The Handyman

by Bentley Little

  After we thanked the agent and left, my dad drove us back to one of the owner-offered lots. There was no one around, but we got out and walked around the property—a rather small piece of land with a lot of trees—before my dad wrote down the telephone number listed on the For Sale sign.

  He seemed to remember where all the lots were, because he drove down a narrow road, around a house-sized boulder and through a neighborhood of ill-kept shacks until we reached the next for-sale-by-owner property.

  It was at the third lot that we came across two couples clearing brush. They hadn’t been there when we’d driven past with the realtor, but now they were apparently trying to get the land in shape for selling. The man who seemed to be in charge was a bald older guy wearing thick black-framed glasses and striped overalls that made him look like a train engineer. He was directing the two women to rake up leaves, while he and the other man concentrated on clipping branches.

  “Hello!” my dad called from his open car window. We’d pulled up parallel to the workers and Dad waved at them from across a small culvert. “Are you the owners here?”

  “We are,” the man with the glasses said, walking up. He gestured toward the other man. “You interested?”

  My dad turned off the ignition and got out of the car. The rest of us got out as well.

  “I might be,” Dad said.

  “I’m Frank,” the man said. “That’s my wife Irene, and my brother-in-law George, and his wife Betsy.”

  My dad jumped the culvert and held out his hand. “I’m Andy. Andy Martin.” He gestured toward the For Sale sign. “How big’s the lot and what’re you asking for it?”

  Frank didn’t answer right away. “I live right across the street there, in that house. Built it myself.”

  We all looked over at the home opposite the lot. Two stories, red with white trim, it resembled a barn as much as a house. A rock chimney ran up the left side of the structure, and two upstairs windows to either side of the doorway gave the impression of a face. A gravel horseshoe-shaped driveway took up most of the land between the house and the street, with scrub brush and a single pine tree in the center of the U.

  “George and I, we bought this property together for investment. George and Betsy live down in the Valley.” At the time, I had no idea what this meant. I thought they lived in some nearby valley, but I learned later that when anyone in Randall referred to “the Valley,” they meant the Phoenix area, which Arizonans had dubbed the “Valley of the Sun.” “We thought it was probably a good time to sell. And since George is retired now, he and Betsy can use the extra money.”

  “What’re you asking?” my dad repeated. “And what’s the size of the property?”

  “It’s a quarter of an acre, nearly half an acre with the greenbelt.” Frank pointed. “The land in back is owned by someone, but we’ve never seen him, don’t know who he is, and the lot’s never been built on. Probably an investment. The greenbelt runs along the side there, fifty feet wide, and that gives you some privacy with the Davidsons’ cabin, although that’s a vacation home and they’re hardly ever there.”

  “The price?” my dad prodded.

  Frank stroked his chin. “Truth is, we haven’t really figured that out yet. We kind of put the sign up before we were ready. We were planning to clear off this dead brush, trim a few trees and bushes and see if we couldn’t get a little more for it. We bought the land about seven years ago, off the guy who sold the Davidsons their place, and paid twelve hundred for it. We were thinking we could probably get three for it now.”

  Dad had picked up a little information about the area from our tour with the realtor. He squinted skeptically at the lot. “Are there sewer hookups, or is this a septic tank situation?”

  “Septic. Sewer line’s still three streets away. They keep promising it’s coming, but I’ve heard that for five years now, so don’t hold your breath.”

  While my dad continued to discuss details of the property with Frank, and my mom started talking to the two women, my brother and I walked through the lot. To us, it was a revelation. Unlike our home in California, with its ranch-style house placed between a front lawn and a back lawn, this land was wild. There was a kind of path that led through the brush, and it appeared to be a trail used by animals; I could see hoof prints in the dry dirt. The predominant vegetation consisted of large bushes with thick red branches and small green leaves that I later learned were Manzanita. There were pine trees as well, most of them small, with pale weeds that grew within the thin branches of sticker bushes. Birds flew up from their hiding places as we approached, and a squirrel froze when he saw us, thinking we wouldn’t notice him, before speeding off through the underbrush. Near the back of the lot was a big tree that was definitely not a pine but looked more like one of those huge sprawling oaks, usually home to a clubhouse, shown on the covers of children’s story books. I looked up at the thick branches forking off from the wide sturdy trunk and saw where we could hammer beams and planks and make a tree house of our own.

  “How about twenty-five hundred?” my dad was saying as we walked back. “That’s more than double your investment, and a pretty good price for a lot with no sewer hookups.”

  “We were thinking three.”

  George nodded. I don’t think he’d said a word since we arrived. Off to the left, my mom and the two old ladies were laughing about something.

  “Maybe we’ll keep looking,” my dad said, turning away. He motioned us back toward the car.

  “Who you gonna get to build your home?” Frank asked. They must have been talking about the pre-fab house while we were exploring.

  “I don’t know yet. Why? Do you have a suggestion?”

  Frank gestured across the street. “Like I said. I built my house from scratch. You pay me two thousand to put your kit together—and you won’t get a better deal than that; not in this town—and we’ll let you have the lot for twenty-five hundred.”

  George nodded.

  “I don’t know…” my dad said.

  “You talk to anyone in town. Frank Watkins does quality work.”

  “Are you in construction?”

  “I was. But I’m retired now. More of a jack of all trades these days. Why don’t you all come in and look at my house? Check out my work before you make any decisions.”

  So we all walked across the street, where Frank and Irene gave us a tour of their home, Irene pointing out knickknacks they’d gotten from various trips, Frank showing off the fireplace he’d built, the wet bar he’d made. He did seem to know what he was doing, although he told us the upper floor was still unfinished and consisted of plywood floors and open walls.

  “I work on it when I get a chance,” he explained.

  Billy and I were allowed to go back outside and explore, and when my mom called us back, my dad was shaking Frank’s hand and everything had apparently been decided.

  My dad was smiling. “You got yourself a deal,” he said.

  THREE

  “…And that one idea of mine saved the U.S. Air Force over three million dollars.”

  Frank was sitting on a stack of lumber, talking to Del Stewart, who was leaning against the side of his pickup truck drinking out of a thermos. So far, both times we’d come by to check on the progress of our house, Frank had been lounging around and talking. Meanwhile, the house wasn’t getting built. After telling us that he could put the whole prefab home together in less than a month, he’d only managed to construct the skeleton of a cinder block foundation in the first nine days.

  Del was the man Frank had hired to help him. A lean, taciturn man with long greasy hair and a wardrobe that seemed to consist of a single pair of dirty jeans and a faded Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt, he looked like the kind of guy who would rob a house rather than build one.

  We walked up, and I could tell from the way my dad said “Hey, Frank, how’s it going?” that he was ge
tting frustrated. The first time we’d driven over from California, four days after they’d delivered the building materials, we’d expected to see the frame of the house constructed. After all, as Frank said, building a pre-fab house was like putting together a model: all the parts were there, they just had to be joined. But when we arrived, Frank and Del had only managed to clear a section of the lot where the house was to stand, and string some twine between stakes to mark the area.

  This time, only my dad and I had made the drive, Billy and my mom choosing to stay home rather than make the nine-hour trip to Randall.

  “I thought you’d be a little farther along,” my dad said diplomatically.

  “We’ve been working on the plumbing,” Frank assured us. “Right now, we’re just waiting for the building inspector to sign off on it. Then we can go on to the next step and start on the frame.” He showed us where he and Del had installed a septic system and put in a main water pipe that went out to the street. In addition, they’d cleared a section of dirt for a driveway, and built a culvert over the ditch.

  Seen in that light, Frank had accomplished quite a bit, but there was still no way that the house would be done in another two-and-a-half weeks. Not at this speed.

  As it happened, the building inspector arrived as Frank and my dad were talking. He did indeed approve the plumbing, which allayed my dad’s fears and let him know that Frank did know what he was doing, and allowed Frank and Del to start work on the frame. My dad and I stood around and watched for awhile, my dad even helping a bit, before the two of us went off to have lunch. We returned to California the next day, feeling good, knowing the house was finally going to be built.

  It took nearly two months to finish construction, and the summer was practically over by the time Frank called to tell us that the work was done and we could move in. My mom had been searching for cheap or secondhand items with which we could furnish our vacation home: getting an old dresser out of Grandma and Grandpa’s garage, some bed frames from the Salvation Army, mattresses from a discount warehouse, our old coffee table that we’d stored in our garage, my aunt Alice’s discarded couch. Though there were still plenty of things we needed, we rented a U-Haul trailer, piled in what we had, and took off for Arizona.

  Our first impression was that the house still wasn’t finished. The model home had been a dark redwood color, but the A-frame on our lot was the pale yellow peach of unpainted pine. Frank had obviously been waiting for our arrival, because he was crossing the street from his own house, keys in hand, as we got out of the car. He handed the keys to my dad. “She’s all yours.”

  He began explaining which key was for which door, but Billy and I were already rushing forward. Peeking in the front windows, we saw an empty living room, the kitchen beyond and the stairway that led up to our loft. Mom, Dad and Frank were soon behind us, and with a loud “Ta Da!” my dad unlocked and opened the door. We walked inside.

  The walls were made out of cardboard.

  At least that’s what it looked like to us.

  Frank told us it was drywall.

  “Where’s the paneling?” my dad asked. “The model home had paneling.”

  Frank shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. This is what got delivered. If I’d known there was supposed to be paneling, I would have asked about it, but I assumed that this is the way it came and you were going to finish it yourselves.”

  “We don’t know how to do that,” my dad said.

  “I’ll show you,” Frank promised. “It’s easy.”

  We stood in the middle of our small empty living room, looking around. Not only did our vacation house look like its walls had not been put up, but the floor was plywood. None of us could remember what the floor of the model home had looked like, whether it had had carpeting or tile or linoleum, but it had not been bare wood.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Frank said when we pointed this out to him. “Maybe there was some sort of deluxe package offered, but the kit you bought had no finishing materials provided at all.”

  There were sinks, however, and a toilet, and a shower-bath combo. There was even an electric stove installed (although no refrigerator).

  Upstairs, in our loft, the deficiencies weren’t quite as noticeable. The floor was still bare plywood, but our side walls consisted of the slanting A-frame ceiling and actually looked pretty good. The front of the loft overlooked the living room below and had a bare wooden railing, so it was only the back wall, with its single small window, that had the cardboard-covered drywall.

  Frank invited us over for dinner that night, and my mom gratefully accepted. We had no groceries, no refrigerator, and with all the unpacking we had to do, dinner would have been, of necessity, a pretty makeshift affair. But Frank said his wife Irene was making hamburgers and told us we could come over whenever we wanted. “Whenever you get hungry,” is how he put it, and that gave us time to unpack the U-Haul, get our beds set up and arrange what little furniture we’d brought.

  Even my parents had not realized how many things were needed to stock a vacation home, and after a long night sleeping on bare mattresses (we’d forgotten sheets), we went out to the Randall Café for breakfast and spent the rest of the day buying the day-to-day necessities we’d need if we were going to keep living in the twentieth century. One shocking omission was a television, and here both Billy and I put our feet down. While it was cool having our own vacation house, there was no way we were going to spend the remainder of the summer without a TV. My parents must have felt the same way, because one of the first places we went that morning was the local thrift store, where we bought a used black and white set. It was only temporary, my dad promised. As soon as we had a chance, we’d go down to the Valley and charge a new color one. Billy and I would inherit the black and white set for our room upstairs. We could only get two stations—channel 12, the NBC affiliate out of Phoenix, and channel 4, the NBC affiliate out of Flagstaff—but NBC had some good shows on in the mid-1980s, so we were pretty happy.

  Frank did indeed teach my dad how to tape up and plaster over the sheets of drywall, and the entire family ended up painting both the inside and outside of the house. We also bought peel-and-stick tile that we laid down on the floors.

  By the time we finished all this work, the summer was pretty much over. “Not much of a vacation,” I grumbled.

  “Consider it a working vacation,” my mom said.

  “It builds character,” my dad joked, but then he wrapped an arm around my shoulder, squeezing it. “We’ll make it up next summer.”

  There were three days left before we were going back to California, and Billy and I spent them exploring. We hiked up the hill behind our little neighborhood and found what appeared to be an Indian ruin at the top. There were several square foundations made from rocks and adobe, and though we didn’t find the arrowheads we were hoping for, we did pick up some black and brown pottery shards that we put in our pockets. We also walked into town—with our dad’s blessing but against our mom’s wishes—and, with the allowance we’d been given for all our work the past weeks, bought ourselves cherry slushes from the Dairy Queen. Billy also bought a map of Arizona ghost towns in a tourist shop. I thought it was a complete waste of money, but he tacked it to the sloping ceiling above his bed so he could look at it as he fell asleep.

  What we didn’t see, either in town or on our street, were other kids. There had to be some, but from our perspective, Randall seemed like a retirement community. There were old people everywhere, and the two boys we did see, down by the Circle K, were tough looking and older than us, wearing CAT hats and cowboy boots, and we walked a long way around just to avoid them.

  On our way home, someone honked at us, and, startled, we turned to see Frank’s pickup truck. He offered us a ride, and Billy and I just looked at each other. The dangers of hitchhiking had been drilled into us ever since we could cross a street, and we’d been warned
never to take rides from strangers. Frank wasn’t exactly a stranger, but neither of us had ever gotten into the car of anyone besides our parents or the parents of our friends, and that made this a monumental decision. Would we get in trouble if we rode with Frank? Would our parents get mad at us because we didn’t get their approval first?

  In the end, we decided to keep walking, and Frank laughed, said, “Suit yourselves,” and drove off.

  I looked over at Billy and saw that he was glad we hadn’t let Frank give us a ride. I wasn’t sure why, but I was, too. We were both tired of walking, but somehow even exercise seemed preferable to being stuck in a pickup cab with our neighbor from across the street. We didn’t discuss it, though, and walked the rest of the way back in silence. Frank’s pickup was parked in his driveway when we arrived, and Frank himself was standing on the gravel in front of our house, talking to our dad, who called us over. “I just want you to know,” he said, putting one arm around each of our shoulders, “that if Frank offers you a ride, it’s okay. We know him; he’s not a stranger.”

  Dad, as usual, had known exactly why we’d done what we’d done, and we nodded to show that we understood, although when Billy and I glanced at each other, it was clear that neither of us regretted not accepting the ride.

  Frank’s last name was Watkins, but for some reason he wouldn’t let either me or Billy call him “Mr. Watkins.” He wanted us to address him as “Frank,” the way the adults did, and after a short disagreement the first time it came up, my dad gave in. It was the first time we’d ever called a grownup by his first name, and it definitely felt weird.