Flat Water Tuesday by Ron Irwin Page B

shutters were peeling but otherwise it seemed in good shape, bigger than I thought it would be. It was a long building and when I walked around the back I realized it was built on a hill and he had a good few acres of property, all of it gone wild. He’d kept his back screens up for too long and they were rusted and bowed crazily in and out from winter. I saw what he was building and what I would be working on: a new shed. The garage right next to his house was obviously too small to store anything in—it was one of those old carriage houses they still had in New England that you swore was slumping over to one side when you looked at it long enough. A hundred years ago there would have been a barn somewhere close by but that was long gone now. The surrounding land and houses were owned by movie stars and investment bankers from New York, who every so often drove out to Fenton to look at the leaves.
    I called out Channing’s name a few times and then stepped up to the front door of the little shed. I turned around and looked at the main house; from that angle it was maybe the loneliest looking place I’d ever seen in my life. He’d gone out and bought a stack of pressed wood—too much, I thought, just eyeballing it—and two wine boxes of paint were stacked on top of it. An A&P shopping bag full of stiff old paintbrushes balanced right on top of the gallon cans of paint. There was another box full of the shingles you get at those big outlets for people too cheap to call a custom roofer, who figured building a house was as easy as buying a video on the subject.
    Sawdust was all over the ground and dusted the floor and sills of the shed and I knew without walking in there he’d been ripped off by a crew of bozos. I could see the old mugs and dirty rags left in the corners and the coffee rings on the finished sills that they hadn’t bothered about. They’d screwed the job up good and proper. I wished for a second I could give my father a tour. He’d have a laugh. He’d walk in there and kick the walls hard enough to buckle them. I wondered if Channing had only recently wised up and fired everyone once things had progressed to this condition, or if he just didn’t know any better. Boat work and building work were two different animals, I guessed.
    “Carrey. Only an hour and a half late, I see.”
    There he was now, in the doorway to the porch of his house, without a tie. He walked down the sagging steps, crossed the ragged lawn. “What do you think of my addition?”
    “I’d call it a subtraction.”
    He made a sound and his deep-set eyes flashed briefly. His hair was tightly curled, fading. He wore brogues, khaki pants that were spattered with flecks of wood stain along the sides and a parchment-crisp shirt that had been ironed thin. Channing had the faded tan you get working outdoors every day. His hands were manicured and clean but beat-up and raw, too. I’d discover it was hard for him to pick a pencil up off the floor, or dig a piece of chalk out of the tray in front of a blackboard. He’d built a sailboat once, he’d tell me, and being the coach of the crew he did most of the work on the shells. But Channing didn’t have woodworker’s hands. They looked like they belonged to a meat packer.
    “I thought at first this was going to be a storage shed but now I’m thinking you’re building an office?”
    “Possibly; also it will serve as a guesthouse.”
    “How much did you pay the morons who built it?”
    “Isn’t it possible that I built it myself?”
    “Not unless you’re the kind of guy who litters all over his own little playhouse.”
    He frowned, looked in at the mess. “I paid them a fair price. And you are exceptionally insulting, Carrey.”
    “Straight talk is no insult in this business, Mr. Channing. I can make a recommendation or I can be polite.”
    “All right, then. Give me the hard truth. Lay it on me, as they say.”
    “The sashes aren’t set right and your wiring’s too low and