[Stylist] novel excerpt

[Chris Kuell]

Greetings,

There hasn't been much life on this list lately, so I thought I'd post a
chapter from the novel I mentioned yesterday when responding to David's
post. All comments and suggestions are welcomed.




Roofers

By Chris Kuell


	My sister Ingrid gave me an alarm clock last year for Christmas. It
speaks the time, and it has two alarm functions, one for weekends and one
for weekdays. The best feature is that it can communicate with a military
satellite orbiting the earth, so the time is always correct. It even changes
itself for daylight savings time.
	Truth is, I don’t need it. The alarm part, at least. I’ve heard
there are dogs out there that let their owners sleep in mornings. But, I
don’t have one. Weekdays Amos waits until six a.m. to plop his big head on
my pillow and wake me up. He’s a very smart dog, and on weekends he usually
waits until six-thirty before letting me know it’s time to go. Saturday,
after inhaling a lungful of canine halitosis, I pressed a button and the
clock announced that it was six-fourteen a.m. “You’re a little early this
morning, aren’t you?”
	Amos answered me by pushing his snout closer to mine and snorting. I
rubbed his head and neck for a minute, climbed out of bed and into some
clothes. Early September mornings in Maine can be chilly, but as we stepped
outside, a warm breeze and the chattering of birds greeted us. I put the
leash on Amos and we meandered a few blocks to the south. 
	As puppies, guide dogs are trained that, when they're in harness,
they're working and it's serious business. All the normal dog instincts,
chasing cars and cats, barking at other dogs, eating a scrap that fell out
of somebody’s trash, are shut off. In harness, the dog and handler operate
as a team, and the dog knows his role.
	For our morning walks, I put Amos on a leash and let him be his own
dog self. We travel routes we’ve done a thousand times, and he sniffs this
and whizzes on that. I always carry a plastic bag to clean up after he takes
a dump, and this is how we start our days. 
	Back home a half-hour later, it sounded as if total havoc was
underway in the downstairs apartment. This was where the Bonds family was
currently squatting. They had seemed like nice enough folks when I first
rented to them a year and a half ago. George had a good job at an auto parts
store, and Violet stayed home with their three kids. They paid their rent,
were fairly considerate when it came to parking, and except for a few
all-night baby wailing sessions, we got along just fine. Until last spring,
that is, when George claimed he hurt his back at work and sued for
disability. Of course the auto parts store doesn’t want to pay, and George
doesn’t want to work. The end result, though, is that they only came up with
half the rent in May, and haven’t given me a dime since.    
One kid was crying, the others were yelling, and at seven in the morning,
the television was already blaring. I made a fist, banged the door twice,
and yelled, “Knock it off.” Everything but the TV went silent. My lawyer has
warned me several times not to confront George or Violet, so Amos and I went
upstairs and had some breakfast.
	An hour later, my friend Gary showed up with his extension ladder,
some sheet metal and a package of roofing shingles. Gary is a home inspector
when the weather is good. He cuts firewood and sells it through most of the
winter, when home sales are slow. 
	Before I lost my sight, I used to play third base in a men’s
softball league for an enthusiastic, but mediocre team called the Black Sox.
Our first baseman moved away and we were in a pinch. At our next practice, a
six-foot-two beanpole with a red goatee showed up with a bottle of Jack
Daniels. Several of the guys didn’t want to let him play. But, lacking any
other prospects, the team decided to give him a try. Gary downed the
remainder of his pint, then proceeded to hit three home runs and didn’t let
a ball get by him at first. 
	At the first game, Gary showed up with a six-pack of beer. In the
seventh inning, with one out, the other team had a runner on second and
their clean-up hitter at bat. The guy clocked a pitch, drove it hard down
the first base line, and the runner on second took off. Gary jumped easily
two feet straight up, stretched as far as he could and snagged what could
have been a two-run homer. Before Gary was back on earth he spun and whipped
the ball to me at third. I tagged the runner. Inning over. It was beautiful,
and we’ve been best friends ever since.
	Amos had the run of the yard while Gary and I hauled supplies up the
ladder to the roof. Since my friend was providing time and equipment, I got
to carry up the bundle of shingles. 
	“Before we get started,” Gary said, “My professional opinion is that
this roof needs replacing. Patching will buy you time, but band-aids always
fall off after a while.”
	“Thank you for your expert advice, but the plumber’s bill last week
set me back three hundred and fifty bucks. I’ll have to start selling my
organs if I need any more home repairs.” I pulled my telescoping cane from
my back pocket and extended it. I swept it around in large arcs to feel the
roof’s edges and corners to get oriented. “So, I have to opt for the
band-aids.”   
	We decided Gary would patch the flashing in one valley and replace
shingles in a section where I’d lost some. My job was to repair the flashing
around the chimney.
“So how’s business these days?” Gary asked.
After losing my sight, my job, my fiancée, and my self-worth ten years ago,
I had picked myself back up and trained as a massage therapist. I found a
job working with a chiropractor, but since the great recession hit a few
years ago, and massage isn’t covered by insurance, things have been tight.
Too tight. And with the parasites downstairs bleeding me dry, I had no idea
what to do.   
 “Slower than molasses on a January morning. Hopefully it will snow soon.
Shoveling always brings in a few hurt backs.” I decided to change the topic.
“How’s Lynne and the kids?” I asked as I tossed shingle scraps onto a tarp
we’d laid in the yard.
	“Lynne’s good. Her mom’s going to have a knee replacement next week,
so she’s all in a panic over that. Tiffany’s doing great. She played in a
piano recital a few weeks ago and the kid really rose to the occasion.”
	“That’s great, good for her.” I had to raise my voice over Gary’s
hammering. “And how about Nate?” 
	Gary finished a shingle and put his hammer down. “He’s my son, and
you know I love him to death. But, sometimes, the boy just ain’t right.”

	I squeezed a glob of roofing cement onto the new nails in the
flashing and smeared it around with my finger to make sure I got everything.
“What do you mean?”
	“When I was a kid,” Gary said, “I collected baseball cards. Also, me
and my buddies had marble collections, and we’d trade them or play for
keeps. So, guess what my son collects?”
	“Not baseball cards and marbles, I’d guess.”
	“Dead bugs. He had a conniption fit when Lynne found them under his
bed and threw them away.”
	“Bugs, like moths and butterflies?”
	“Anything. Dead worms he found on a sidewalk, dead flies he found on
the windowsill. Wasps, bees, roaches, spiders. Kid had a shoe box nearly
full of dead bugs.”
	“Maybe he’ll be one of those, whatcha call its, insectologists one
day.”
	“Entomologist,” Gary corrected. “That is, if he lives that long. The
kid heard on some television show that Americans don’t get enough fiber, so
he decided to start eating paper, since it’s made out of wood and is nearly
one hundred percent fiber.”
	“Oh, what’s the big deal?” I said. “You must have eaten paper when
you were a kid. Everybody has.”
	“Not everybody,” Gary said. “Some of us had enough brains to know
eating paper was stupid.”   
	“Okay, how about dog food? You ever eat a dog biscuit?”
	“Not voluntarily,” he said. “My older brother Mark, the crazy one,
made me when I was like four.”
	“You didn’t like it?”
	“It wasn’t as bad as I imagined, I have to admit. But I still
wouldn’t ever have done it except under severe mental and physical duress.” 
	I nailed two rows of shingles around the new flashing and heard
Hillary, the oldest kid  from downstairs, playing with Amos. It wasn’t long
before the other two joined her. The morning sun warmed our backs as we
worked. Gary told me a story about a drunken woman in Wells who offered him
drinks and tried to put the moves on him while he inspected her house.
“What’d you do?” I asked.
	“I accepted a glass of Wild Turkey and ginger ale, but didn’t take
her up on her offer of a more intimate inspection.”
	We finished around eleven-thirty and yelled down to the kids to stay
out of the way as we tossed a few remaining scraps. Gary positioned himself
to go down the ladder first. “Houston, we have a problem.”
	“What?” I said, finding the top of the ladder with my cane.
	“Unauthorized toddler, looks to be two or three, about half-way up
the ladder.”
	“What? Who’s on the ladder? Ivan, is that you? Get down right now.”
	“It’s not Ivan,” Hillary called up to me. “It’s Oscar.”
	“Well, tell him to get down. Ladders can be very dangerous.”
	Hillary pleaded with the boy, but apparently he only moved one more
step up. “He doesn’t know how to come down,” Hillary said.
	Jesus, this is all I need. A toddler falls and breaks his neck, on
my ladder in my yard. “Hillary, can you climb up and help him down?”
	“He’s too high. I’m scared of ladders,” she said.
	“Shit,” I muttered. “Oscar, down. Go down.” I used my dog command
voice and hoped the little varmint would obey.
	“He’s smiling, and he just moved up another step,” Gary said. “If we
just gave it a shake, he’d fall, but probably be okay.”
   	“Too risky,” I said. “I’m going to have to get him.”
	“Let me,” Gary said. “Working eyeballs might come in handy for this
particular rescue mission.”
	“What’s your game plan?” I asked, holding the ladder as he started
his descent.
	“Reach down between my legs and grab him by the collar. If it’s a
quality shirt, he’ll live.”
	The ladder rattled against the gutter as Gary went down. “Okay,
little Oscar,” Gary said in his caring, daddy voice. “I’m going to reach
down and pull you up, and you aren’t going to wiggle at all. Right?”
	“No,” the kid said.
	The next thing I heard was the kid crying, the ladder clanging, Gary
cursing, and a sound like a dropped bag of mulch striking the ground.
	“Everybody okay?” I asked in a panic. “Gary? Oscar?”
	After a groan, Gary said, “Fabulous.”
	I swung my leg over and scrambled down the ladder as quick as I
could. Hillary was comforting a bawling Oscar. Amos ran around, barking at
all the excitement. “What happened?” 
	Gary groaned. “I got above him, reached through my legs and pulled
him up. No problem. I cuddled him close to my chest, and the little bastard
turned and took a bite out of my arm. I jerked away and fell the last few
steps.”
	“Is the kid hurt? Hillary?” But she had carried her brother inside
the house.
	“He’s fine,” Gary said. “He had me for a cushion.”
	“You okay?”
	“I probably need a tetanus shot, and I won’t be able to walk
tomorrow, but I’ll live.”
	Maybe it was his well-maintained, baseline alcohol level, but Gary
didn’t react to pain in the same way most people do.  One time we were
hiking Tumbledown Mountain, and he slipped on some moss covered rocks. He
fell about fifteen feet and cut one leg pretty bad. Since I couldn’t see the
injury, I relied on his judgment. Gary poured some gin on the cut to flush
it out, then tied a spare tee shirt around the wound. We completed our
climb.
	It wasn’t until we were off the mountain that Gary said, “I think we
better run over to the hospital. I might need a few stitches.” He ended up
getting five stitches in his leg, as well as a lecture from the attending
physician, who had smelled liquor on his breath.    
	Gary put away the ladder while I gathered roofing debris for the
trash. As I started folding the tarp, I heard the grunting and huffing of a
wildebeest coming at me from the front yard.
	“What the hell did you do to my baby?” Violet Bonds raged. The words
were spit-covered and lispy.
	“Saved him from breaking his neck. You’re welcome.”
	“What kind of idiot sets up a ladder where children are playing?”
	“This is my house, my yard, and my roof. I can do what I like, and
you need to keep your rugrats the hell away.” I wasn’t quite yelling, but my
voice had raised a decibel, and Gary stepped closer.
	Violet responded by cranking up her own volume. “You’re dangerous.
You can’t even see how dangerous you are. If you want to fall off the roof
and kill yourself, go right ahead. But, when you hurt my child, you’ve
crossed the line.”
	“Here’s an idea,” I said. “Do us both a favor. Pay me, pack your
stuff and move.” 
    	“You’re a bitter, hateful man. If you ever come near my kids again,
I’ll, I’ll--” Violet searched the clay in her skull for a cliché.
	“Slit your belly open and make sausage from your entrails?” Gary
offered.
	Violet growled, and I could hear the spittle spewing between her
Cro-Magnon teeth.   She kicked at something in the grass and stormed away.
	“Nice suggestion,” I said.
	“Glad I could help,” Gary said. 
	I fed Gary a meatball grinder and three beers for lunch, and he
helped me go through some mail. Half-a-dozen bills I couldn’t pay, and a
notice from the cable company that my service would be turned off in ten
days if I didn’t make immediate restitution.
	I heard the front door open and someone went into the apartment
downstairs. A few minutes later, heavy footsteps came up my stairs. I heard
Gary move to the window. “Look out,” he said. “It’s the fuzz. There’s a
cruiser in the driveway.”	
	“I’m Officer Chaunessy,” a deep woman’s voice said when I answered
the door. I introduced myself and we shook hands. “Want to tell me what
happened?” 
	She was tall, with man hands and a tone that conveyed she had better
things to do. I told her about working on the roof, Oscar’s climbing
aptitude and Gary’s selfless rescue of the boy. 
	“Do you really think it’s wise,” the officer asked, “for a guy with
your disability to be climbing around on a roof? Do you think it’s wise to
leave ladders and tools around where there are children playing, and you
can’t observe them?” 
	I stood there, my hand cramped from squeezing the doorknob so hard.
“Is being unwise illegal?”
	“It’s called reckless endangerment and can lead to tragedy. My job
is to serve and protect.” She put special annunciation on the word protect,
like a constipated nun teaching remedial English.
	“Then go downstairs and protect the kid who needs it, ’cause I
don’t.” 
	The cop changed tactics.  “Where is this friend of yours?” 
	A four-second beer belch resounded from behind me. “Hi, I’m Gary.”
	“Is it true that you were working on the roof with Mr. Wonder and
played a role in getting the baby off the ladder?”
	“Truth?” Gary said. “You can’t handle the truth.”
	This must have unnerved the cop. Silence hung in the air for several
seconds before she regained her composure.
	“Have you been drinking?” she asked.
	“Have you been drinking?” Gary asked back.
	I needed to step in before things got ugly. “Listen, this is my
house. The people downstairs are squatting illegally, and I’m in the process
of evicting them. Gary and I were up on the roof, which I have every right
to do, and their unattended kid climbed up our ladder. Gary got him down,
and the kid wasn’t hurt. He was upset, just like I told you. Hillary, the
kid’s sister, witnessed the whole thing. There is no need for your
involvement.”
	It took me another ten minutes to persuade the cop that we hadn’t
been drinking until after we finished on the roof, and I managed to get Gary
to shut up and show the cop the teeth marks on his arm.
	“I hate cops,” Gary said, almost after the door was closed. He
grabbed us each a beer. We watched a special about hurricanes on the Weather
Channel and exchanged theories about how bugs get into enclosed light
fixtures, and how that might be an untapped resource for  his son Nate to
rebuild his collection.