The Bricklayer's Lunch Hour

Two bricklayers are setting the walls of a cellar in a new dug out patch of dirt behind an old house of wood with brown gables grown over with ivy on a shady street in Denver. It is noon and one of them wanders off. The young subordinate bricklayer sits idly for a few minutes after eating a sandwich and throwing away the paper bag. He has on dungarees and is bare above the waist; he has yellow hair and wears a smudged but still bright red cap on his head. He sits idly on top of the wall on a ladder that is leaned up between his spread thighs, his head bent down, gazing uninterestedly at the paper bag on the grass. He draws his hand across his breast, and then slowly rubs his knuckles across the side of his chin, and rocks to and fro on the wall. A small cat walks to him along the top of the wall. He picks it up, takes off his cap, and puts it over the kitten’s body for a moment. Meanwhile it is darkening as if to rain and the wind on top of the trees in the street comes through almost harshly.