The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Hey.”
“Love.”
“That good, ha?”
“Pretty good.”
“Let’s hear it. Are you in the car at ten-thirty at night?”
“Smoking window. Yeah, I drove Cody home.”
“Not the body, the boy, right?”
“Yeah, the man himself. We were watching the dam plug.”
“You did the dam? I knew there was a reason I didn’t hear from you all day.”
“Want the good stuff first and the bad stuff last like it came to me, or do you want a custom order?”
“Bring it natural.”
“Well, we did the dam. Me the whole time loading up the account to see if the funds landed.”
“Me too.”
“Something weird about those wires. Always the same thing. I get the ALTA Settlement. I sign it. I know the number, but it doesn’t feel like money until it’s in the account.”
“My first time.”
“Yeah?”
“When I sold my Sevierville house, I got a check from the closing company.”
“Neat. So, the money landed just about the time I realized my controlled demolition on the dam was actually working.”
“And Cody, what’s that?”
“Cody was useful today. It started rough, but the dam emptied of water and filled up with information all at the same time. He used to swim there. There are Bullheads, and the dude can think. I put geothermal in him in like five turns, and he nailed it.”
“Did he ever work HVAC?”
“Nope, I told you the boy’s smart. He came up with this idea to use the excavator blade as like a sluice gate and pipe stabilizer, and he added in a skid steer bucket dump insurance policy. We didn’t need any of that, but the sluice gate probably helped a lot.”
“So the pond’s empty?”
“No. We weren’t emptying it. We were setting in the spillway pipe.”
“I know. I meant, lowered to the pipe now?”
“Mostly. The dangerous part is history. I’ll rest easy tonight.”
“What’s the bad part?”
“I drove him home, and my headlights went across the front, and he stole some of our lumber to put up trim around the front door of his house.”
“What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
“I meant what did you say to him, idiot.”
“Oh, I didn’t say anything. I knew it. I clocked the whole damned thing in a turning headlight beam, and I said, seeya in the morning.”
“You let him steal?”
“No, officer. I didn’t let him steal.”
“How do you know it’s our wood?”
“There you go. You got there without me. Cedar don’t have serial numbers, Stef.”
“Is it our wood?”
“Not anymore. When we were doing the window casement, he cut it too thin, so it went in the scrap pile. I was actually going to use it for a couple of shelves above the TV in the shed when Amazon delivers that tomorrow, but it wasn’t in the scrap pile anymore. I figured it got used somewhere.”
“So he stole scrap.”
“If he stole it. That’s not the freight though, if he did.”
“Yeah, how did he get in there and get the wood out if he stole it?”
“That’s the stuff. I could care less about the shelves. When you drive by his trailer, you’ll see it there on the front door frame. There was probably some rot or something. I gave him that caulk – I threw it out, and he took it out and said don’t thow this out, and he took it home with him. Probably for the same project.”
“There’s a baby in the house. If there was a gap or something, and he just stole it to fill the gap.”
“And there’s my girl. Maybe not a warning, but someone finally got some headroom from the tax police.”
“It’s still an invasion. And how did he do it without the cameras? That’s my next quest.”
“Fair enough. How was the first night home?”
“It was awesome! I forgot how much I love it here. The whole family just living the life I been missing. Jenny just came home from the game. She and Sydney went to watch FD, and Karen bought me new sheets for my old bed, same bed I slept half my childhood on, same bed Tommy had as a boy. We had dinner. I unpacked my bathroom stuff. I filled my closet.”
“No Bryan Adams poster rediscovered rolled up in the corner of the closet?”
“Nick Lachey, 98-Degrees. That man’s still gorgeous.”
“Little Clover got any posters up yet?”
“She’s got a Pillsbury Grands Biscuits poster. Mammy gave her one at dinner.”
“She don’t call her Karen?”
“Nope biscuits equal Mammy.”