Chapter 49
— Chapter 49 —
I resign myself to borrowing money from Aubrey to pay the tax bill. That, plus what I’d saved for the roof, gets us close enough to paying the September installment. I know my tips can cover the balance as long as we’re careful. But I’m trying extra hard to cross off as many items on the list Lee Skagway left me in case the market changes and there’s any chance I could sell before January.
When I figured out how to fix the oar for my rowboat, I realized I could probably fix the crack in the bathroom door. So at work last week I asked Gus if I could borrow some bigger clamps. Instead of letting me stop by his shop to pick them up, he told me he’d bring them over and help me too.
When he does, I have a sixer of Weihenstephaners on ice for him.
Gus laughs when he sees them. “You know you can just buy Budweiser, right? It’s not forbidden at your house.”
“I was afraid your palate is too refined now,” I say, grinning.
Gus snorts. “I got to admit, I can at least tell the difference. Not saying one is better than the other, but I know what’s what.”
I feel a little awkward and I think he does too. It’s odd to see him off his barstool, out of his shop clothes. He’s wearing a Yankees t-shirt and faded board shorts. He has a big heart with wings tattooed on his freckled calf. He won’t let me open the beer for him.
“You’re not at work,” he says, using the bar key on his key chain and opening one for me too.
We go into the basement. Shray’s latest—a giant papier-maché head that appears to be Andy Warhol in David Bowie makeup—is in progress in the alcove under the stairs. Aubrey bought an odd lot of used drop cloths on eBay, and she’s been painting the clean ones with fabric dye to make curtains for the house. She also keeps adding more splatters to the already splattered ones, using Step’s old wall brushes to flick paint at them, because she says it makes her brain feel good. Her latest is hanging from the rafters, and there are fresh streaks of Day-Glo orange dripping to the floor.
“Got a whole art commune happening down here, huh?” Gus asks. He seems out of scale in the basement, so tall his head almost grazes the beams. He keeps ducking, like he’s not sure he fits.
“Working on it,” I say. “You can join if you want.”
Gus grins. “Well, let’s see that door you got.”
I thought the door was one solid piece, but Gus shows me how to take the sides apart and pull out the cracked panel.
“You didn’t even need my clamps,” Gus says. “This is a small piece.”
“Yeah. But I guess I needed you.”
He grins and reaches over to mess up my hair. “You’re a good kid.”
“I’m thirty.”
“You’ll always be a kid to me,” he says. I think maybe he knows it means more to me than it might to someone else.
After we’ve got the panel glued and clamped with Step’s old bar clamps, I show Gus my grandfather’s woodworking tools. “Oh, man,” he says, turning the smallest chisel over in his hand so he can see the inlay. “I got a guy who comes into my shop who collects stuff like this. But I bet he ain’t ever found anything so good.”
My mother’s dresser is in the garage now, so I can work on it when I want to but don’t have to look at it all the time. It’s almost finished. I checked out a library book on maritime carving and worked out my ideas on scrap wood before I committed. I’ve never had this much patience for anything else. I lose time when I carve, the day fading before I realize that I haven’t eaten, I have to pee, and the glass of water I brought downstairs with me hours ago is still completely full. Now, the dresser is an ocean scene so layered and elaborate you can’t tell I started with fake colonial furniture. There’s a narwhal spread across three of the drawers—his twisted horn looks like it’s about to break away from the wood.
Gus whistles low when he sees it, running his hand over the spindles on the side of the mirror carved to look like flowing ribbons of kelp. “You got a knack for this, kid. I never seen anything like it.”
I feel kind of shy about how much his praise means to me. “I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I say.
“Who says you gotta know everything to do something? You learn too much, it could box you in. And that would be a damn shame.”
We go through Step’s scrap wood and find some blocks to play with so Gus can try Vili’s tools. He roughs out the silhouette of a duck, and we take turns carving shadows and wings and feather marks. I draw a dogwood flower and we try to get the petals to curve in toward the center and look delicate and lifted at the edges. We spend a couple hours drinking beer, passing the blocks back and forth, listening to a country music station Gus dialed in on Step’s transistor radio. I never spent time with Gus like this, but it gets comfortable fast. We don’t talk too much. Sometimes we hum with the music. I watch what he does and he watches me. He knows more than I do about carving, but he keeps saying that what I’ve taught myself came from good instinct.
Shorty calls him on his cell phone, and he goes out to the driveway to take it but comes back quickly, holding his hand over the mouthpiece.
“Shorty went down to Fulton this morning and says he grabbed a whole bunch of steamers. You got a grill?”
I nod. Aubrey and I resurrected Step’s old Weber from the garage a few weekends ago when Jam gave us a bunch of hamburger meat that was on special at the store.
“Can he come here?” Gus says.
“Of course,” I tell him, and it doesn’t catch in my throat. It’s my house. I get to have friends over. I call Bee and she says she’ll stop at the farm stand and grab a bunch of corn, and Jam says he’s got more burgers in his freezer. Eddie brings beers, and his mom, and Tommy Tom. When Aubrey and Shray come home to our weird little party, Shray calls his dad and the Singhs come over—which means that Ravi Singh is at my house. But after half an hour or so of feeling awkward, it all normalizes, and my childhood crush fades into lovely guy who appreciates how much Aubrey and I adore his lovely kid.
I feel bad and call Hans, because I don’t think anyone invites him to anything, and he shows up with Emmeline and three bricks of ice cream from Friendly’s. I don’t call Carlos and Sam because it’s Sunday and they’re working, and I don’t want Sam to think I’ve stolen customers for my cookout. But I resolve to do this again on a Monday night when The Aster is closed so they can join us.
Everyone’s talking to everyone. Eddie is laughing really hard at something Ravi said, and Dr. Singh is shaking his head at them. Bee shows Hans the scar on her shin that she got when we tried to roller skate down the big hill by my house. Emmeline is sitting on Mrs. Davis’s lap, leaning over to point at Shorty’s tattoos with her sticky fingers. Aubrey and Gus flick paint at a drop cloth and he ends up with purple splatters in his beard.
“You got to throw forward and not at all back,” she says, and they laugh hysterically when he splashes himself with paint all over again. I suspect he’s doing it for her amusement, and also that she knows he is.
I could never understand why people liked holidays, why they didn’t feel dread seeing the red-print dates creep closer on the calendar. But I would look forward to this. I would love Christmas and New Year’s, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July if this is what holidays felt like.
Jam comes late with the burgers, right when we’re all ready for another round of food. He keeps a wide berth on Bee for a while, but eventually they end up in the same conversation with Ravi and Gus, and everyone’s fine. Around eight we get Shray to drive Tommy Tom to the 7-Eleven to buy more beer, and they come back with stuff to make s’mores too. We stay up past midnight, adding charcoal to the grill, setting marshmallows on fire and blowing them out. Eventually, everything turns to embers. Everyone goes home. And Aubrey and I fall asleep on the floor in the den watching Anne of Green Gables for the millionth time while the joyful chatter of the night echoes in my head.