3. Barn … Dance?
Barn … Dance?
Penny climbed down the ladder again and backed up, taking in the entire pattern and the rest of the barn.
"Now it looks right." The white design on the red barn pleased the eye.
A soft sense of protection also swaddled the barn, encouraging calmness in and around the large structure.
"Glad it's not registered," she declared to the air, then went back up the ladder one last time to bring down the paint, brushes, and rags.
She'd stowed the ladder and paint in her trailer by the time Mr. Koestler came to check on the work. The farm's rich-brown owner stopped, stared, and blinked several times before declaring, "Daz is gut." He nodded and almost smiled, which she'd been assured was high praise from a local farmer.
She finished cleaning her brushes and poured the solvent into the can, then triple sealed the lid and stowed the can in the trailer.
Her old boss had used some really interesting Italian when his son-in-law hadn't bothered to clean up the equipment one day.
She'd gotten to help salvage the brushes and sprayer tips, if they could be saved.
Penny checked the job off her list, then drank some iced tea and stretched, loosening her shoulders.
Finishing jobs always made her tense. It wasn't done until it was completely done, and a lot of stuff could happen in that last stretch.
"Ninety-five percent done with ninety percent to go," her aunt had always said.
She made certain that the trailer chain wouldn't drag, locked the door on the little blue and white trailer, and set out to the next job.
"Clean and outline, then the rest tomorrow, weather permitting.
" It should, since the job was on a wall on a show shed, not twenty feet in the air on a barn, but Pennsylvania springs didn't always cooperate.
Sideways rain didn't play well with her paints.
The shed's owner came out to meet her. "Oh, good. You can explain," Mrs. Johnson said as she opened the gate. Penny pulled through and parked well away from the house, farmyard, and orchard access.
A frowning older dark yellow man met her and Mrs. Johnson at the back of the trailer. "You're foreign," he stated, then folded his arms and glared from under bushy eyebrows.
"I'm not from River or Devon Counties, no sir. My family immigrated to the US just after World War One."
Mrs. Johnson sagged a little, the rose-colored aura around her dimmer than when they'd met to talk about the designs and colors. "Mr. Hoffer has traditional colors on his buildings."
Penny waited. Indeed, Mr. Hoffer stared at her, then declared, "Local's better, even for an Englisher. Hex signs don't belong here, ja?"
"Yes, sir, which is why I'm not doing hex signs." The patterns were Polish, not German or Swiss. She opened her notebook and held up one of the designs. "These have no power or hex to them."
"Local's better," he replied.
A voice from the other side of the farmyard called, "Hans, Peter's got the tools sharpened, come see." The man brushed past her without saying anything more. His color felt spiky, unable to blend with any other shade. Penny thickened her shields out of habit.
"I'm sorry, Miss Favarro," Mrs. Johnson said, watching the man's back as he stalked off. "He demanded to know who was doing the work, and got upset when I told him. His cousin's renter had trouble with the state for putting new patterns on the building without checking."
Penny shrugged. "Thank you, ma'am. I'll get started, if you don't have any changes you want or need?"
"What? Oh, no, please go ahead. I'll be in the house if you need anything." The lady almost ran to the white two-story farmhouse.
Penny shrugged once more and went back to the trailer to get her cleaning supplies and drawing equipment.
Maybe the lady was a Sensitive, or at least, more sensitive than she knew.
Being around Mr. Hoffer would make her unhappy if she hadn't learned how to shield.
He reminded her a little of that guy who later washed ashore on the Jersey coast, the one who seriously pissed off her previous boss once too often and got thrown off the job site.
Mr. Salvatore didn't have any patience for people who ran their mouths without producing.
First she scrubbed the dirt off the wood and base paint.
It wasn't as bad as farther west, but every little bit became a larger problem later.
Then she wiped it dry and used a sticky cloth to get any last motes.
That done, she sketched out the desired pattern using a string compass and yard stick.
This would be a flower basket between two starbursts, all in primary colors.
She'd based the design off of some from Poland, near Krakow, designs that had no magic at all associated with them.
Mrs. Johnson had also asked for a fruit and vine pattern around the customer door, to draw attention to the entrance.
Penny got everything outlined but the doorway by the time the light faded too much to work.
One job finished, one well started, that was sufficient for the day.
She tucked her supplies back into the trailer.
Mr. Hoffer had left already, departing in a whine of tires.
The colors of the farmyard had brightened a few minutes later. Some people were just like that.
She drove with great care back to the little in-law house she had rented.
She didn't need much space, just a safe place to park her car and trailer, and to rest. "Too bad Don didn't need painters this season," she told the trailer, then stretched left and right before making absolutely sure that everything remained where it should be.
The special racks and straps held cans, brushes, trays, the rag can, and other tools secure.
That was, if she remembered to latch everything.
Nothing had spilled, dropped, or otherwise made a mess, so she closed the door, locked it, and backed the trailer against the house wall as best she could.
Mr. Salvatore had insisted, and docked people twenty dollars if they forgot.
She'd only forgotten once, and she'd had an excuse.
He gave her a bonus later that week, so it had evened out.
Ooh, she missed the evening sea breeze! Mosquitoes had hummed happy choruses around her as she worked.
Sweat dripped, not evaporated. Penny hurried into the little house and closed the door.
A quick shower made things better. She heated some of the stew-to-go she'd gotten at a farm café.
That and the heavy German bread she'd traded for grounded her from the day's work.
The kitchen grew dimmer as the sun set. The art history podcast should have dropped today, so she could listen, then sleep.
The next day dawned dry. That was good. She hadn't brought towels to rub dew off the wall before starting to paint.
Penny drove to the Johnson's farm. The sign on the gate had the official address, then "Hirschorn-Koehler-Schmidt Farm" under the street and numbers.
She still could not quite get used to calling farms by the name of a family that had sold out or died out over a hundred years before.
Well, her father used a long-gone gas station as a landmark, but that was different.
Everyone knew where that had been. That and the pier that had washed away in the big hurricane in seventy-seven.
Giving instructions using buildings and names that had gone away a century ago?
Very confusing. She parked, unlocked the trailer, and found what she needed to finish sketching the pattern on the doorway.
"Now for the walls," she announced to the air forty-five minutes later.
What color to start with? As she dusted the wall once more, she extended a little magic.
The white wanted ... blue. She'd begin with the blue on the starbursts, then the paler blue-green for the basket of flowers.
Red followed, then ... Green? Maybe green.
First came the brilliant blue, the blue of lapis lazuli.
Penny got the can out of the trailer, along with brushes and the hand can.
Having the big can open outdoors invited trouble.
Elementals loved to get into her paint, even if it wasn't water based.
Why? The little things never answered, just giggled and made an even bigger mess.
They could be worse than chickens. Oh, she remembered that job.
Mr. Salvatore had almost had a stroke when he'd seen what the chickens did overnight to the cement and other parts of the job.
She'd stayed far away from the guys for the rest of the morning, working on other parts of the project.
By noon, she'd finished a star and a half.
The cool blue rested easily on the white wall.
Working in shade was nice, even if the shed partly blocked the breeze.
She'd added bug spray this morning, since she wasn't working above the mosquito line.
Her stomach grumbled. Good time for a snack, and to drink more water.
"Ooh, it looks lovely already!" Mrs. Johnson peeked around the corner, then emerged from behind the long sales shed. "The blue is perfect." Her rose color had brightened since the day before, no longer muted and hiding.
"Good. I'm glad you like it." Mrs. Johnson had approved the colors already, but things sometimes looked different on a wall.
A man called, "Hannah, a hand I'm needin'," and Mrs. Johnson hurried off.
That would be Peter, her husband. Penny drank another bottle of water, chased it with sports drink, and some of the energy-nuts-crunch mix she'd grabbed for the trip.
The guys ate real food for lunch. All real food did was sit like a lump of scrap metal in her stomach.
Morning and night were for meals. Midday was water and a snack, just enough to keep her hands from shaking.
It wasn't like she was working magic or doing heavy stuff.