"Wake up!"
"Don't shout," Sean mumbled. He was in the middle of a nice dream involving Suzie and didn't want it to end.
"The sun is almost up. You don't want to miss sunrise, do you?" Lily asked brightly.
"Yes," Sean said giving the short answer. He rolled over so that his back was to her.
"Wake up!"
"Go away," Sean said. He knew that as soon as he started arguing that the chances of getting any more sleep had dropped to zero.
"Suzie is here to see you," Lily said.
Sean's head popped up from the pillow and he asked, "She is?"
"No," Lily said with a grin. It was her job to get him up in the morning and she was quite proud at being very good at it.
"That's evil," Sean groaned. He turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling while considering running away from home so that he could sleep until after sunrise for once in his life.
"Out of bed sleepy head," Lily said. She knew that Sean found rhymes particularly irritating first thing in the morning.
"I'm awake," Sean said. He stretched thinking that there was something he was supposed to do that morning, but he couldn't remember what it was.
"Come on, get out of bed," Lily said.
"I'm in my underwear," Sean said.
Having an effect on Sean like nails were being driven into his brain, Lily shouted, "Mom! Sean's a pervert."
"Of course I am. All boys my age are perverts," Sean said. He sat up, yawned, and then said,
"One of these days I'm going to sleep until noon."
Lily said, "I'll let mom know that you're awake."
Sean watched her leave the room. He looked at his pillow thinking that his head should be resting on it. He scratched his head thinking there was something he was supposed to do that morning. Nothing came to mind and he yawned again.
Lily popped back into the room and said, "Come on. Get up. The day is almost half over."
"Yesterday is over and today hasn't even started yet," Sean said trying to focus on his sister. His eyes weren't working yet and she was just a blur.
"Get dressed. Breakfast is ready. We're having cereal," Lily said cheerfully. She seemed to think that the chance to have cereal was well worth the effort of getting out of bed.
"Oh, joy," Sean said. The blur that was his sister left the room. He got up and put on his sweatpants. He stumbled to the bathroom and found the door was closed. He sat down on the floor with his back to the wall waiting for his sister to finish inside. His eyes started to drift shut.
"Wakee, wakee!" Lily shouted.
"Why don't you go to the bathroom before waking me?" Sean asked.
"Because I don't have to go then," Lily answered as if there was no other possible answer to that question.
After a short visit to the bathroom, Sean stumbled to the kitchen. His mother placed an empty bowl in front of him. Looking almost motherly, she turned to him and grabbed his head. She examined his face very carefully. She said, "Hmm."
Puzzled, Sean asked, "What?"
"I was just checking your eyes. I heard that you had a breast stuck in one of them and I was afraid that there might have been permanent damage," his mother answered.
His father grinned and said, "You could have gone blind."
Sean wished there was some place to hide. This kind of stuff first thing in the morning was just too much to handle. He said, "I hate mornings."
"You can't hate mornings," his father said.
"They have dimples when they smile," his mother said.
"That doesn't make sense," Sean said shaking his head. He said, "Mornings are ugly things filled with horrible cheerful people."
"Did you hear him call us horrible?" his mother asked sounding offended.
"I heard. At least he tempered it with saying that we were cheerful," his father said.
"That's true. He could have really been nasty and called us horrible grumpy people," his mother said.
Smiling over at Sean, his father said, "That would have been the pot calling the kettle black."
"I hate mornings," Sean said staring into his empty cereal bowl. There was something missing.
It took him a second to realize that it was supposed to have some cereal in it. He reached for the nearest box.
His father said, "You've got a lot of hard work ahead of you today. How long will it take you to scrape the rest of the building?"
"I don't know. A couple of hours or so," Sean answered remembering what it was he was supposed to do that morning. With no one around, he would really let the scraper go at it. That would be later. For the moment, it was taking all of his mental energy to figure out how to open the cereal box.
"It will take you a lot longer than that. Last time I painted the house it took me three weekends to scrape the outside," his father said. Of course, his wife had kept distracting him whenever he was scraping near one of the windows. It was kind of hard to scrape and watch his wife do a sexy striptease. She had assumed that striping the paint off of the house was just a subtle hint that he wanted her to do a little striping as well. He hadn't bothered to correct that little misunderstanding.
"I guess I'll find out," Sean said pouring some cereal into the bowl.
"Just work at a nice steady rhythm and the job will be done before you know it," his father said.
"Okay," Sean said.
"You're going to have to sand it after that," his father said.
"Sand it?" Sean said. He figured that after scraping off all of the old paint that he'd just paint it again.
"You need to feather the edges of all the spots where the paint couldn't be scraped off or else the building will really look ugly," his father said.
"That's a lot of work," Sean said thinking about sanding the whole outside of the building.
"That's what a job is — it is a lot of work," his father said. He said, "After you sand it, you'll have to put down a coat of base paint and then give it a second coat of paint."
"Oh," Sean said staring at his cereal. He had been hoping to finish the job tomorrow. It was beginning to sound like it would take a couple of days.
"All of the real work is preparing the surface," his father said.
Sean stared at his bowl thinking that there was something missing in it. It took a minute for him to realize what it was. He said, "Pass the milk, please."
His father said, "The milk is right in front of you."
"That breast must have done more damage to his eyes than I thought," his mother commented.
His father said, "Dangerous things those breasts are."
"I remember the time when you got your mouth stuck on one of mine. You must have been stuck there for an hour before you were able to get it out of your mouth," his mother said grinning at her husband.
"It has happened more than once."
"I really hate mornings," Sean said covering his ears with his hands.
An hour after eating breakfast, Sean moved the drop cloth to catch the paint chips that were flying from the building. Once it was in place, he stood back to watch the pair of scrapers frantically moving over the wall. He had gotten a second scraper from the garage thinking that a second scraper would get the job done in half the time. Each scraper was wrapped by a single glove. They were moving a lot faster now than when he had his hand in the glove. He said,
"Well, that's the rear of the building down. One side and the front to go yet and I'll be done scraping the paint off this building."
He walked over to one of the picnic tables and took a seat. Yawning mightily, he said, "This sure is a lot of work."
A car drove past, but the area where the scrapers were hard at work wasn't visible from the road. He said, "I guess I'll have to be careful when I do the front of the building."
The drop cloth was collecting quite a pile of paint chips. Thinking about how he was going to have to empty the chips into the trashcan soon, he reached down and idly ran his hand over surface of the picnic table. He pulled his hand back when a rather large splinter went into his finger. He looked at his finger and ordered the splinter to get out. It worked its way out and dropped to the table. Sean shook his head and said, "These tables are a danger to the customers."
Sean got up and ordered the scrapers to stop. He took care of the drop cloths by folding them into thirds width-wise and then length-wise. They were almost too large and bulky to carry over to the dumpster. He struggled to get them there. Opening them, he dumped the paint chips into the dumpster. It was the hardest work he had done all morning. Frowning, he said, "There's got to be a better way to do that."
He carried the drop cloths back to the building and spread them under the area where the scrapers had not yet removed the flaking paint. There wasn't that much left on the side of the building to finish. All that remained to do was the front of the building. Sean glanced at his wristwatch and noted that it was nearly nine in the morning. He'd been there for almost two hours.
Sean was about to order the scrapers to get back to work when he heard a truck pulling into the parking lot. He went around the side of the building and saw Mr. Catchums getting out of the truck. He said, "Good morning, Mr. Catchums."
"Oh, hello Sean. I was wondering if you'd gotten here yet," Mr. Catchums replied. He went around to the back of his truck to get out the ladder.
Sean took the ladder from Mr. Catchums and said, "I was here at sunrise."
"Oh, I didn't expect you to start working without me to supervise," Mr. Catchums said surprised by Sean's claim.
"No need to supervise me. I'm just a paint scraping maniac," Sean said thinking it would be a disaster to have Mr. Catchums watching him. He might actually have to work.
"Set the ladder down and we'll see what you've done," Mr. Catchums said. He wondered just how much work Sean had actually done without someone around to make sure that he was working.
Sean looked at the ladder and said, "So this is a corporate ladder. It looks pretty easy to climb to me."
"It is a whole lot harder when there are other people already on it," Mr. Catchums said.
"Wow. This one even has warnings on it. Let's see. Do not to stand on the top step. I guess that means that you don't want to be the guy at the top of the ladder," Sean said examining the rather large patches of paper with writing on them.
"You do want to be the guy at the top of the ladder. You just don't want to stand on the top step of the ladder," Mr. Catchums said.
"Ah! I get it. Once you get to the top of the ladder you sit down and become lazy," Sean said.
"Just don't stand on the top step," Mr. Catchums said.
"Do not use on slippery surfaces. I wonder how you are supposed to change the lights over an ice rink," Sean said reading the warning labels aloud.
"I don't know," Mr. Catchum said. Sean's mother used to ask him questions like that. It was one of the reasons he went after Cindy.
Shaking his head after reading all of the warnings, Sean said, "You'd think that they'd warn us that only one person should be on it at a time."
Mr. Catchums shook his head. He'd be worried that Sean was going to be a problem except that the kid had showed up in the morning. He stepped around the side of the building and stopped.
Shocked at how much work had been done, he asked, "Did you skip the rear of the building?"
"No. Was I supposed to?" Sean asked puzzled by the question. He set the ladder down by the drop cloth.
"No. I just didn't think that you'd get that much done by now," Mr. Catchums said.
"Do you want me to slow down?" Sean asked.
Mr. Catchums said, "No. Just don't kill yourself."
"I won't kill myself. I never entertain thoughts of suicide except when my sister is waking me up in the morning. Then I just lie there in bed wishing that I was asleep or dead. Even then, it is just an abstract kind of dead rather than a real dead. I never really even gave it much thought about how I would go about getting abstractly dead. I don't think I'd enjoy waking up and finding that I was really dead," Sean said.
"Never mind. Just be careful," Mr. Catchums said.
"You know, when I become a secret agent I think I'll change my name to Jack Careful Stone.
That way, I'll be able to say that Careful is my middle name," Sean said.
"Huh?" Mr. Catchums said. He wasn't a morning person and this conversation was edging past weird and into surreal. He wished that he was back in bed with Cindy.
"My name is Stone ... Jack Stone and Careful is my middle name," Sean said sounding it out. He smiled and said, "Do you like that more than Stone ... Jack Stone — man of action?"
Mr. Catchums said, "I'm going to go back to the house. I'll be back a little before eleven to open the store."
"Excellent. I should be done by then," Sean said.
"You're sure that you'll be okay working here alone?" Mr. Catchums asked. He still found it rather incredible that Sean had done so much that morning.
"Sure. It was kind of nice working while it was still cool and nobody was around," Sean said.
Mr. Catchums went to his truck and drove away shaking his head. He muttered, "That kid is mad as a hatter, but at least he knows how to work."
Sean ordered the gloves to return to work scraping the exterior of the building. He sent one to work on the wall and the other to work on the higher areas. He stood there watching the gloves drag the scrapers across the surface of the building. He said, "It is a whole lot better working when no one else is around."
He went over to a picnic table that was on that side of the building and took a seat. Thinking about adopting a middle name for his secret agent persona, he said, "I wonder if James Bond had a middle name. I'd hate to get thrown out of the spy business because I happened to accidently break a secret agent rule. I'll have to ask my mother about that."
With his elbow on the table and his chin resting on the palm of his hand Sean watched the scrapers work their way across the remainder of the building. When that got too boring, he had them race each other across the building. That broke up the monotony for a whole five minutes. He tried to have them perform a square dance while scraping, but that didn't really work out too well.
"This is boring," Sean said after watching the scrapers work over the building for an hour. He added, "No one warned me that work was so boring."
Sean looked down at the drop cloths and noticed that there was a pile of paint chips on it. He ordered the gloves to stop while he emptied the chips on the drop cloths into the dumpster. He put the drop cloths back down on the ground and ordered the gloves to return to work scraping the building. He said, "You sit around waiting and then suddenly it is all rush rush rush."
Sean took a stroll around the building looking at the bare walls and thinking about how much work remained to be done. His father had said that he was going to have to sand the wood to feather whatever paint remained. He had no idea what that meant. It seemed to him that feathering paint involved birds and not sandpaper. He decided that he'd ask the guy at the hardware store about it.
He returned to his seat, sighed, and then said, "I wish Suzie was here."
The gloves fell to the ground. Looking over, Sean realized that the entire exterior of the building had been scraped clean of paint. He went over and started cleaning up the area around the building. There were quite a few paint chips that had missed the drop cloths. They were scattered all around the building and looked rather ugly. He said, "I wish I had a vacuum cleaner."
He looked around for something to help him pick up all of the paint chips. He looked at the gloves and gave them the order. The gloves flew around picking up paint chips. They would each pick up a paint chip and then fly over to the drop cloth. Watching them, he realized that it would take forever to clean up the area. He went over to the trashcan and noticed a paper cup in it. He ordered the paper cup to follow the gloves around and for the gloves to drop the paint chips in the gloves. That sped things up significantly.
He happened to glance down at his watch and noticed that it was nearly eleven. Mr. Catchums said that he'd be returning about then. He folded up the drop cloths and emptied them in the dumpster. He folded them and put them in a pile by the back door of the kitchen. He ordered the gloves to stop what they were doing and to rest on top of the drop cloths. He stood there and said, "I'm forgetting something."
"Oh, I forgot about the scrapers," Sean said. He went around to the front of the building and picked them up. He had just straightened up when Mr. Catchums pulled up in his truck.
Mr. Catchums climbed out of the truck staring at the front of the building. He couldn't believe that Sean had finished it already. He said, "You're done."
"Yeah, I just finished," Sean said slipping his father's scraper into his back pocket.
Mr. Catchums went close to the building and examined the area around the windows. Sean had even managed to get rid of the paint in the corners. He was impressed. He said, "You did a pretty thorough job."
"I guess I need to head over to the hardware store and get some sandpaper. I have to sand the building to bird the edges of the paint that remains," Sean said hoping that he was using all of the right words. He had no idea what he was saying, but it was pretty close to what his father had said. He realized he had gotten it wrong and said, "I mean feather the edges of the paint."
"Of course," Mr. Catchums said. He had no idea what Sean meant, but he wasn't going to let him know that. He had figured that after scraping the old paint off that Sean would just put on a coat of paint. Considering the job Sean had done so far, he figured that Sean knew more about it than him. He asked, "How much sandpaper will you need?"
Sean frowned as he considered the question. He had no idea. He answered, "I'll have to measure the building and take the numbers over to the hardware store."
"Of course," Mr. Catchums said. He opened the back door and said, "We'll get fifty out of the register and you go get what you need."
"Thanks," Sean said.
Twenty minutes later, Sean entered the hardware store. As soon as he stepped into the store, the clerk at the counter asked, "What can I do for you?"
"I need some sandpaper," Sean answered thinking this was going well. With a little clever questioning on his part, he would be able to learn all that he needed to know without looking too stupid.
"What grit?"
Having absolutely no clue what he had been asked, Sean answered, "No grits. I already had breakfast."
The clerk laughed and said, "That's a good one. I'm going to have to remember that."
Realizing that the subtle approach to curing his ignorance wasn't going to work, Sean went over to the counter and said, "I need a little help here. I've just finished scraping all of the old paint off the Dairy King down the road. My dad said that I needed to feather the paint that remained after scraping by sanding it. I've got no clue what that means."
The clerk asked, "Why didn't you ask your dad what he meant?"
"Are you kidding? He was busy teasing me about getting a breast stuck in my eye," Sean answered.
The clerk laughed and said, "That's a good one. I'm going to have to remember that."
"So what does it mean?"
The clerk looked at Sean and answered, "Whatever paint remains on the building has little edges. If you were to paint it, those edges would remain and the wall would look mottled and ugly. You don't want that."
"Right. We don't want mottled walls," Sean said nodding his head. He wondered if he should be taking notes. This was starting to sound complicated.
"When you sand the paint down, you are actually lowering the surface of the paint and getting rid of the edges so that you can't tell where the paint ends and the wood begins. That's call feathering."
"I kind of imagined that feathering involved throwing birds at it," Sean said.
The clerk laughed and said, "That's a good one. I'm going to have to remember that."
"So I get some sand paper and sand the paint until the edges disappear," Sean said.
"You'll do it first with 80 grit sandpaper. That will get rid of the hard edges and most of the paint. Then you'll use 120 grit sandpaper. That will smooth it out nicely," the clerk said.
"I take it that grit has nothing to do with breakfast," Sean said.
"Grit is the size of the abrasive on the sandpaper," the clerk said shaking his head.
"Lots of people tell me that I'm abrasive. What grit am I?"
The clerk laughed and said, "That's a good one. I'm going to have to remember that."
"Okay," Sean said. He thought about it and said, "I need 80 grit sandpaper and 120 grit sandpaper. So I have to sand it twice. Is that right?"
"That's right," the clerk said.
"How much sandpaper do I need in order to sand the outside of the Dairy King?" Sean asked.
"I assume you'll be using a sander," the clerk said walking out from behind the counter.
"No, I plan on doing it myself. I don't think Mr. Catchums would appreciate me hiring someone else to do the work," Sean said.
"No. I meant using an electric sander," the clerk said.
"He gave me fifty dollars to buy sandpaper. I'm not sure that will be enough to buy an electric sander, too."
The clerk said, "Doing it manually is going to be a lot of work."
"That's okay. I'll be a sanding maniac by the time I'm through," Sean said. He figured that he could send ten sheets to work at a time on the wall. It wouldn't take anytime at all to sand the outside of the building doing it that way.
The clerk shook his head and picked up three packs of sandpaper. Each pack held twenty-five sheets. He said, "This should get you started."
"What will get me done?" Sean asked.
"You'll have to see how far you get with that much," the clerk answered.
"Okay," Sean said wondering how he was going to deal with it when he ran out of sandpaper.
He said, "So that's it."
"Do you have a sanding block?" the clerk asked.
Sean answered, "If you were to ask my mother, I'm sure that she'd tell you that I was a blockhead, but I assume that's not what you meant."
The clerk picked up a sanding block and said, "You'll need this."
"What do I do with that?" Sean asked.
The clerk shook his head and said, "You have no idea what you're getting into."
Shrugging his shoulders, Sean asked, "Does anyone?"