Because of Ellison (3 page)

For the next hour or so, I looked around the cabin of the
plane while idly tapping my fingers on my legs. The lack of technology was
getting to me and I was like an addict missing his next fix. I tried to
formulate ways to get a message to my friends back home that I was in need of
liberation. I considered smoke signals, carrier pigeons and even Morse code.
Unfortunately, modern convenience had all but extinguished the need for archaic
modes of communication and my friends would be none the wiser as to what I
needed even if I was able to get the message out. I was screwed and I knew it.
And I was extremely unhappy about my parents’ decision to force me into exile.
What was I going to do in the middle of nowhere for three long months? This
wasn’t punishment; this was torture. There were parties I was missing and
alcohol that would fall down the throats of some other lucky bastard while I
was holed up in the middle of the woods fixing shit. I didn’t deserve this.

The plane finally landed in the middle of nowhere and the
pilot emerged from the cockpit a few minutes later with a large smile plastered
across his genial face. “We’ve arrived, Mr. McCormick. A business associate of
your father’s is waiting on the runway to escort you to your next destination.”

I looked up into the brown eyes of the pilot. His tanned
face bore the fine lines of an aged man, yet the silvered hair at his temples
gave him a distinguished look. Standing up on cramped legs, I reached into the
stowaway compartments to extract my bags. I fished out my sunglasses and threw
them on my face before stepping out the door and descending the stairs. I found
the pilot shaking hands with another man I didn’t recognize who was dressed
much like my father in a top of the line pinstriped suit. The man turned to
smile at me before waving me over to where they stood.

“Hunter!” The unidentified man strode purposefully towards
me holding his hand out in greeting. Grasping my hand firmly, the man
introduced himself. “My name is Robert Klimpt. I’m a business associate of your
father’s. He called and asked me to authorize clearance for his plane to land
on our private runway. I’ll be escorting you to the front of the neighborhood
to where your uncle is waiting. It’s good to meet you. You look very much like
your father.”

Pulling my hand back to my body, I nodded my head, mumbled
an unintelligible response and soon, we were making our way to the golf cart
waiting nearby. Another 10 minutes passed as Mr. Klimpt babbled on about his
business dealings with my father. We reached a large iron gate at the front of
the community and between the thick iron bars, I could see a red truck that
looked like it hadn’t been washed since it was built, which would have been
roughly 1972. The red paint had faded and was broken up from rust spots, dents
and dings that littered the metal surface. Beside the truck, stood a man who I
assumed was my Uncle Bill together with a petite blonde girl. Both were dressed
in plain white shirts and cutoff jean shorts and, whereas Uncle Bill was
wearing flip-flops, the girl next to him wore no shoes at all. Her hair was
styled into a short bob and it bounced around above her shoulders as she
animatedly spoke. The man smiled down at her every so often between taking
puffs on the cigarette he was smoking, but his eyes locked on me as soon as I
approached the gate.

“Well, damn, Hunter! Look at you! I’ve seen the pictures
your mom has sent me, but I didn’t think you were as big as you are! How tall
are ya? Six foot five?” My uncle’s voice was rough from years of smoking and
his skin resembled a worn and wrinkled shirt. He was about as wide as I was
tall and a veritable wall of muscle. After letting out a howling cackle that
could wake the dead, he motioned to the little blonde beside him. “You remember
your cousin, Lily, right? We’re both really excited to have you stayin’ with us
this summer.”

I slowly stepped out of the golf cart after the gates slid
open and grabbed my bags before heading over to where they were standing. Once
I’d exited the cart, Mr. Klimpt promptly said goodbye and hightailed it as fast
in the opposite direction as the battery-powered engine of that cart could go.
Turning back to my Uncle, I huffed out in resignation and threw my bags over my
shoulder with one hand while reaching out to shake my uncle’s hand with the
other.

“Uh, yeah, I remember Lily. Hey.” I waved down at the small
girl and her smile beamed up at me, bright as sunshine.

“Hunter!” She bounced in my direction and took me into the biggest
hug she could manage. “I really am glad to see ya. I told my best friend all
about ya and she’s excited as all hell to meet ya.”

Damn, that girl talked fast …

“Watch the language, baby girl.” Bill looked down in Lily’s
direction with a fake glare that was quickly replaced with a smile.

Lily shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s get a move on. I’m
losing precious time in the sunlight standing around here.” She turned suddenly
and bounced her way over to the truck. Bill chuckled and clapped me on the
shoulder as he said, “We’d better get going, son. You keep those girls out of
the sun for too long and their heads start turning in circles on their
shoulders. It’s scary shit.”

I nodded silently and followed
behind him. It was going to be one hell of a summer, but there was nothing I
could do but suck it up and get through it.

~
    
~
    
~

The trip to my Uncle’s place was cramped as we tried to fit
ourselves into the cab of the truck. Lily babbled on about all the things they
did in Florida, while I smiled and did my best not to look at the never-ending
sea of green that passed the windows as we drove. Most of the activities
mentioned by Lily included a lot of being out during the day and sleeping at
night. I cringed at the thought, concerned that the circadian rhythm I’d worked
hard to establish over the past few years of my life might get thrown off. As
it was now, it was 3:00 in the afternoon and I should have still been sleeping
in my bed with another two hours to spare.

Pulling up to the house, my eyes once again bugged out from
my head as Bill parked the truck in a wooded lot. The property was somewhat
hidden from the road by the tree line and there was only one other house to the
left of Bill’s. I looked over the metal roofs of both houses and then focused my
attention on the aluminum siding on the shack,
er
,
house I would be occupying. The little remnants of paint that remained on the
siding looked awkward against the gray aluminum that was mostly exposed. The
house was raised up from the ground and wooden lattice lined the bottom. A
questionable staircase led up to the front door, and by the time the truck was
in park, Lily had jumped out and was bounding her way up those stairs, quickly
disappearing into the interior of the building.

I climbed out of the truck and my shoe landed firmly in a
mud puddle. “Shit!” While I pulled my sodden shoe out of the brownish liquid,
my uncle chuckled.

“Yeah, you got to watch out for those. It rains every day in
Florida, son, and the lack of concrete makes walking around the property a
bitch at times. You’ll get used to it though.” Chuckling again, he clapped me
on the shoulder as he led me towards the house. “I know the place don’t look
like much. That’s why I was real pleased to hear that you’d be coming down this
summer to help me fix it up. In fact, I got the materials ready that you’ll
need to scrape and prep the siding before we paint it. I figure, if you get
started now, you should have a lot of it done by suppertime at seven.”

We were making our way up the rickety staircase just as Lily
came bounding through the door, nearly taking me out in her path. “I’m off,
Daddy! El and I will be in our normal spot if ya need me.”

Lily disappeared in the direction of the other house as I
was led inside. I wasn’t impressed with the mismatched furniture and the
scraped up wooden floors of the place. Bill made a point to quickly show me the
bathroom and my room, giving me just enough time to set my stuff down before
whisking me back in the direction of the living room. Leading me out a back
door, Bill stepped out onto an open porch that was littered with machine parts
and a deadly mix of different chemicals, separated out in bottles. If this
place ever caught on fire, we were screwed.

Bill started pulling out different scrub brushes and spray
bottles of clear liquid and handed them to me. “Sorry for the mess, son, but I
don’t have time to deal with this shit and keep my auto shop going. I’d have
Lily do it, but while the girl is good at reading and looking pretty, she
doesn’t have a clue when it comes to tools of manual labor. Having you come
down really is a blessing in disguise. It’ll be good to have some more
testosterone around the place. Now, I
gotta
go back to work, but all you’ll need to do is spray that paint thinner on the
paint that’s left and give it a minute before scraping it off. Should have no
problem with it considering how old it is. After you’re done with that … ” Bill
reached over and picked up a one-gallon paint canister and a paintbrush. “ …
You’re going to be applying a layer of primer. You’re a smart boy, you should
have no problem figuring it out.”

I took the canister and brush from Bill’s hands and Bill
turned to immediately exit the porch. Making my way back through the house, I
decided to tackle the front elevation first. Stepping out onto the rickety
staircase, I heard a loud slap of metal against metal and jumped back thinking
the whole damn house was about to come down. Turning my head, I looked to the
house on the right and saw Lily and another girl in their bathing suits as they
were propping a ladder up against the side of the roof. Lily giggled at
something her friend had to say and then turned to look at me in a failed
attempt to be discreet. I noticed anyway.

Shaking it off, I jumped down the stairs and went to work
scraping paint. The creak of the ladder caught my attention again and I watched
as both girls climbed up onto the roof, stepping around carefully in their
flip flops
while retrieving padded mats that were secured to
the roof by rope. Laying their towels down on the mats, they eventually plopped
themselves down to soak up the sun. I took a second admiring the body of Lily’s
friend, but they were at such a distance, I couldn’t really make out much more
than the fact that she was thin, had some nice curves, and wore a small yellow
bikini.

Over two hours into my chore, I had the last specks of paint
stripped from the siding and was beginning the task of slapping on primer
;
a task that would be carried out with a delicate hand and
attention to detail because I was a perfectionist. It’s important to know this
fact in order to understand what was about to happen. At times, my love of
perfection could be a good thing. I aced tests and excelled at any video game I
played; but on the flip side, and where my perfectionism was a bad thing; I
could get crotchety when I was focused on my task and something came along to
fuck it up.

After applying a coat of primer to the first quarter of the
front wall, I sat admiring the fact that the paint job was flawless. Brush
strokes were minimal and the application of the paint had been even over the
entire surface of the siding. No drips had occurred and I was preparing to move
on to the second quarter.

Yes. It’s primer. But like anything of value, a solid and
well executed foundation is essential to the overall quality of the job —
much like what I keep hearing about love — if you don’t have something of
quality to base a relationship upon, eventually it will crumble down. It’s a
weak analogy, but one that might help the romantic
understand
how I view things.

Just as I was standing up to move my tools to an area to
start ‘Primer — Phase Two,’ a truck pulled up in the dirt lot in front of
the neighbor’s house. The engine was loud, the tires were huge and I briefly wondered
if a stepladder was required to step down from the beast of a truck that may or
may not have been street legal. Turning my attention back to the primer, I
noticed out of the corner of my eye as two large men climbed out and made their
way to the front door of the house. Dressed in head to toe camouflage, both men
looked as if they’d just come off a hunting trip. Opening the front door, one
man disappeared into the interior just before a litany of curse words sounded
from the house.

Two dogs, one that was black and looked to be a mix between
a greyhound and a terrier, and a white one that was smaller than the first,
came bounding out of the house.

“Sasha! Bear! You get your flea-ridden
asses
back here!” The man who hadn’t yet stepped into the house yelled after the
mutts and I turned my full attention to find that those ‘flea-ridden’ creatures
were making their way towards me at top speed.

By the time they reached me, they were covered in mud from
running through the multitude of puddles that were speckled across the dirt
lots. My hands were filled with brushes and scrapers and I stepped back in a
failed attempt to dodge the airborne
furballs
as they
lunged in my direction. When their muddy bodies struck mine I was forced
backwards into the wall of primer perfection I’d just accomplished. My anger
was immediate and those dogs were going down.

Dropping a brush from my hand, I picked up the heavy
canister of primer, and with a feral scream I swung out at the dogs and stepped
forward in an attempt to force them away from the house.

The dogs were able to dodge the swinging paint can, opting
at that time to run in circles around me, happily barking as if we were playing
their favorite game. Using the momentum of the can, I swung around in circles
with them, noticing how they continued to kick up mud, dirt and leaves onto the
wall of the house. The entire section I’d just completed was destroyed and it
would take another day just to scrape the siding clean again. By that point, I
was no longer speaking a recognizable language. My anger at the dogs had
reduced me to a basic and primal form of communication consisting of random
grunts, growls and the occasional snort. My adrenaline was on overdrive as I
rotated with the rabid beasts and while I was swinging around for the second
time, I saw a streak of yellow just before I was tackled to the ground.