Trigger Warning: The content may not be suitable for children or those with a fragile psyche

Repairs

Two things occupy my mind which make it difficult to focus on my work which is stripping lead paint from a rundown house owned by a veteran of The Vietnam War. 

The house had been his father’s. He had spent most of his life living in a cabin in the woods and had moved here when he was old. He had never adjusted to the city. The transition from trees to apartment buildings had been too jarring and he rarely left this house.

The first thing that occupies my mind is how much I want a beer. The second thing is a strange pattern I saw emerge inside the crumbling rooms of the homes I have walked through, to make small useless repairs.

I will talk about the second thing. How much I want a beer is not very interesting.

The first house didn't have any numbers. They had fallen off some time before. You could still make them out by where the paint was missing. The missing paint was the ghost of numbers. The ghost of the numbers said 1667.

The backyard had a single gnarled tree whose base was surrounded by sheet metal to protect it from the elements. The kitchen was full of dishes. Half-eaten food filled the sink. The dishwasher didn't work so it was used as a second cabinet for pans and cutlery. The woman who owned the house was sitting in a chair.

 “In the basement, in the side room to the left. There is a leak in the ceiling. Water pools in the ceiling there. It is a giant bubble of water sagging the drywall down. I worry that it is rotting. There might be mold. I am afraid of mold particles in the air. They aren't visible. I could be breathing them in, and I would have no way of knowing. I could be dying. Please look and see if you can fix it," she said.

"Can you show me where it is?" I asked.

"My legs don't work any longer. I can't walk downstairs. It's not hard to find," she said.

I made my way down to the room.

The entire house was falling apart. Inside the room was a man in his late thirties. He was sitting on a chair very close to the television. The television was small and old. The television was playing a program on the history channel about the invention of different weapons that could be used to destroy the world.

He didn't care what was on the television. It could have been anything at all.

The woman had not mentioned this man, and I wondered if anyone knew he existed.

He was her son.

"Hello," I said to him.

He did not respond. I looked at the leak in the ceiling. I could see thin strings of black growing in the corner.

I could not fix it.

I do not remember much about the second house. It is a phantom house in my memory without form or definition. I was replacing the smoke detectors when I walked into the room where he lived. There was a twin bed. There were plates of food on the ground next to him.

He sat on the floor and looked at a television from the late 90's. It could have been an identical twin to the television in that room with the water ready to fall from the ceiling. He was a man in his early thirties. He hadn't moved in a long time. He was doing his best to become furniture so no one would ever talk to him again.

It didn't take me very long to replace the smoke alarms. The new smoke alarms had their own batteries. They last twelve years. I only needed a screwdriver to install them.

I saw many more of these invisible people, living in forgotten rooms of their parents’ houses, but it is hard to separate them in my mind. In my imagination they all remain as lonely kid brothers. They are all very similar; it seems there are unspoken rules the universe has created to dictate the lives of these eternal children.

Men. Un-mentioned. Watching television.

I am not doing a very good job stripping the lead paint. There are strict laws regulating the stripping of lead paint. I learned about them a week ago in an early morning conference room in a hotel. There were no windows in that conference room and the fluorescent lights were always on so I could not tell if it was night or day. They had given me a booklet and a certificate as a lead inspector.

Lead paint is a very serious thing. Unmanaged flakes of it can be carried by the wind and ingested by children. Lead paint can stunt their growth, harm their brains. It can cause slowed speech and behavioral abnormalities.

The plastic tarps which I had laid down to catch the paint are blowing in the wind. The tape I had used to fasten them to the ground is not holding to the grass. Flecks of lead paint cover the lawn. I try to pick them up, but they crumble in my fingers. Little bits of white speckle the dry green of the grass.

There is still more paint to strip, but I am the only one working, and I really want a beer, and it is very hot, and I don’t want to be here any longer. I pack all my things into my car and drive to a bar.

The outside and inside of the bar are both painted a dark black. The lights are very dim, and I can't make out the face of the bartender.

I have four beers and a shot of Jameson.

I drive home.

In the near future we paint his home. We paint it a bright white. There are many volunteers who show up to paint the house. They all feel good about themselves since they are helping someone worse off than they are.

There are sandwiches for lunch.

I think they are turkey sandwiches.

 In the slightly more distant future, the man whose house we painted, the veteran of The Vietnam War, sends me a gift in order to thank me for what I have done. The gift is a CD. On the CD are recordings of him singing Christian Gospel songs. He is a very religious man. I do not have a CD player. I do not care enough about his renditions of Christian Gospel to go out and purchase a CD player.

So I will never know

The sound of his voice

When he sings

END