Bud Smith - F 250

Trish would yell out to Feral, “I’m reading about aphrodisiacs. Did you know that an Italian sub can be a turn on? Especially for a fat ass like me?”

“No, I didn’t know that, babe,” Feral said. “What’s your point?” He passed me another shovel full of cement.

“My point is, if you go and get me a sandwich from the deli, I’ll be, like, mad turned on, and maybe I’ll take you in the tiki hut and rock your world.”

Feral looked at his wrist, but he wasn’t wearing a watch. He hadn’t had a watch on in many years. “It’s not lunchtime, yet.”

“I could go for a sandwich, too,” June said.

“Not me,” K Neon chimed in. But that was no surprise. She had never been hungry, not once in her entire life.

I was distracted but tried to get some work done. I’d taken down a section of white PVC stockade fence. It was easier that way; I could back the F-250 right up to the edge of the pool and drive across the lush lawn.

I finished stacking concrete blocks about two feet away from the bullnose paver edge of the pool, setting the blocks on a base of concrete “mud” with re-bar running up the middle to strengthen the whole thing. Feral was helping by filling up the space between the blocks with cement. It wasn’t quick work, but it was enjoyable work. That’s all you can hope for in life sometimes.

We were just emerging from our devastation. We were making efforts to return back to the land of the living. The birds chirped about sex and food and war, so we focused in on that.

I even felt bad for K and June, who seemed to be waiting around for me to come back to life. They just kept kissing me and bringing me more beers, more wine. They took turns listening to my heart.

“It sounds like you’re alive, but your eyes look so dead.”

“It’s a magic trick,” I said. “I’m operating this body remotely.”

“From where?”

“A secret chamber where the air is hyper-charged and vivid.”

“Rad.”

“Come outside. Let’s lay in the grass, darling.”

The sun felt good. I was in it. Needed it. It was treating me well.

When I built waterfalls into swimming pools, I liked to have people there with me. It made the job feel less like work. A party: that’s what I wanted. I liked them there, swimming in the pool, drinking, listening to the stereo. It felt good. Back then, I used to bid kegs of beer into the price of the job.

As per usual, I’d done the same at this mansion. It was one of those cookie cutter houses: big, boxy, and looming but lacking character. Beige vinyl siding. The streets lacked character. Not one chimney pushing back at the sky. No winter wood smoke in the air. A development of identical houses, not homes — crackerjack mansions occupied by investment bankers and low-level attorneys.

I hopped up in the bed of the pickup truck and shoveled yellow dirt against the back of the concrete wall. Feral jumped up and helped too. Little by little, we got all of the dirt out and relieved the springs. The body raised. That was over two and a half tons of dirt.

“That’s that,” Feral said, hopping down. He went and filled two red solo cups up in the tiki hut. When he came out, they were foaming over. We sat drinking with the girls for a while, letting the cement set.

“What’s next?” K asked as she came to the edge of the pool and looked up at me.

“Well, the world is your oyster, K Neon. Really … whatever you want.”

She laughed. “I know that,” she said. “I mean with the job.”

“Stone,” I muttered, grinning.

I kicked off my sneakers and lowered myself into the swimming pool.

“Now the work gets enjoyable,” I said.

Feral began to pass me flagstone from outside.

“No, man,” I said, “I need a boulder.”

“Oh, you gotta be kidding me.”

“No joke,” I said.

Feral went over to the pile of moss rock next to the tiki hut. He made me proud. He hefted a boulder, weighing at least 100 pounds, while grunting and turning red. He set it down on the ledge. I filled the gap with wet concrete mud, my fingertips already burning from the limestone.

Feral brought over two more boulders and set them down on the edge of the pool between the concrete block wall and the water. Feral must have felt bad for me. He was working too hard for it to be anything else. He felt bad for me. He passed me more flagstone. More scoops of cement from the wheelbarrow. He felt bad for me.

I doggie paddled into the cool, inviting water. The girls drank on the deck. It went like that for a while, with me just bobbing in the water, building the waterfall from inside the pool, and Feral helping as much as he could. A little while later, June Doom and K Neon drove my pickup truck across the grass and went to the deli down the street.

Trish sat forward in her chair, put her tabloid magazine down, and said, “I called Denise a few times. She doesn’t answer her phone.”

“She’s probably the most heartbroken out of anybody,” I said.

“She really liked Seth,” Trish said. “I was talking to her a lot. We were getting pretty close pretty quick. I thought she needed a friend. She’d call me at night, and we’d talk for hours.”

“That girl especially,” Feral said. “She liked the way coke smells just a little too much.”

Trish didn’t say anything.

“Look who’s talking,” I thought.

Feral said the concrete was done in the barrel. I hopped out of the pool. That was it till after lunch.

“I think she might be in rehab,” Trish said. “Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.”

I lay down on the grass, starting to feel fuzzy drunk. I looked up at the blue sky. The clouds were all there, suspended, not moving a single millimeter. Time was frozen. We were all trapped in amber. Or purgatory. Or worse.

I almost dozed off. When I opened my eyes, the girls were coming back in the pickup. They had two large, brown paper bags loaded with sandwiches and chips. Italian special: cappicola, ham, salami, and provolone with extra vinegar, a little oil, salt, pepper, and oregano.

June sat down next to me on the lawn.

“You alright?” she asked, looking at me.

“Not at all,” I said.

She gently ran her hand through my hair.

“The sun is making it light — looks like you have highlights. Oh, what’s this?”

She pulled back a loose section of the lawn next to us and revealed a small burrow with tiny rabbits.

Everyone came over. June picked one up and held it.

“It’s so small!”

“You shouldn’t have touched it,” K remarked. “Now its mother will abandon it.”

June put the rabbit back in the burrow and patted the grass down.

“I don’t know if I believe that,” June said.

None of us knew the truth.

We ate slow and silently on the concrete apron. I sucked down beer as quick as I could. Being drunk was the only way I could deal with any of it back then.

I went back in the pool. Feral continued to work with me.

I said, “I think I’m ready for a wheelbarrow full of pebbles.” I liked to put them in the concrete so that the face of the waterfall showed a lot of stone rather than concrete.

He took the barrel around to the pile, filled it, and came back. He was walking all wobbly. Just as I said, “Hey man, be careful,” the barrel tipped out of his hands, and the entire contents went into the swimming pool.

Thousands and thousands of little river stone pebbles sunk down and came to rest point at the bottom on the fake coral pattern.

My jaw dropped.

“Alright, well, you can guess what’s next,” I said.

We all started diving down into the pool, almost making a little game of it. Who could carry up the most pebbles — handful after handful were tossed back into the wheelbarrow. All of us diving down for pebbles and coming up for air reminded me of playing with Seth when I was a kid.