NIGHT WATCH

- Want a smoke?

- Sure. Bet on one. - Łukasz eagerly reached for the cigarette his friend handed him.

They were both silent for a long moment, trying to light it with a match, the flame dancing uncertainly in the strong wind. Robert was the first to grunt triumphantly and inhale deeply. When the tobacco in his cigarette burned steadily, he allowed Łukasz to light it from his.

Robert and Łukasz stood facing each other, exhaling alternate puffs of smoke. They did this steadily, like a machine. The heavy gray clouds seemed to freeze briefly in the air, then rushed towards each other, like two drunk drivers playing a game of chicken. Only when the puffs merged into one did a strong wind disperse them. At one of the puffs, they burst into laughter and began to smoke, each in their own rhythm. Łukasz took long, deep drags while Robert inhaled quickly and greedily.

"Are you sure you won't mind staying here overnight?" Robert asked, glancing around the construction site, nervously searching for his son playing somewhere among the foundations of the slowly rising house.

"I've got a few beers, and you've got the TV in the trailer. We'll figure it out," Łukasz replied.

"I really wouldn't ask you to if I didn't have to."

"You better go to the hospital, don't screw up. You'll have another kid soon."

Robert didn't answer. Instead, he began to look around nervously. After a moment, he shouted loudly,

"Marcin! Marcin, come here right now! I'm sorry. What were you talking about?"

"Never mind. You need to take a break from that boy; any longer and he'll finish you off." "

I'm losing my nerve. You'll see how yours gives birth someday.

" "Mine?

" "A wife, a woman. Whatever," Robert explained, still looking around for his son.

"Well, I can't wait for that feeling," Łukasz replied in a sad tone.

Robert wanted to comfort his friend, but decided against it. Only a month had passed since Justyna dumped him. They'd been together for a few years, until she finally declared she didn't love him anymore. Łukasz claims she said it as if she were asking him to change the channel on the TV. Right after this indifferent statement, the doorbell rang. When Łukasz opened the door, he saw a younger man in a black leather jacket and slicked-back black hair so heavily coated with gel that the comb marks were visible. The newcomer was chewing gum, his lips constantly moving under his crooked nose.

"I'm going to Justyna," he declared loudly, smacking the gum in his mouth, simultaneously spreading a faint strawberry scent around him.

Łukasz didn't even have time to respond when Justyna hovered over the stranger and kissed him deeply. The newcomer and Łukasz's recent girlfriend flirted in the doorway for a few minutes until they finally remembered their host.

"Janek," the newcomer introduced himself, extending his hand to the host. He had been chewing gum the entire time. He didn't bother to spit it out during the kiss.

Łukasz, disoriented, shook his hand and mumbled something. Less than an hour later, Justyna left with a gelled-up Janek and a large bag of luggage. Łukasz watched everything as if through a fog. He couldn't believe it.

"Bye, man!" Janek exclaimed, smacking his gum from somewhere in the hallway. "You better not wait for Justyna. She won't be back." Now he was joined by the loud chuckle of Mrs. I Don't Love You Anymore Justyna.

Łukasz sat on the couch, stunned, and stared at the turned-off television. He finally came to his senses enough to go to the kitchen and retrieve the vodka he'd been holding. He drank it straight from the bottle, as if he were holding half a liter of mineral water. He only realized what had happened the next day, when, right after waking up, he was hanging on the toilet bowl, emptying the contents of his stomach. "

I didn't want to mention it, and..." Robert finally broke the silence. "

He's sitting over there, by the cement mixer," Łukasz interrupted, staring at a chubby boy, no more than four years old, furiously digging in a pile of sand with a plastic shovel.

Robert smiled sheepishly and waved at his son, who raised the red shovel in greeting and then went back to playing. "

You're probably right, I should give up on this. Enough time has passed, but I still can't forget."

"I'm definitely right," Robert corrected. "You should go have some fun." Find a woman and go to bed with her. That'll cheer you up. "

I tried, but nothing came of it. I think..." He suddenly stopped. He didn't want to admit that ever since Justyna dumped him, he'd been afraid of women. A pretty girl sitting next to him on the bus was enough to give him goosebumps and tremors. They were like fire to him, and he didn't want to get burned. "So what am I supposed to be guarding?" he changed the subject. "Concrete or maybe that priceless clay?"

Robert didn't want to push it. He accepted Łukasz's terms.

"No," he replied matter-of-factly, as if he hadn't heard the irony in his friend's question. "You can guard the concrete mixer and the Styrofoam, though.

" "Concrete mixer?" Łukasz asked, staring at the heavy device standing on a small hill, which Robert's toddler was carefully beating with a red spatula. "Nobody would have taken that scrap metal out of here anyway."

"And that's where you're wrong. Yesterday, some people tried to take it away." When I ran out of the trailer, they found that the foreman had ordered it to be moved to another construction site.

"And?

" "And I chased them away. The bastards couldn't release the wheel lock, and now I have to put a block under it to keep this giant from rolling down the hill. I have to fix this somehow.

" "Aren't you afraid it'll roll onto the kid? It's on a hill and looks pretty heavy...

" "Marcin won't be able to get the block I put under the wheel. Besides, it won't hurt him because it's my concrete mixer!"

His interlocutor laughed loudly. To which Robert responded rather impulsively:

"What? You'd talk like that too if you paid a thousand for it!"

Łukasz, however, wasn't bothered by his words at all. Staring at a point behind Robert, he continued laughing loudly. Finally, Robert turned and followed his friend's gaze, who was glued to the concrete mixer's drum, or rather, its mouth, from which blue corduroy shorts and a pair of sneakers protruded wildly in all directions. The cement mixer rocked precariously as the trapped boy tried to escape.

"Marcin!" Robert shouted. He threw what was left of his cigarette to the ground and rushed to help his son trapped in the red drum.

Instead of following suit, Łukasz grabbed his knees and tore his sides with laughter as he watched his friend struggle with his legs emerging from the mixer. Eventually, however, he won over the machine and pulled his son out with such force that they both landed on a pile of sand. The mixer swayed precariously. For a moment, there was complete silence. The machine continued to dance a moment longer on top of a small hill before finally returning to its original position. The red colossus almost fell directly on Robert and his son.

The first sound Robert heard after the mixer stopped rocking was Łukasz's loud laughter:

"Because it's my private concrete mixer!" "I can't!" Łukasz laughed from a distance, watching the fat dad and his chubby son simultaneously brush the sand off their faces.

"Shut up!" Robert replied furiously, searching for his glasses, which had fallen off his nose in the fall. "She could have killed us!"

The boy, furious, ran to the cement mixer and kicked it with all his might. It didn't even flinch, while Marcin grabbed his leg, howled in pain, and then jumped back, hitting his dad, who was just putting on his found glasses. This time, they fell straight into a large puddle that had formed during the overnight rain right next to the pile of sand.

"Because it's my private cement mixer!" Łukasz repeated once more, now practically rolling on the ground with laughter.

"Fucking clay," Robert groaned, ignoring his son.

He tried to get up, but repeatedly slipped on the wet surface and landed back in the puddle. When he finally managed to get back on his feet, he was covered in brown mud. He adjusted his glasses and pulled his son out of the muddy clay chute.

"Mommy won't be happy," he wagged his finger at him, which the little one responded with a burst of tears and Łukasz with an even louder, almost absurd, burst of laughter.

"Because it's my..." he began, but couldn't finish as he collapsed into giggles again.

Robert looked first at Łukasz, then at his crying son, then at his dirty clothes, and to his own surprise, joined his friend's laughter.

"My own private cement mixer," he finished the thought and approached Łukasz. "Jesus, I'm covered in dirt. They probably won't let me into the hospital like this?"

"Come on, you look like a classy pig," Łukasz replied, tapping him on the shoulder. He quickly regretted the gesture when his hand became completely covered in mud from his friend's shirt.

"Wait, I'll get you a towel and some water," Robert suggested, seeing Łukasz clumsily trying to wipe his hand on something. "I'll give you some too, Marcin! Come and wash up!"

The boy obediently ran over, and the three of them went to the camper.

"Okay, we'll go," Robert said, stubbing out his cigarette. He put on a new shirt and pants and hung his dirty clothes by the construction site. "Be careful. At night, when it rains, all this clay turns into one big slide.

" "It's a shame I didn't bring my skates; it looks like today will be perfect weather for some skating," Łukasz replied, glancing at a black cloud completely obscuring the sky above the forest surrounding the construction site from the north. "

You have a flashlight in the camper." Walk around the construction site a few times at night, or at least open the door and check if I have any uninvited guests.

"Seriously, could anyone come here?"

"If anything, it'd be better to come in a large car. It'll be quiet.

" "And uncle, watch out for the Scary Guy!"

Łukasz turned toward Marcin. The boy was already standing in clean clothes. He was wearing a tight, red blouse with an advertisement for some now-defunct company, making him look exactly like a piece of ham that had broken off the string at the local butcher shop. In his right hand he clutched a candy bar, probably a Mars bar, which his father had given him to wipe away his tears.

"Excuse me?" Łukasz asked, surprised. "

Watch out for the Scary Guy," the boy repeated, lowering his voice as he pronounced the last words. Then he ran back toward the cement mixer with a shovel to get his new clothes dirty.

"Scary Guy?"

"Some woman in the shop told the kid that our house was on some old cemetery or something," Marcin explained, adjusting his shirt to cover the mud stain on his neck. "You know how it is in a small village. Someone moves in and there's a big fuss.

" "Is that true?

" "I don't know," he continued. "Possibly. But even if so, it was already very old. The only thing I found was a sort of barrow." He pointed to the outhouse. "Right there." "

You made a toilet on some pagan grave?" Łukasz asked, surprised. "And now why are you shitting on the heads of Mieszko I's warriors?"

"Don't get so upset. Give me a break. It was just some ordinary hill, that's all. And anyway, what's it bothering you?"

"Probably a hill," Łukasz repeated, hissing back the beer can. "I'll be a little uncomfortable, really, pissing on corpses."

"I've been here for months and haven't seen a single dead body. Only Marek has this Scary People thing in his head and now he's talking to me about him nonstop. It's all just village legends to scare children. Nothing more.

" Łukasz nodded and took a sip of beer.

"Okay, I'll be off," Robert announced, staring at his friend drinking beer. "If he attacks, watch out for the cop. It's getting incredibly slippery. Marcin, come here immediately!"

The boy reluctantly stopped playing and ran to the car, wiggling his chubby butt. Łukasz thought that if he added a little tail, he'd be indistinguishable from a pig. And that's when the boy spoke to him:

"Be careful, Scary People," the boy said to Łukasz, pointing his chubby hand at the outhouse, and then hopped into the car. "

I'll be there tomorrow morning. I'll call you when he's born.

" "Sure," Łukasz replied mechanically, watching the car drive away.