by Dave Jackson
She was out the door and heading down the steps when he called after her. “Not tomorrow, though. Tomorrow’s a holiday, and if you’re working for me, you have to take it off because I don’t want to pay double time.” He laughed awkwardly. “See ya, Nikki.”
She forced herself to turn back toward him briefly. “I won’t. Thanks for the help.”
“Should’ve offered you some coffee or something.”
“No, that’s okay.” She turned and headed home, her face burning.
What in the world had she done? Made a total fool of herself, that’s what.
Chapter 29
“Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain . . .”
The words in his mind woke Greg. He knew they came from the Bible and their truth was thundering down on him. Without God’s blessing, his business was failing!
Nicole was already up and busy elsewhere in the house as Greg swung his legs onto the floor and sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on knees, chin in his hands. “Come on, God, don’t make a fool of me here,” he moaned. “Pastor Hanson said all I needed was to put my faith into action. Well, I’ve been ‘acting,’ but I’m beginning to feel like Noah trying to build an ark in the desert. Where’s the rain? Where’s the blessing?”
He sighed. Today was supposed to be a holiday—Monday following the Fourth of July—but should he take the time off? It would express confidence in his business, maybe even faith in God. But he felt desperate.
He stood up, stuffing his fears. He would take a break! Besides, what could he do that would make a difference? And his “honey-do list” of projects around the house was getting longer, not that Nicole was adding much to it lately. In fact, she’d been cutting him some slack in that department while he launched SlowBurn. He should thank her. Still, the water heater needed replacing. The gutters were so clogged the last heavy rain had cascaded down the side of the house like Buckingham Fountain. And there were half a dozen other projects that needed attention.
He’d start with the gutters. Then maybe he’d go to Home Depot and order a new water heater—if it was open on the holiday. And depending on how much it’d cost. He might have to just keep relighting it till they got back on their feet.
After breakfast, Greg set up the ladder near the front corner of the house and was halfway up when he noticed Destin Jasper walking past on the sidewalk. He scrambled down and called, “Hey, Destin. Hold up a minute.” He’d just check on—no, encourage him a little.
Destin waited for him to catch up. “How you doin’, Mr. Singer?”
“I’m good, but how’re you doin’?” Greg noticed Destin didn’t seem able to look him in the eye. Maybe he should say something about that to the young man. You can’t be good at sales if people don’t trust you, and people don’t trust someone who looks away or down or gives the impression they’d rather be anywhere else than with you. “How was that basketball camp you went to last week?”
Destin cleared his throat. “Oh, the camp was good. Got some good instruction.” He smiled and finally looked at Greg. “Got an award for Best Post-Up Moves.”
“Get out!” Greg said playfully and bumped knuckles with the kid. “Does that mean you got recruited to one of the Big Ten?”
Destin chuckled self-consciously and looked down again. “Not really, but . . . a couple of scouts did take the time to talk to me.”
“That’s great. Absolutely on schedule for getting you a scholarship.” Now that he’d given the kid a little encouragement, it was time to check up on business. “I bet after gettin’ an award and all, the guys were wondering what you were chuggin’ that gave you all those hot moves, right? You sell a lot of SlowBurn to the other guys?”
Destin looked off down the street with a thousand-yard stare. “Wasn’t able to do that.”
“What do you mean? How much did you sell?”
Destin looked back at him, a defiant glint in his eye. “Mr. Singer, I didn’t make a penny. When the coaches saw me tryin’ to sell those cans of SlowBurn, they confiscated every one of ’em on the spot like I was tryin’ to peddle drugs and told me one more infraction of the rules and I’d be outta there. I never saw any rule about that. Believe me, Mr. Singer. I wasn’t meanin’ to break any rules, but . . . it just didn’t work out.”
Destin shrugged and started on down the sidewalk in the direction he’d been going.
“Hey, don’t worry about it.” Greg caught up with him. “We all have these little setbacks, but we can’t let them get us down.”
“I hear ya, Mr. Singer, but I don’t have much time left. I got a lotta money to pay back—to my folks and my college account. I’m gettin’ worried.”
Greg put his arm around the boy’s solid shoulder and walked along with him. “I know what you feel like, but we’re in this together. We gotta make it work, and there’s only one way to do that: Find someplace else to sell the SlowBurn. Find some new kids who’ll love it. I’m sure they’re out there.”
“Maybe so, Mr. Singer, but I don’t know where to look.”
Greg couldn’t let on how familiar that feeling was to him. He had to help Destin make it work. “Maybe you gotta look for a new location. Know what I mean? Kids hang out together all the time, and they usually have a can of something in their hand, or they’re just coming out of a 7-Eleven with a Big Gulp. There’s your market! SlowBurn’s definitely better than that stuff.”
Destin was nodding his head by the time they got to the corner of Chase Avenue, and it was time to let him go. He’d given the kid his best pep talk. He slapped him on the back and peeled away. “Go get ’em, tiger. You can do it.”
Destin glance at him sideways and gave him a skeptical smile and a wave as he turned the corner on Chase.
Back home, Greg did not climb the ladder again to work on the gutters. Instead, he went into the house and flipped on his computer. He didn’t know what he was looking for or what he could do, but having just pumped up Destin, it didn’t seem right to take the day off himself.
His email downloaded—some spam, a few messages from friends, but nothing related to launching his business. And then a notice flashed on his screen: “Internet Connection Lost.” Rats. Seemed to be happening more often lately. Each time he’d called his Internet Service Provider, he’d gotten a recorded message that the company was aware of the problem in his area and was working to restore full service as soon as possible.
Sometimes it took only a matter of minutes, sometimes hours, but it always came back on, and he’d never been able to do anything to speed them up. In fact, it was almost impossible to reach a real person by phone. Greg pushed his chair back. It was futile to call again. But he ought to do something. Maybe he should call Arlo. Arlo might give him a pep talk, get him going again, but what could Arlo say that he himself hadn’t just said to Destin?
* * * *
Tuesday morning—another workday he couldn’t pass off as a holiday. The Internet was back up, but as Greg sat at his desk, he let his head sink. The truth was, he wasn’t who he thought he was. He wasn’t an entrepreneur. He wasn’t a great salesman. He had no idea how to start a new business, not really. And he wasn’t sure people wanted to drink SlowBurn even if he could figure out how to introduce it to them.
It. Just. Isn’t. Working.
He’d been unemployed now for five weeks. Might as well admit it. He was unemployed! Maybe it was time to pull the plug on SlowBurn and look for something else . . . No! He’d just been scoffing at Chuck Hastings for closing Powersports prematurely, bragging that he’d never have done that himself.
Greg closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and gritted his teeth. He might not be who he thought he was, but he was not a quitter!
More reps—that’s what he needed. And he’d almost forgotten about the old lady, Mattie Krakowski, who’d bought a forty-nine-dollar starter kit of SlowBurn to sell at her family reunion. He should check to see how people liked it and if there was any chance to recruit some of her relatives to sell it
.
He went across the street and rang her doorbell. It seemed like two minutes passed before she opened the door a narrow crack, secured with a safety chain.
“How’re you doing today, Mrs. Krakowski?” He noticed she was still in her housecoat. “I hope this isn’t too early. Could we talk a few minutes?”
She shook her head vigorously. “Not interested. Don’t wanna become a Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness or whatever, so don’t come back again!”
The door started to close, but Greg put his toe in the crack, realizing as he did so that he was behaving worse than the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. “But Mrs. Krakowski, wait. I’m your neighbor from across the street. Greg Singer. Remember?”
She squinted her eyes and pulled the top of her housecoat tight around her neck.
“Remember? I sold you those cans of energy drink that you took to your family reunion. I think it was for your son’s birthday. Do you remember now? You did take them, didn’t you?”
“Oh. Yes, yes, I took ’em, and we had a great time too. Wonderful picnic.”
“Glad to hear it. Uh, do you think you could open the door and let me come in for a minute?”
The old woman hesitated, then finally relented and removed the chain.
Inside, the only chair not piled high with papers and books and stuff was the old lady’s rocker, so Greg stood. The TV was blaring too loudly to talk easily, but Greg persisted in asking his question.
“Well now, far as I recall, everybody liked the drink. In fact, I intended to bring a can home for myself, but I think I gave every single one of ’em away.”
“You gave them all away?”
“As I recall, yes. It was a large picnic, you know, and kinda hot that day.”
“Did anyone want more?”
“I don’t know. If they did, I didn’t hear about it, because I didn’t have any more, you see. It was all gone by then.”
Greg tried to keep impatience out of his voice. “Did you tell anyone they could become salespeople for SlowBurn?”
“SlowBurn? What’s that?”
“The name of the drink.”
“Oh, yes. No, no . . . nobody asked to sell it.”
Greg sighed deeply. This was hopeless. “Uh, thank you very much, Mrs. Krakowski.” He headed toward the door and then turned back. “One more thing. Do you have your son’s name and phone number? I’d like to call him if I could.”
“Sure.” She shuffled down the hall and came back a few moments later with a ragged-edge scrap of paper torn off a brown paper bag and handed it to Greg.
He studied the numbers scribbled on it and repeated them to her. “Is that your son’s number?”
“Yes. That’s Donald’s number, though sometimes he doesn’t answer. He’s very busy, you know.”
Greg felt a knot tighten in his gut as he trudged home, his hope of finding another rep fading.
It wasn’t working.
He made a fist and shook it. He should go down to the Illinois Department of Employment today and apply for unemployment benefits. Should’ve done that the first thing when Powersports closed.
Back at his desk, he checked his email—two spam messages. What’d he expect? He scanned the news headlines: “Retailers Devise Stimulus Plans to Revive Sales,” “China Fears Consumer Growth Flagging,” “Pakistan Army Finds Taliban Tough—”
“Dad! Dad, hurry! You gotta come down here right now!”
Greg could hear his son thundering up the stairs from the basement. “What’s up?”
“A flood! There’s water all over the laundry room floor, and it’s coming down the hall to the family room!”
Chapter 30
Greg took one look at the water spreading across the basement floor and swore under his breath. So much for his plan to apply for unemployment that day.
The flood in the basement was coming from the water heater. It was no longer a tiny drip that occasionally doused the pilot light—more like a torrent. Greg quickly shut off the water main to the house, and the stream slowed, but there were still forty gallons of water in the tank spreading across the floor, soaking the old rug in the family room and anything else in its advance toward the sump pump.
“Why did they put the sump pump in that corner?” Greg yelled, as if there was someone around to answer him. Running out to the backyard, he brought in the garden hose, connected one end to the outlet spigot near the bottom of the tank, and put the other end down into the sump pump. Then he opened the valve on the tank and let it drain. That slowed the leak even more and within a half hour emptied the tank.
Greg stood in the middle of the mess and shook his head. He should’ve found out where that leak was coming from weeks ago. Now it was obvious the rusty old tank had blown out a hole in the bottom. Couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
Nicole was out doing errands, and he had no way to call her to come home since she didn’t have a cell phone. The kids tried to help, sloshing around in the basement, getting things up off the floor, but when Becky started crying, Greg realized his own frustration and frantic efforts were putting too much pressure on the children.
He called them over to a dry corner and enwrapped them both in his arms. “Shh, shh. It’s okay, Becky. You didn’t cause this flood and neither did Nathan. The water tank just rusted out. Couldn’t be helped, so don’t worry about it.”
But it could’ve been helped if I’d dealt with it at the first symptom.
Well, it was what it was. Greg took a deep breath and gave the kids another hug. “Tell you what, why don’t you go on up to your rooms and get something dry on your feet? Maybe you can read for a bit while I clean up down here. Okay? When Mom gets home she’ll fix us all some lunch.”
It was almost noon when Nicole got home. She took one look at the mess in the basement and looked as if she might cry.
“Honey, don’t worry. I’ll finish cleaning up down here. You just see about some lunch, okay?”
In a few minutes she called downstairs, “How am I supposed to cook with no water?” And two seconds later, he heard Becky yelling from the second floor. “Dad! Dad, the toilet won’t flush, and it really smells bad!”
Greg closed his eyes as if to make the whole scene disappear and then trudged up the basement steps, his legs already feeling like lead. At the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor he called, “Sorry about the toilet! I had to shut off the water to the whole house. You’ll just have to make do, okay?” When Becky didn’t respond, he added, “A little smell isn’t going to hurt anyone.”
He poked his head into the kitchen. “Can’t you make sandwiches or something that doesn’t require water? It’s just lunch.”
“I was going to make deviled egg sandwiches. But don’t worry about it. We’ll have peanut butter and jelly.”
“Make mine cheese,” he growled. “You know I hate peanut butter and jelly.”
Greg trudged back downstairs, feeling as if he were being banished to a dungeon. But then he looked around. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Other than the family room rug, which was now out in the backyard, a few boxes with wet bottoms, and a damp basement floor, the damage had been stemmed. He should be thankful. It was nothing like the several inches of water that had flooded the Molanders’ basement, but it still took him most of the afternoon to clean it up. Finally setting up a couple of box fans to help dry things out, he examined the water heater.
Hmm. Certainly couldn’t be that hard to replace one of those things. He wasn’t particularly mechanical, but he was no dummy. All he needed to do was disconnect the two water pipes . . . and the gas line—gas could be dicey—and the exhaust pipe. Remove the old tank. Slide in the new one, and reconnect everything. Light the pilot—at least he knew how to do that—and they’d be back in business.
But how soon could he get a replacement? Cleaning his hands on some old rags, he went upstairs to his computer. The Home Depot website showed a forty-gallon tank for $328 plus a $40 delivery charge. Looked just like the old one,
and it was in stock at the store up in Evanston. If he got up there and paid for it tonight, they could get it here by noon tomorrow.
It took forty minutes to disconnect the old tank before he could tip it over. Uhhh. Hot water tanks weren’t light, even when empty. He rolled and dragged it to the bottom of the outside basement steps . . . and stopped. No way he was going to get the bulky thing up the steps alone. And he certainly wasn’t going to ask his wife to help. That wouldn’t be right.
He sat on the bottom step, breathing the already moldy-smelling basement air. It was five o’clock. Who could he ask to help? Maybe Harry Bentley. He laughed at the memory of the older man taking charge of rescuing the Molanders from their basement flood. Bentley wasn’t young, but he was strong and the only help Greg could think of at the moment.
“Sure thing,” Harry said when Greg dropped by the two-flat to ask for help. “And let me give Josh Baxter a call.”
The kid from Harry’s Bible study? Why him? “Don’t think we need three of us just to get that thing outta there.”
Harry shrugged. “Just thought he could give you some tips about installin’ a new one. He does building maintenance. Knows about this kind of stuff, ya know.”
With the two of them huffing and puffing, it didn’t take long to get the old tank out to the alley. “Hey, man. Thanks so much. It would’ve taken a block and tackle to get it up those steps by myself.”
“No problem. Glad I could help.”
Greg was reaching to shake hands when Nathan called from the second floor window. “Hey, Dad, when can we use the bathroom? There’s still no water up here.”
“I know. Just go ahead and use it.” Greg shrugged helplessly at Harry.
“You cut the water off to the whole house?”
“Yeah. Had to stop the leak somehow. I’ll look for a plug when I go to Home Depot.”
“Humph! Let’s go back down and have a look.”
It took Harry only a minute to find a valve in the cold water feed to the tank. “Here. We can close that, and you should be able to turn the water back on for the rest of the house.”
