trench warfare

They've been out there day and night. Bright lights run by portable generators keep the operation going in the dark hours. The backhoe burrows its way up the street, or down or around, carving a narrow path parallel to the sidewalk. The trench is no wider than the backhoe's digging bucket. A trench box sits idly by; no one is ever in the trench when I stroll nearby. From the look of it, they dig, fool around down in the dirt, add or take out pipes or cables or who-knows-what, and then cover it up with dirt and zip it up with some asphalt. It looks shitty afterward, bumpy and lumpy; unfinished.

You can hear them when you try to sleep.

They say you get used to it, in the way that people who live near train tracks do. 

What are they digging? Why? What is taking so long? What are they putting in? Or taking out? When will it stop?

UTILITY WORK AHEAD announce signs on every corner from every direction in the neighborhood of a dozen or so streets.

At first, the backhoe (always just one, on its solitary mission and journey) was accompanied by two or three vans from the local power utility with its crew of hard-hatted men smoking cigarettes, lolling, laughing, and pretending to play their roles as Official Construction Voyeurs (OCVs).

Then, on the same streets, rectangular tree-lined city blocks, east and west, north and south, hill and dale, flat and sloped, a new squad of support trucks arrived. The same trenches were dug again, in exactly the same manner, sequence, and pattern. Only now, the vans and hard hats were ostensibly with the phone company, if that's what they still call purveyors and providers of phone service, be it cellular, land line, or any other kind of phone service, such as it is.

In a span of fourteen days (I started counting by making daily notes on my wall calendar, opposite the window looking down onto the street they always start and end with), day and night, night and day, the trenches are dug, inserted or lifted or subtracted or added, bright lights illuminating, generators gurgling, chewing up and chugging the recently excavated miniature dirt-filled canals.

Fiber optics?

Then the water company came in. How did I know it was the water company? The blue vans displayed the logo of the water company, as did the hard hats, the jackets, and the vehicular warning signs.

I wanted to talk to the OCVs or a foreman (no women ever join the crew, not yet).

'What's going on?" I shouted.

They looked at me blankly amidst the din, as if my vernacular is foreign and unintelligible, as if they couldn't read my lips.

During the next fourteen-day cycle, the yellow backhoe was accompanied by white panel trucks with no identifying name or signage or license plates. The six-man crew wore white work pants, white vests, white hard hats, white boots, and white gloves. Three of the six wore white balaclavas.

During the most recent fourteen-day cycle, the yellow backhoe was accompanied by black panel trucks with no license plates and no identifying name or signage. The six-man crew wore black work pants, black vests, black hard hats, black boots, black gloves, and black balaclavas.

Then the streets went dark, no power on any street light or in any house. 

No car driving by shone its lights.

The only light shone from the pole-mounted surveillance cameras on the two corners, their iridescent blue eyes blinking silently.

And the UTILITY WORK AHEAD signs are gone.