The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Hey, Karen! What are you kids up to?”
“We was just waitin’ on you. How’s it going up at the Drip?”
“Lots of wheel-spin, no traction.”
“It’s been a month already. You really need to cut this out and come stay here.”
“You ready?”
“Saved by the bell. Karen’s got dinner, a U-haul, and only God knows what else hanging in the balance.”
“Michael, you can’t live in that shed like this!”
“I know, Karen. But Kitty can’t live there all alone either.”
“Bring-her-here.”
“You know I can’t do that. First, there’s a road, and Kitty don’t live by the leash. Second, she’s old, never lived a shut-in life. Third, she’d claw Pooty’s eyes out of his head as soon as look at him.”
“Pooty won’t bother her.”
“Fifth, she’s too old to learn two new places.”
“She’d be fine.”
“She has to be there, I have to be with her so she can explore.”
“She can explore here.”
“She needs to learn her home. She’s a predator, and her mind works on predator rules. Problem is she’s not the apex in them woods.”
“Are we going?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Karen, I love you. Thank you so much for worrying about me. I feel that.”
“I worry about you’s all.”
“I know, and I have to worry about Kitty, and it’s not so bad. If it was worse, I’d figure something out, but a little cold won’t kill anyone.”
“Not this again.”
“Walk this way, m’lady.”
“Come on, Clover.”
“Get her back here at a decent hour, Meathead.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Cotter, sir.”
“Clover, quit pullin’!”
“She’s nuts. You shoulda seen her when I got here.”
“Only thing she likes more than all her people in the same place at the same time, rides. Hop up, girl.”
“Did you get your warrants?”
“Yup, bangin’ doors tomorrow.”
“You’re breaching someone?”
“No. Walk in during business hours, warrant held high, step away from the register, Ma’am, that kinda thing.”
“Sounds way more fun than my day.”
“Chambers – thrill.”
“I meant tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s the fun part. How was your today?”
“Our today went one for three. The dam man killed it. Far and away the best visit. He had a whole list of advice, and he reads the dam safe with the plan as it stands. He…”
“Dam – fascinating, I’m sure. Contractor, Michael. Tell me again about the contractor.”
“The contractor was a complete bomb.”
“Michael! You can’t do it. I’m telling you, you’re not building this house.”
“Easy, detective. Maybe hear the reporting party, walk through the details of the allegations, and then trump up the conviction.”
“Sustained.”
“The guy’s a bust. The end of the rope is two point four.”
“Two point four what?”
“They want twelve-hundred dollars a foot, not mud-foot negotiable. Wants an office appointment. I declined.”
“Wait, are you saying he wants two and a half million dollars to build our two-bedroom house after we build the road, install the septic, install the solar power, and dig the hole?”
“He won’t let us dig the hole, and he says the road sucks. We never even got to the solar or the geothermal. He was so high I just played along.”
“His price ain’t high – he is high.”
“Trippin’. Look at your dog.”
“She’s so cute!”
“Like a cartoon with her head out the window’s too small for her face.”
“Got her safety squints going – I wonder what she smells.”
“Poor mutt’d be nose blind all the crap these contractors run.”
“Lucky she lives at Mammy’s.”
“Little guy told me there’s no shame in it, not having the money, but they have in-house financing if I qualify.”
“Who is this guy?”
“Some company I found on Google. The kid that came was like a project manager or something.”
“Not the owner?”
“I’m guessing they’re corporate-ish.”
“Is it gonna cost that much?”
“Absolutely not. But that’s two bombs so far. I have another one tomorrow, and I can schedule a few more, but you’re going to have to call Maddron.”
“He won’t do it.”
“I’ll keep trying, but I have a feeling.”
“Don’t sabotage though, promise?”
“I don’t have to promise, honey. It’s skin off my back every day. This guy said he could start next April and be done within eighteen months.”
“That’s like two and a half years.”
“Thirty-two months. In a shed.”
“He’s out.”
“I gathered.”
“How about the Well man?”
“No call, no show.”
“What’s wrong with this world?”
“Amen. I mean, I can’t fit a shower in that shed anyway, but coming up here every two days…”
“Three days.”
“Do I stink?”
“No, surprisingly, but you never stink.”
“At least there’s that.”
“You smell like you rolled around in an ashtray though.”
“My mouth tastes like metal I’ve been smoking that chain so much.”
“What the hell? Was that chain smoking?”
“Not my best work.”
“Look out!”
“What?”
“You just cut that guy off.”
“Oh, my little helper’s back. I missed you so much I forgot all of your secondary qualities.”
“You drive like a video game.”
“I got the Playstation hooked up today too. The batteries are holding solid, and I need the mind melt.”
“That’ll do it, but don’t GTA the mountain scenery.”
“Did you call in the order?”
“Didn’t even think about it.”
“Aw, nuts. I was hoping to walk in for a snatch and pay.”
“They have an app. Extra tomatoes?”
“That’s the stuff.”
“Anything else?”
“Not for me.”
“I don’t like that place, so I ate out of the fridge while I was waiting on you.”
“We’ll just drive around a while then, go pick that up, and I’ll take you home.”
“I don’t like that.”
“I know, Stef. You gotta call Mikey Maddron.”
“He won’t do it.”
“I’ll keep meeting guys, but even when the price is normal, they all say the same thing. They don’t want me digging the house seat.”
“Maybe they’re right.”
“They better not be, or we can’t pay for it.”
“I mean, we could afford it if we have to.”
“No, pay for it. We literally do not have the money to even pay for it if we hire for the foundation. The dig alone is a hundred-fifty thousand, and then we’ll need three benches with four retaining walls - at least four-hundred feet of those. And the spoils are required for other projects, like the road and the dam. It’s a monster job.”
“Why do we need so many retaining walls?”
“It’s a hillside, and house footers will be like twenty feet below the top of the cut.”
“I don’t get it.”
“We gotta hold the hill back. It’s one huge wall with an engineering bill and design complications way beyond my skill, or it’s terraced benches with short walls.”
“So, flower beds and gardens?”
“That’s the idea. It’ll be pretty, plus we can afford it.”
“Like how much?”
“Honey, the numbers don’t change. We’re every bit of six-hundred short right now and that’s if the house costs six-hundred.”
“How come that number’s not changing?”
“It’s changing; just today it changed about two-million worth.”
“That’s not real.”
“It’s real.”
“You always find a way.”
“How long they say on the food?”
“The app doesn’t really say. Says, preparing. Turn left here.”
“I’ve never been up this way before.”
“The old fire tower is up here.”
“Hear that, Clover, we’re going to the fire tower.”
“Ears been turned off since we moved into Karen’s.”
“I can do five or six months in the shed. Kitty’s got a rough-sketched routine.”
“Clover’s got the routine in snack-stops.”
“It’s March, and the weather’s changing. But I’m not sure there’s a way to find on the money.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“I love the confidence, but I’ve been in the numbers every minute of every day, and that’s the number until I sell something in New York, or I make a lick in the markets.”
“Well, Charlie, get to it.”
“Charlie?”
“Schwab.”
“I’d definitely get a new toilet every time if I had that kind of money.”
“Aspirations.”
“We gotta dig the hole. We’re on it. I got the top bench in today. When it’s dug, contractors will stop licking chops at the dirt money and get realistic.”
“Is that a good idea?”
“Not my best. I’m digging without a permit, and when that goes bad, it goes bad fast and lasts a long time.”
“Then why do it?”
“For one thing, I need the materials. Plus, I have a team, and I’ll need those guys pretty soon, so I gotta keep them working.”
“What if you get caught digging?”
“If I get a contractor, that won’t matter, but it forces the issue. They come, they see the money that’s actually here rather than the money in their imaginative minds.”
“How much have we borrowed so far?”
“Now, that’s a number that changes.”
“Nope. One account. LMA. How much?”
“It’s low still. I paid for some materials and the golf cart.”
“So, untapped?”
“Mostly.”
“What about the house sale money?”
“That’s a different story. So far, I paid myself back the ninety-five from the closing funds. Eighty of that went to John Deere Financial. We still owe eighty there. And I put fifteen to the checking account to start paying off the sixty truckloads of gravel and the washout boulders when that bill comes this month.”
“Yeah, that was close. You had ninety-two dollars in the checking account.”
“Don’t I know it. The kids are taking every penny of my salary and then some. The dividend earners got the other two, so there’s a few bucks when the quarterlies come in.”
“How much is that?”
“It’s two-thousand-one-hundred-and-nine dollars per quarter.”
“Wait. The whole two-hundred thousand dollars leftover from the sale of our home – the whole deposit - is going to earn us two thousand dollars every three months?”
“Before taxes.”
“Michael!”
“Did you just snap at me for dividend percentages?”
“It’s not much.”
“My love, it’s our life. Leases been a five-cap for twenty years, never more and never less. The difference is that for the long term I paid off the mortgages and let the equity grow. The leases stayed more or less the same – and cashing it out was a year and a half process. Now it’s liquid. We will get the same five percent, but rather than growing to wood, we grow to income.”
“It’s so little.”
“Friday’s the first. Duran and Fatah pay on the first if all goes right.”
“You owe the credit card sixty-three thousand dollars, Michael.”
“It’s the gravel.”
“It’s the boulders too.”
“No road, no house.”
“Road’s not so hot.”
“It’s what we can afford. If we had a crew come in, it’d be triple.”
“No, Clover. I won’t let this bad man cut into your biscuit budget.”
“Stock up while you can.”
“Are we desperate?”
“Desperate math again?”
“That’s the shape.”
“I feel it too, but what else can we do?”
“Great! Shaped like a duck, and now it quacks.”
“Look. Not every man with a car is going to drink and drive. Some men don’t drink. Some men were told not to, and will not do it. Some men see the wisdom and simply agree. And some men did it and learned their lesson.”
“Appearances, Michael.”
“Not reality. The only reality here is that we are going to borrow a lot of money, and we’re going to use every last bit of our income the whole time, and hopefully we can close the gap between living in a shed and living in a home.”
“Desperate math.”
“It’s not desperate. There’s just a lot of line items.”
“What other items are out there?”
“The LMA.”
“We just did that one.”
“I know, but is that account like finished yet?”
“It’s fully invested, yes, Duran’s and mine. Same passwords.”
“That’s a bad idea.”
“It works.”
“I’ll change those.”
“Good. I don’t have the time.”
“I got the mail last time I was up there, and I just opened it today. The survey invoice came in the mail.”
“Just in time. I almost had a couple bucks not spoke for.”
“Thirteen thousand, Michael.”
“Pay it.”
“We don’t have it.”
“I put that fifteen in the checking, and the boulders can wait.”
“You got any other checks out?”
“Should be good.”
“Michael. A thirteen-thousand dollar bounced check is a crime.”
“I haven’t bounced a check since my kiting days, and I ain’t starting now. Pay it.”
“Any other bills coming I don’t know about?”
“The culvert pipes. Ready for the dam man story yet, or are you still mad we actually have to pay for this house?”
“Turn left.”
“You know we can see this tower sort of from the Drip.”
“I know. Tommy said it would be a fifteen minute drive if we didn’t have to go around the bluff.”
“So the dam man said you have a good eye – noticing that swath of galvanized grey trees.”
“He said galvanized gray?”
“No. That’s me. What he said was that they’re called pioneer species, and they’re there because there used to be dam wall connections those hillsides, and the dam must have collapsed – and that’s why those trees are different.”
“Oh, cool.”
“He said the dam was huge, and what’s left is like a puddle of that.”
“The app just texted me. Your salad is ready.”
“Oh, bummer. I wanted to see the fire tower.”
“Next time. Let’s go get your food so you can get back and take care of the cat.”
“I don’t want to. We had one night for a date, and we spent the whole time bookkeeping.”
“We’ll come up here next time.”
“Promise?”
“Tomorrow I have the warrants, but maybe Thursday.”
“That ain’t bad. Until then, back to the drafty old shed in the woods.”