The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Love.”
“Love.”
“Did Cody show?”
“He showed.”
“What’s that like?”
“Decide for yourself. What time is Amy calling?”
“She said ten-thirty.”
“I got here just in time. So, I sneak out of here, and I feel the electric car quiet. The only jarring sound is the garage door rattling into place above my head. It’s dark as country I think, and I drive the country way, one highway between me and the backwoods, and my headlights are all I see. When I see the first car pass me by, it’s almost like they’re invading my space. And I drive all the way up and park next to the shed. No phone ping at the equipment yard, that’s what we’re calling it now. But it rang coming by the solar panels and when I park at the shed.”
“Mine too.”
“So, I’m walking along the pond on my way down, and the headlights go off, and I was wrong; it’s noon daylight here compared to the Drip. Dark. I’m like a hundred feet from the truck and the shed, and my phone is in the truck, and I know it’s that way, but I can’t see it or anything else, and that owl calls out. And this animal is talking right to me, mine-mine, mine, mine. We’ll share, my mind answers. I’m walking to the truck, and I can imagine where it is, but I’m sure I’ll bump into it before I ever see it. And I’m almost leaning into the walk, almost hands in front of me, and a stick breaks up on the hill off to my left. And I’m back in that tent in Albany, homeless again, and it’s not just a sensation. I’m transmogrified. I’m laying in the tent, and the forest is alive all around me. The whole place is one organism, and I’m walking through the cells of it. My shoe breaks a grain of sand, and I hear it. Absolute echolocation, and I feel the truck in the air, and I reach for it, and rather than stub a finger, I’m petting across the dry curve of the hood, and I feel the moisture in the air the entire calculus of the moment falls upon me. The truck is dry. The air is wet. Aerodynamics dried the car. And I’m back in the moment, and I know where the shed stairs are. And I sit down, and I try to get it back, but the moment has passed. I’m at The Drip, and I’m on the stairs, and I need my phone from the car to see my way down to the equipment yard to log in to the Ring app and fix that camera.”
“Did you take acid this morning?”
“So, I sit and I close my eyes, and I listen, and I can’t get it back, but I’m like reassured that the moment is running in the background, one level down, and it’s at one with this place. There are bears on those up close hills, and I’ve seen a thousand Bobcat prints and Coyotes and Raccoons and every manner of critter over the last month up there, and I know one of them, some of them are watching me. And I look to the sky, and I can see. The tree tops are all around me, but there’s a tunnel to the sky, our sky, honey. We’re blind to the world up in that holler, surrounded on all sides by hillsides and trees and the quarter mile of winding gravel road below the pond is an alarm system no company could ever give us. The sound comes up, trapped by the hills, and I hear everything before it even gets close.”
“Only you could make eerie sound dreamy to me.”
“It is dreamy. Looking to the sky, you can feel this history, and as the blue starts to come in you feel the time pass, and you just know all at once that every man and thing that ever sat in this place throughout all time, they felt it too. And I walked down in the early breaking dawn. I can see the trees now. I can see the ground. And everything changes at the edge of the dam when my feet move from forest floor to gravel road. It’s all gone. All I hear are my footsteps and my breathing. I know it’s all running there in the background, one level down, and I know it knows my conscious state too. The accompaniment that I felt back there is still with me, but it’s just doing its thing, recording the gravel, transcribing my breath, putting it all down on the register for next time. And my list floods in. Camera, trailers, tools, contracts, excavations, previous, what if, and next. And this damned bleb.”
“It’s nothing to mess with. If that thing pops while you’re up there in the deep woods like a fool all alone. Can’t you at least let the guys get there first rather than slinking out of the house in the dead of night…”
“It was dark, not the dead of night. And I was in the middle of my morning story.”
“Don’t deflect me, Michael. You’re the one that mentioned it.”
“One more beat on it, Stef. We gotta get out of Hardin Valley, and I have to build this house. I’m sitting on my ass the whole time, promise. I’m not lifting anything. I’m not hammering anything. The hardest thing I do is walk up and down that hill a hundred times a day.”
“Six times.”
“Camera, got it. You count too. I promise I’ll go back to the doctor when we get the house done. So, I fix the camera…”
“I saw that. You look a little creepy messing with that thing, half dark behind you. Hand covering up the screen, and image back, but now moved. Your determined face.”
“I knew someone was watching me. So, it takes a few minutes, but I get the camera working, and then I hear Cody’s Chevylegs walking up the driveway, and I duck fast behind that Poplar. You know the big one right as you head up the hill.”
“The one he hit with the excavator?”
“Yep, that’s the one. I’m behind it, and I can hear him now next to the equipment yard, and I say flat, Hey, and he just about jumped right out of his own ghost.”
“That’s mean.”
“Because I’m in charge here, that’s why.”
“Yeah, people love that.”
“So he came back. And he’s right on cue for the arrival race. Picked up where we left off, he wants a ten second countdown, and I’m straight in with the scalpel. You’re a thief, this is the life of a thief, I see you’re a thief, and I give you a chance to be something else. And as always, we agree to disagree, and we get back to work. He called me lonely. Says I’m paying for friends.”
“I can see that.”
“Is that real?”
“It’s not wrong.”
“I don’t wanna be that.”
“It’s not all of it, but it’s some real. Look at our dinner parties, Fifi, Bill, Deno. All people you met by paying them something.”
“Deno is my ex girlfriend’s uncle. Sure, we’ve done work together, but I knew him ten years before we did the first business together.”
“I didn’t know Deno then.”
“James and I were poor together. High school was almost forty years ago, and never a lost year between us. Gervie is my friend fifty years.”
“And you broke into his house as a boy.”
“And he stole my fish tank. Life’s complicated.”
“There’s Amy. Answer it.”
“I just emailed the offer draft.”
“No hello?”
“Nope, right in. See how it jars the moment?”
“Ouch.”
“Michael, stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop saying ouch every time someone scores a point. Hi, Amz. Look out, this guy is on the parable pipe today for sure.”
“So what will it be, eighty measures of wheat, or flip the tables?”
“Wheat? --- did you get my email.”
“It’s right here, Amz. Don’t listen to this guy. I’ve got it loading.”
“Has he been like this all day?”
“All his life, girlfriend. It never stops.”
“And now who’s buying friends?”
“You’re right about that. He was in the room as his realtor, Judy, and I pounded out the details, and I hear him in the background, tell her this, tell her that, and finally he just skipped right past her and talked to me directly. Asked if we could just let you and him figure it out.”
“That’s not the worst idea.”
“It’s a terrible idea.”
“No. Let the principals get together and pound out the details and then let the bookkeepers pound out the paper.”
“Book….. Listen, if you want to talk to the man, do it AMA.”
“AMA? Now you’re a doctor? Believe me, I can handle selling a house without – you know what, yeah. Let’s get a conference call going. Save a little time. Tanner will be here in a few minutes, and I need to cut to the chase.”
“It’s your funeral.”
“Not today it’s not.”
“I’ll call Judy. Hang on.”
“Michael, be nice.”
“I am being nice.”
“You’re being rude.”
“I’m being overbearing, maybe, but she just told me that the horse is right there…”
“Who cares if the horse is there or not? You haven’t even read the contract yet.”
“I don’t need to.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Are we all here?”
“Yes, Amy. I’m here, and so is Stef.”
“Michael, this is Emam. I thought we could just cut to the chase and get the details down fast. I have appointments today.”
“That was a good idea. We should have thought of this and planned lunch today or something.”
“Man, that would have been great.”
“We’ll get to it. You’ll need a sherpa for quite a while with your new house. There’s a lot of stuff.”
“I have that feeling too.”
“So, we gotta get the basics down. You chose a price, and it’s fine. The downpayment is super low though, and I really need to see an amortization table before I can pick an interest rate. Head math says middle six.”
“Six point five is too high. That’s just over eight thousand a month interest on the front side.”
“Eight-one. That would be on one point five, so you already factored in the higher deposit.”
“Yes. I was low there. I’m sorry, man. I have a lot of work to do there. The Master on the Main is one thing, but I want new floors, and I’ll take off the whole deck and extend it another six hundred feet. I need to add two rooms downstairs, one for my gym and the other to enclose the porch under the deck. I was preserving capital. It’s a big job, and I can’t go more than twenty percent down and I gotta keep the interest below five percent.”
“Four point nine nine it is, then. I know you gotta pay your agent, but twenty percent is low. I gotta pay Amy too.”
“Wait, seller pays all realtor fees. It’s on the second page.”
“I didn’t read that, and good I didn’t. I wouldn’t have taken you seriously. I don’t go to the tailor and pay his wool vendor a transaction fee.”
“It’s standard.”
“It’s not. You hired her. You pay her. I hired Amy. I’ll pay her.”
“Hang on.”
“I hit the mute key. He’s asking the realtor what’s the play, guaranteed.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, I do.”
“Don’t screw this up, Michael.”
“It’s a big point. I don’t pay the guy that cleans the parking lot at Walmart so I can go in the store. That’s Walmart’s responsibility.”
“Hey, man. I’m back.”
“Hey.”
“So, we’re going to raise the offer price to one, nine, seventy-five so you can pay Judy’s fee too.”
“Oh-kay. Sure, that works fine.”
“That’s all we need for a signed offer, right? I picked the Title company today, so…”
“Yes, that’s all I need. Stef, do you have any questions?”
“Do we still have thirty days to pack and move?”
“Yes. None of that changed.”
“Awesome! We have a deal Emam! One point nine seven five, four hundred down and four point nine nine meets.”
“Perfect, man.”
“Did Amy give you my number? Call me any time you want.”
“I’ll give it to Judy.”
“It’s 423-435-2241.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Okay, Amy email that as soon as Judy sends it, and Stef will sign it, and we’re on.”
“All good?”
“All good.”
“One thing’s sure, I’m getting the office in the new house. You got holler mud all over the bedroom floor.”
“Six bedrooms, and she chooses the actual bedroom for her office.”
“I already have it picked out. Did you see that little nook room in the front corner off the kitchen?”
“Decided.”
“Is that Tanner pulling in? Why does he have a trailer?”
“I bought it over the phone. He picked it up.”
“But why?”
“I need a place to store my tools if I’m going to live in that shed.”
“And why today?”
“If we’re moving out, I don’t have to do any more construction here, and I can get my shit to the Drip and work in earnest.”
“You bought a trailer for the move because the work was finished here, but you didn’t even have a signed offer yet?”
“Have we met?”
“Hey, Tanner.”
“Hey, Stef.”
“Tanner let’s back that thing up to the basement first. All of my duplicate tools and half the crap we need are in there. Then it’s the workshop and the garden shed. Get all the ladders, the shovels, the rake, and the pick axe. And be careful of those garage doors stacked in there. Don’t walk on the crate. There’s glass in there. Fill the trailer to busting. If you see it, and we might need it, throw it in.”
“No problem.”
“My Love, this is going to be a long day, but I got Cody in the excavator and Rusty dropping dirt across the waterway, and Tanner and me are getting the tools now. I’ll be a little late, but we can celebrate later.”
“That’s premature.”
“Worry not. Sign the offer when it comes, and get this calendar started.”
“You have to sign it too.”
“Nah, they just want written confirmation. Offer’s nothing more than a formality. We’ll both have to be there at closing, but you got the pen for this.”
“I’ll call you if they want both.”
“If they want both, sign my name right-handed with a Crayola. They’ll never question it.”
“You’re not well.”
“Ears of god.”