When the Furniture Comes

As the bail out of 2008 neared, Tyler Hopkins, chief negotiator

for Big Gnocchi Brother's Inc., felt the press of the white whale

beaching toward Main Street and feared the carcass' implosion.

Tyler's BGB, Inc. foreman, Jamber, lead singer in an AC/DC

cover band, is due in Family Court to remit forty-eight thousand

dollars in back child support of which he is forty-two thousand

dollars light. Limon, twenty-three year old American-Mexican

immigrant, is the force of the Gotham Minors, a schist breaking

division of Tyler's company. Limon wields a one hundred and

twelve pound sledgehammer over the hands of splitting maul

cradler, Umberto, a sixty-two year old Puerto Rican transplant

from the Bronx. The third member of the crew, light barer, key man

and mule, is a rebellious scholar from Merida, who distinguishes

the six mauls used by the minors to slab schist, by linking the

names of the Apostles from the New Testament with those from

the Gnostic Gospels--unbeknownst to the romantic scholar, he

is also lunch fetch. It is the task of the Gotham Minors, breaking

schist below the sidewalks of Manhattan, to clear enough room

in the earth for the passage of a man's head...without disturbing

the neighbors.