. Rick props the towel bar higher; the cable twangs out to chain-link and dies.
"Fork excavator swinging again," Rick says, glancing back. The bucket cuts the left lane with a lazy reversed arc that might mean the operator learned or didn't.
"Don't gift him another noun," Gavin says. He threads past a stack of cones and a sign that reads SLOW—written by the last honest person in this grid—and takes a shallow right where the plates end and raw asphalt begins.
The red dot returns, tasting for them on the hood. It crawls, then loses; line-of-sight dies behind a stack of ducting.
"Street opens," Madison says. "But right lane is fenced with temp panels. Left side has jersey barriers tight."
"Middle then," Gavin says. He steers a seam between compromises. The van hums with the dock rope's note, the safety wrap kissing the seat base like a rosary.
"New trap," Rick says. "Come-along across an alley mouth. Ratchet handle sticking up."
The come-along cable spans an opening at grill height, ratchet body perched on a trash can like a little god. It will bite the hood lip and saw.
"Header route again," Gavin says. "Windows two. No fingers." He lists left and gives them a clean, calm line. The ratchet body buzzes across the header seam, sparks tasting glass. The cable tries the roof seam and finds paint courtesy. It pops free with a lash that stings the mirror stump and leaves a buzz in their teeth.
"Left now," Madison says. "Industrial spine becomes a T at the rail spur."
"Crossing arms?" Rick asks.
"Dead," she says. "Trains own their own gods now."
The spur itself is ballast and iron. The crossing's rubber panels are half-pulled, leaving gaps. Gavin takes it dead straight and slow enough that momentum is a friend, not a jury. The dock rope hums in a higher, nervous key as the hood lip chatters over the panels and then settles back against the header with the comfort of habits.
"Clear," Rick says.
"Noise behind," Madison says. "Bucket boy again—and rope kids learning cables."
"They can learn after we leave class," Gavin says.
Past the spur, the road narrows between jersey barriers into a temporary S-curve—a chicane designed to punish trucks and make cars polite. No one is polite tonight. Ahead at the S's second bend, a lowboy trailer sits nosed into the lane with its rear over the line. On the right, a temp fence leans inward. The gap is a mail slot with ideas about who should pass.
"Curb braille," Gavin says.
"Strap crew left," Madison adds. "They're crouched by the barrier with something thicker."
"Tow rope again," Rick says, and then corrects himself: "No—tow chain."
The men at the barrier heave, and a chain jerks across the lane—heavy links, mean and low. At the same breath, the excavator's bucket appears in their left, lazy and late but dangerous. The operator swings across the S as if swatting a fly, misjudging how rubber makes a bad crane base.
"Bracketing again," Madison says, voice flat.
"Door's in the hinge," Gavin says, setting for it a second time. He kisses the curb—ssss—and loads the left tire on a plate seam that pretends to be a ramp. The chain scrapes the bumper, tries to climb, meets the dock rope's angle, and changes its mind. The bucket's teeth cross above the glass a finger high, filing the gutter one more small letter. The van threads the eye of a problem because it believes it can and because physics agrees for now.
They spill out of the chicane into a shitty open: a wide construction lot with plate mountains to the left, stacked duct to the right, and a wheeled excavator repositioning in the center with its bucket low and out like a hunting dog's head. The operator sees them and—finally—commits. He pushes the stick hard. The boom dips and the bucket drops right as they arrive, teeth a row of deliberate, eager notches.
"Middle—again," Rick says, hating it and trusting it.
"Again," Gavin says. He aims for the heel and the hinge where speed is least, compress ready. The bucket sweeps and the world fills with steel.
He buys a finger of bounce from a plate lip, kisses the heel with the bumper, and squats the nose. Teeth shear a new shave along the roof seam, pull a thin screech of paint, and miss the glass by a breath.
"Line?" Madison is already on the knot with her eyes.
"Holding," Rick says, hand on the safety wrap by reflex. "Hum's high but good."
"Outlet," Madison says. "Back lot slit between stacked duct and a roll-up door."
The slit is barely more than van width, with a roll-up door half lifted—waist height, teeth hanging—because someone tried to save a day earlier and failed. Beyond it, Gavin can see a thread of daylight that is a street with more problems but different ones. He sets his line.
"Door height?" Rick asks.
"Roof dent and strap angle say 'maybe,'" Madison says.
"Maybe is a yes we haven't earned yet," Gavin says. He angles the hood dent under the door lip and breathes once. The door's teeth rake the roof skin, find old scrapes to honor, and let them through with a scream like a long receipt. The dock rope hums, high and fine.
Inside the warehouse bay is worse: floor slick with sawdust and oil, sawhorses on their sides like sleeping deer, and a tow strap already laid across the exit mouth at shin height, hooked to a pallet jack on one side and a column base on the other. A shadow behind the column hauls slack with both hands.
"Again?" Rick says, unbelieving of the ambition.
"Again," Gavin says, calm because choices are a luxury and physics is law. He lines for the pallet-jack side—lower anchor, kinder angle—and puts the right tire on a mounded seam of epoxy that can be a micro-ramp. The strap leaps tight. He touches the tire into the seam, squats the nose a finger, and lets the rope skate the hood lip to the header, then the gutter, then away.
They blast out the far roll-up into night air. The street there is half blocked by a loader with a fork carriage parked high. The carriage drops as if woken, and the forks slam to knee height across the lane.
"Under is throat," Madison says, that same dead-pan.
"Over is glass," Rick repeats, resigned.
"Middle," Gavin says, and hates the pattern even as he loves the geometry. He aims for the carriage heel, loads left, buys the finger, kisses steel, and the forks shave the roof seam long and mean. The dock rope thrums but stays true.
They clear the forks. That's when the excavator from the lot—persistent, offended—slews to the fence line parallel to them and swings one last time through a gap in the temp panels. The bucket's teeth jab into the lane from the left at hood height, a sudden, dumb stab—no swing, no arc, just a murderous little poke into their air.
"Left!" Madison barks.
"No left," Gavin says—the jersey barrier is there like a law. "Hold center."
He holds. The bucket jolts into the hood lip with a hollow thunk that feels like a strike on a drum. The teeth slide—one, two—then catch. Not on the hood. On the dock-line knot where Rick's trucker's hitch sits proud in the slipstream.
The bucket hooks the knot and pulls.