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From “Handyman”

Jeff and Christie Cummings sat at their kitchen table sipping coffee while reading the Manchester Times. Outside, the New Hampshire sun shined brightly. Indian Summer had descended and the weather promised to be unseasonably warm with cooling Canadian winds not arriving until the weekend. Jeff lowered his paper and looked at Christie. Her auburn hair shined brightly under the autumn sun while her skin glowed with youth and vitality. Thirty-six, and she remained the most beautiful woman he had ever known. A need rose in him. To hell with the story, it could wait. He reached across the table and patted her hand. She lowered her paper and smiled.

“The boys left for school twenty minutes ago. We’ve got the morning to ourselves.”

Her smile grew and she blew him a kiss. They were just rising when a knock sounded at the front door.

“Are you expecting anyone?” Christie asked. 

“No one I can think of,” Jeff answered. 

On their porch, he found a man about his height and weight, smiling shyly at him. His face was familiar, but Jeff couldn’t put a handle on his name. He was still thinking of Christie and how nice she looked in her pink robe. 

“Sam Hawkins, Mr. Cummings. You asked me to underpin your cabin,” the man said after waiting a moment.

Jeff slapped his head with the palm of his hand. “Of course, Mr. Hawkins. I wasn’t expecting you and forgot entirely.”

Meanwhile, Shep, their golden lab had joined Jeff at the door. Suspiciously he sniffed Sam and then growled. “Stop it, Shep, stop,” Jeff ordered. Normally he was the most placid of dogs, even-tempered and sweet to a fault, but this morning he paid Jeff no attention. Instead, he growled more viciously and snapped at the stranger. Quickly, Sam stepped back from the threshold while Jeff grabbed Shep’s collar and wrestled him to the back porch.

“Sorry about that, Sam,” he explained when he returned. “Shep is usually more friendly than that. Come in, won’t you.”

Sam smiled a nice disarming smile and stepped inside, but looked over Jeff’s shoulder into the kitchen where Christie remained at the table in her robe. Sam noticed, and she blushed and stood and cinched her belt tighter but her robe was short and a lot of leg and cleavage showed as she crossed the kitchen. Five minutes later she reappeared, dressed in jeans and a conservative top. Though in her mid-thirties, she could pass for twenty-five, a very firm, pretty twenty-five, and Sam had appreciated his view.

“I hope I didn’t disturb you too much, Mrs. Cummings,” he said when she joined them. “I’ll get started on the underpinning this afternoon. Three, maybe four weeks, and I’ll have the job done.” He smiled the same disarming smile, and she flipped her hair back and blushed slightly. Jeff noticed that Christie liked Sam, but he wasn’t jealous or upset. There wasn’t a woman in the world more trustworthy than his wife. If Sam admired her legs it was because she was beautiful not a flirt. They’d been married fifteen years, and she had never given him reason to doubt her. 

Later that morning Sam moved his tools to the basement and by early afternoon, he was jacking and blocking the main beam so that he might replace the rear support. Though it was a struggle, Jeff managed to tune him out and concentrate on his work. For the last six months he had envisioned a series of stories about dogs, protective, loyal ones like Shep. So much he wanted to bring out their unconditional love with short vignettes that enlightened as well as warmed the heart. He didn’t foresee a best seller, a moderate success at best; enough to keep the bills paid and add a little to the boys’ college fund. Unconsciously, he reached beside his desk and patted Shep, whom Christie had banished upstairs when he continued to bark at Sam.

At four, Jeff reached the end of the first draft of his story and then shut down his computer. He looked around their small bedroom trying to recall himself from the make believe world in which he had immersed himself. The room was neat, the bed made, clothes picked up and put away, only his writing desk was cluttered with disks and copies of stories. Outside, the sun had traveled to the opposite end of the cabin to shine into the bedroom window. Everything was quiet, too quiet, and he felt strange and uneasy. Checking his watch, he realized that the boys had arrived home an hour before. Normally, they called for him to play basketball after they had eaten a snack, and working or not, he always joined them. This afternoon, they hadn’t, and he was perplexed as to why.

Downstairs, he found Christie in the living room still dressed in her jeans and sweater while curled up on their easy chair reading. He didn’t see the boys, but he heard murmuring from the basement below. Christie smiled at him. She had the most beautiful blue eyes. Jeff could always read her moods by looking at her eyes.

“Are you finished, sweetheart?” she asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” he absently replied. His story still gnawed at him. It was always difficult for him to put them aside. “Where are the boys?”

“They’re in the basement with Sam. We were having coffee when they came home from school. He wanted them to see the work he’s doing. I think they’re quite taken with him.”

“Coffee?” Jeff asked.

“Yes, I fixed him a cup of instant a little after two.”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“Well, we heard you humming and typing away. I explained to Sam that when you hummed the words were flowing easily and that we shouldn’t disturb you.” 

Jeff smiled and kissed her forehead and then left to find the boys. Theirs wasn’t a basement in the truest sense of the word. It was more of an over hang where the cabin had been built into the side of a hill and then raised off the ground by a series of support beams. Three years before Jeff had surrounded it with plastic lattice and a door to store odds and ends and any junk that was deemed unnecessary for the upstairs.

“Well, Jeff, what do you think?” Sam asked when he joined them at the rear of the cabin. For a few seconds Bob and Steve stared blankly like he was a stranger.

“Hi, boys,” Jeff said. 

“Hi, Dad,” they replied as if embarrassed at seeing him. 

“Looks good, Sam,” he said. In the half lighted basement he saw that Sam had already dug three deep holes for concrete bases, and that he had constructed a brace under the main beam so that the rear support could be safely removed. He was beginning to wonder if the job would take Sam as long as he had originally estimated.

“I know it’s late, but do you boys want to go shoot a few baskets?” Jeff asked after a moment of silence.

Bob glanced uncertainly to his older brother Steve. Steve frowned, and once again appeared uncertain and embarrassed. “Do you mind, Dad? We’d like to stay and help Sam.”

He did mind, but he said nothing, and for another few moments he stood in the shadows, feeling as if he’d intruded into a private conversation. Meanwhile, Sam explained the need for the concrete bases that the supports would stand on, and why he was digging such deep holes and how the concrete would save the treated wood from rotting. Rudimentary carpentry at best, but Steve and Bob listened intently, almost enchanted, and Jeff began to regret that he hadn’t taken the time to do little handy chores with them. Before leaving, he made a mental note that they would paint the cabin next spring, and that there were other things besides basketball for a father and his sons to share.

Upstairs, Christie shrugged off his hurt feelings. “They’re just boys, and in a few weeks they’ll forget all about him. Building and construction are new to them. They’re only interested.”

“Well, you certainly took to him too, having him up for coffee while I worked,” he teased her.

Christie smiled and stuck her tongue out at him. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have invited him in while I was wearing my pink robe.”

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Only my slippers,” she teased back.

“I forgot this morning, but I’ll remember from now on,” he assured her.

“Well, I do believe you’re jealous,” she said. “Maybe I’ll wear my robe again tomorrow.”

“No, you’re not,” he told her with a tinge of seriousness. He remembered how Sam had looked at her legs and how she had blushed while they talked at the kitchen table. But now Christie laughed and appeared unconcerned, and they let the matter drop.

After retrieving the basketball from the front closet, he went down to the courts and shot hoops while Shep sniffed the bushes for rodents. They returned an hour later. Sam had departed for the evening and Christie was busy in the kitchen while the boys set the table for supper. While they arranged the plates and silverware and brought the hot dishes from the stove, he sat and watched. Neither asked about his work or in particular his story, but they babbled enthusiastically about Sam’s plans for the cabin. From them he learned that besides the supports and laundry room, Sam also wanted to smooth the dirt floor and then add a second toilet for Christie to use when she was downstairs doing the wash. He even thought that they could add new lights, and had he told them that he had a used sink he might install. On and on they went, and Jeff realized that the work they were outlining was more than he had bargained for. Not by a whole lot though, and like the basketball game he said nothing, but nonetheless a misgiving stirred within his heart.

For the remainder of the week, Sam returned, regular as clock work, starting at eight and finishing by five. Jeff seldom saw him. By Wednesday, he’d become more involved with his stories and had forgotten his apprehensions. They might nod and speak if he happened to be on the front porch when Sam arrived or left. Otherwise any questions about the basement, Jeff deferred to Christie so that he could concentrate. Sam was doing an excellent job though. Every evening he inspected the basement with the boys who had given up basketball entirely so they might help with the work, and they eagerly explained the progress Sam was making. He had definitely captivated them. Even Shep had quit growling. Jeff didn’t learn how much he had charmed Christie until Friday morning. 

He arrived a half an hour earlier than usual, and Jeff was upstairs outlining his work when he knocked. So that he wouldn’t be disturbed, Christie answered the door and once again it was a hot morning, and she wore only her pink robe. Jeff didn’t notice or care. Instead, he continued sketching and plotting, making steady progress with a story about a golden retriever searching for his lost mistress in wilds of Minnesota.

He had been working on it since Wednesday, and the story was finally coming together, and he hated to stop when the ideas and words were flowing so smoothly, but not ten minutes after Sam arrived he heard Christie giggle in the kitchen. That was unusual in itself. Usually nothing penetrated when he worked. She always said that the house could burn around him, and he’d never notice unless she unplugged his computer. But that morning her excited laughter disturbed him. It was out of place, not ordinary, damned if she didn’t sound like an infatuated teenager, and that was only the first time.

In another few minutes, just as he’d managed to get back to work, they both laughed out loud like they were sharing an off color joke. Loudly and bawdily, and in a few seconds they laughed again, and the more they laughed, the more frustrated he became. Not that he really heard them, for his mind was far away, racing through the northern forests, following the scent of a lost girl who was depending upon her dog to save her, and then they laughed one last time, so loudly that it sounded as if they were sitting at a bar half drunk. That was it. Hastily, he saved his work, and exited the bedroom so that he could join them and find out just what to hell was so funny.

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