The Changing Lives of Joe Hart

by Shawn Inmon

  Oh, God, this might get a little old. I’ve already watched the Sonics lose this game twice, and one wasn’t that long ago.

  “Sure, no problem.” He dug into his back pocket for his wallet—the blue, zippered one—and dug out the twenty dollar bill. “I buy, you fly. I’ll call it in, so it should be ready when you get there.”

  Wolfish grins spread across their faces. “Excellent!” JD said. “We’re off then. Be back before tipoff.”

  Joe peeled off the gloves and tossed them in the tub. I’ll finish that job tomorrow. I don’t think I can hack doing all the work I just did to get this place ready to sell. I do want to sell it, though. Maybe I’ll hire somebody to do it. Money doesn’t seem that important. I don’t really have anything I want to do with it.

  Half an hour later, JD and Bobby returned with two large pizzas and the same bagful of snacks they had bought the last time.

  I’ll be glad when we move forward a little and events start to diverge. I feel like I’m caught in a Deja vu loop.

  Joe chose a spot on the couch, grabbed a slice, and settled in to watch the Sonics’ inevitable loss.

  Joe had done a lot of work on himself in his previous life that he didn’t need to repeat this time. He didn’t feel like he needed to go see Abigail Green. He tried going back to Al-Anon, but found that he was listening to the same stories from the same people he had heard not long before. After a few meetings, he drifted away and didn’t go back.

  He did call Debbie at the animal shelter and arranged to volunteer, though. He missed the dogs, and was glad when new ones appeared that he remembered from his last go-round. It was like meeting an old friend for the first time all over again.

  He decided to hire a handyman to do all the work he had done around the house in his previous life. He looked under “Handyman” in the Middle Falls phone book and was rewarded with zero names. There was a company listed under “Carpenters” though, so he gave the number a call and asked for an estimate.

  The next morning, an older man showed up in a small pick-up with “Rent-a-Husband” painted on the side.

  “I don’t actually need a husband,” Joe said, coming through the front door, “but I do have a honey-do list as long as your arm.”

  The man climbed out of the pickup and winced a bit. He was a shorter man, with a face reddened by long hours in the sun and the perpetual squint that goes with it.

  “That was my wife’s idea,” the handyman said, pointing to the sign. “Most of her ideas, like marrying me, are good ones, but they’re not all perfect. I’m Stan Fornowski, by the way. Why don’t you show me this honey-do list, and I’ll take a look at it.”

  Joe showed Stan all the jobs he had already done the lifetime before. Stan took his battered old hat off and scratched his thinning white hair. “That’s a pretty good list. I could get all that done for you in a couple of weeks. Gonna run ya about $400 in labor, plus whatever I have in materials, though.” He raised his eyebrows at that last, as though this young man may find that number exorbitant.

  “If you can get all this done in two weeks, I’ll pay you five hundred.”

  Stan raised his eyebrows, then asked, “Half up front?”

  “No,” Joe said. “I’ll pay four hundred up front, then give you the hundred if you get ‘er done in two weeks. How’s that sound?”

  “That sounds like you’re not much of a negotiator.”

  “That’s true!” Joe agreed with a smile.

  Joe hired Stan so he wouldn’t have to do it all himself, but on the very first day, when he saw him painting the garage, he couldn’t help himself. He changed into some old cut-offs and a white t-shirt, found a brush in the garage and went to help.

  When Stan saw him, he raised his eyebrows. “You know you’re paying me to do this, right, son?”

  “I know, but you make it look like so much fun, I can’t help it. You must have a little Tom Sawyer in you.”

  Stan chuckled, but didn’t answer. Once the garage was painted, it was only natural for them to move around to the main body of the house and continue painting.

  That’s funny. I couldn’t stand the idea of doing all this again by myself, but now that Stan’s here, I feel like I’ve got to help him. I don’t think it was doing the work again. It was just doing it by myself.

  With two of them working side by side, the work went quickly. In ten days, not two weeks, they had knocked off every item on the list, and half a dozen more that Stan had suggested. The house looked and felt better than it had the first time Joe had fixed things up.

  On the afternoon of the tenth day, as Stan was packing everything in the back of his little Courier pickup, Joe came out of the house with a Rainier beer and a hundred dollar bill. Stan accepted the Rainier and used an opener on his key chain to pop it open.

  “No beer for you? I’d say you’ve earned it.”

  “Nope.”

  “Good enough, then.”

  One beer probably wouldn’t hurt me, but after watching Mom die the way she did, I just don’t see the attraction.

  Joe watched Stan take a long, deep pull, smack his lips, and wipe his shirt sleeve across his mouth.

  “This is one of the oddest jobs I’ve ever done. I watched you work. You could have done every bit of it yourself, and saved the money.”

  “Not everything’s about money, is it?”

  “Amen, lad. You’re lucky to have figured that out so young.”

  “Speaking of which,” Joe said, handing over the hundred dollar bill.

  “No way I can take that. I would have been hard-pressed to make the deadline without your help. Put that back in your pocket.”

  “A deal’s a deal. I’m happy with what we’ve gotten done. The old place looks damn fine.” He held the bill out to Stan again.

  Finally, the older man took it, put it in his shirt pocket, and nodded his thanks.

  “I’ll tell you what. Me and the missus don’t get much in the way of company, but I’d like it if you’d come over for dinner tomorrow. That’ll give her a chance to complain that the house is a mess and spend twenty-four hours hunting down the last speck of dust.”

  Joe felt a little swell of happiness at the invitation. He nodded, and said, “You bet. I’d like that.”

  Stan took out a business card, wrote an address on it, and said, “We eat around six. Come hungry.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Joe felt nervous all day before going to dinner with Stan and Mrs. Fornowski. He tried to remember if he had ever gone to someone’s house for dinner, and came up blank. He considered calling and canceling more than once during the day, but knew he couldn’t do that to Stan and his wife.

  At 5:45, he jumped in the Olds, which looked like new once again, with no sign of having been tumbled by the volcanic eruption that loomed large in Joe’s memory. He knew the street the house was on, so only had to find the right address.

  It was no surprise to find that Stan’s house was an immaculate little cottage, painted white with blue trim. The cobbler’s children may have had no shoes, but Mrs. Fornowski obviously didn’t need to rent anyone else’s husband.

  Joe pulled into the small driveway, right behind Stan’s orange Courier pickup. He had wanted to bring a bottle of wine for dinner, but he knew the clerk at the liquor store would never sell it to him, so he settled on a spring bouquet from the florist.

  The door was open, with soft music coming from inside and an aroma that made Joe realize how hungry he was. Joe knocked, and a tall, attractive woman came to the door, smiling. “You must be Joe! How nice to have you here with us!”

  And you must be Mrs. Fornowski, but I never would have guessed. I had you pegged as more the Mrs. Claus-type, and here you are, looking like you stepped off the pages of Vogue.

  “Hello, Mrs. Fornowski, thank you for inviting me.”

  “Oh, no,” she said with a tinkling laugh. “No ‘Mrs. Fornowski’ for me. I’m Claire. Come in, come in.”

  Joe stepped through the door int
o a cozy living room. Two high-backed chairs were arranged against the far wall, facing the television.

  “Stan will be out in just a moment, he just got home from a job and needed a shower before dinner. I’ll get you a glass of lemonade.”

  Joe realized he was still holding the bouquet of flowers, and said, “Oh! These are for you.”

  “They’re lovely, Joe. Thank you. I’ll put them in some water, and they’ll be our centerpiece for the evening.”

  Claire bustled away in the direction of the heavenly smell just as Stan came around the corner, his wet hair slicked straight back. “Much better,” she said approvingly, giving him a peck on the cheek on the way by.

  “Thank you, mother,” Stan said. He did his best to appear exasperated by her, but couldn’t pull it off. “Hello, Joe, glad you made it here. I had this crazy thought that you don’t socialize much and might cancel on us.”

  “I can’t say I didn’t think about it!” Joe laughed. “My mom would have climbed out of her grave and smacked me for rudeness if I had, though. I don’t want that.”

  “No, we definitely don’t want that.”

  “Boys, come in to dinner, now,” Claire called from the back of the house.

  Dinner turned out to be beef stroganoff. Thick and rich, with thinly sliced mushrooms and beef, it was of the stick-to-your-ribs variety. After a green salad and two heaping platefuls of the stroganoff, Joe groaned. “If I ate like this every night, I wouldn’t fit through the door.”

  “Oh, we don’t eat like this every night, either. I work down at the library four days a week, so poor Stan gets hurry up meals more often than I would like. But, I hoped you saved room for some pie and ice cream.”

  “I am a teenage boy. I always have room for pie and ice cream,” Joe said with a smile. “Let me help you with the dishes now.”

  “Nope, that is not on the agenda. You and Stanley go out on the back patio. He has one of his horrible cigars he wants to smoke, and I won’t let him do it in my house.”

  Stan nodded in agreement, so they went out into the cooling night air. Mosquitos occasionally zapped their life away in the bug zapper, which reminded Joe of his last encounter with the little buggers.

  The backyard was surprisingly large, with almost a third of an acre of lush green grass, flowerbeds, and several outbuildings.

  Stan removed a cigar from his shirt pocket, inhaled deeply along its length, and smiled. Then he went about the ritual all cigar smokers know well, and which Joe found fascinating. Once it was properly lit, Stan took several puffs and leaned back in his lawn chair, quite satisfied with his kingdom that was contained inside a well-maintained six-foot cedar fence.

  The back yard was at least a quarter acre. Claire’s flower beds dominated the landscaping near the house. A small greenhouse, filled with pots, soil, and indeterminate plants, sat in one corner of the yard. In the other corner was a larger building that perfectly matched the color and trim of the main house. The building didn’t seem out of place, but it drew Joe’s attention nonetheless. He was about to ask about it when Stan Began speaking again.

  “I am happy to offer you a cigar, but something tells me you’re not a cigar kind of kid, are you?”

  “No,” Joe agreed, shaking his head. “But thank you.”

  “I have something else to offer you, though, and you might like it.”

  Joe’s eyebrows rose. He couldn’t imagine what it might be.

  “Sometimes I get jobs that are too big for one man, and I have to turn them down. From the way you negotiated with me, I will guess you’re not hurting for money. Be that as it may, I’m wondering if you would like to help me out from time to time. I can pay you four dollars an hour. It won’t be under the table, though. Claire is the bookkeeper, and she insists on everything being above board.”

  Joe didn’t answer immediately.

  I’ve got things coming up I want to do, but they are a ways off. I’m not going to bother to try and save JD and Bobby this time. I’m going to leave them to their fate. I don’t need the money, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need a job. Stan is a good man, and I could learn a lot from him.

  “Yes, I’d like that,” Joe said, quietly.

  Stan nodded. “It won’t be steady work, because I don’t get all that much work myself, but it’ll ease the load on myself a bit and I’ll share it with you wherever I can. Sometimes it’s on pretty short notice, though, because when a customer calls, it’s almost always an emergency.”

  “That’s okay. The only other thing I have to do is volunteer down at the animal shelter, and that’s completely flexible.”

  “There it is, then,” Stan mused. “I might have to change the logo on the truck to ‘Rent a husband, or a boy.’”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Without looking for one, or thinking he needed one, Joe had found a job. Stan had said he wouldn’t be able to keep him busy, but as it was mid-summer, they were in the middle of the handyman busy season. Joe believed that Stan brought him along on jobs where he wasn’t strictly needed, but it made things easier and the days passed by more quickly.

  On August 1, Joe put his house up on the market for the same price he had in his previous life. Once again, he got an offer he was happy with in short order. Even in the years of high interest rates, a recently-remodeled honey of a rambler is an easy sell.

  The day after he got the offer, he told Stan that all the good work they had done had paid off.

  “So, where you movin’ to, then?”

  “I thought I’d look at those apartments over at the River Crest, see what they look like.”

  “They look like a bunch of shoeboxes with tissue-thin walls, stacked one on top of the other.”

  Joe thought back on his brief stay in the Rivercrest in his previous life. Yeah, that’s pretty spot on.

  “Well, there’s not many options in Middle Falls, and I don’t want to move away.”

  Stan nodded. “You’re right, not a lot of apartments to choose from here in town. When we were sitting in my backyard after dinner the other night, did you see the building that’s in the back corner of the lot?”

  “Sure did. I wondered what it was, but I didn’t want to ask.”

  “It’s a mother-in-law apartment. I actually built it for my mother-in-law—funny how that works. It’s not big. A little under 500 square feet. It’s got a nice kitchen in it, though, and a Murphy bed. I built it myself, so it’s solid.”

  “And square, I’ll bet.”

  “Every angle, you bet your ass. Claire’s Mom lived in it for a few years, but she passed away last year, and now it just sits empty. I was wondering if you’d like to stay there.”

  “I’d like to see it, if we can come up with a fair rent.”

  “I was thinking $75 a month.”

  Joe shook his head with a small smile on his face. “No way. Can’t do it. Maybe $125.”

  “I don’t think you understand how this negotiating thing works, Joe.”

  After their job was done for the day, they drove back to Stan’s property. They went through the side gate so they didn’t track through Claire’s immaculate house. Stan fished a key out of his pocket and unlocked the dead bolt. It made a solid sound when he turned it, and he smiled at Joe.

  The inside of the little cottage was more spacious than Joe had anticipated. The fact that there was no bedroom made the single room spacious. There was a kitchen and eating area on one side and a good-sized living room on the other. And yes, every right angle was indeed square. The whole interior had a solid, homey feeling.

  “If the offer’s still open, I’d love it,” Joe said. “It’s got a good vibe.”

  Stan held the key out to him. “It’s yours from now on. Move in any time. We’ll start the rent on the first of the month. There’s an alley that runs behind the fence. You can park back there, and use the gate in the fence. That way Claire won’t keep too close an eye on your comings and goings.”

  Joe chuckled. “She’s welcome to watch
me as close as she wants, but I’m only likely to put her to sleep. I’m the most boring teenager in the world.”

  “That’s exactly why we invited you to live here.”

  TIME PASSED EASILY for Joe. He worked a few days each week with Stan, once again became a fixture at the animal shelter, and did everything he could do to prepare for his next big adventure. He wasn’t completely sure what skills he would need for that, so he did well-rounded research in weapons, guns, and self-defense, then hoped he would never need to use any of it. He got a membership at the YMCA to get in better shape and took self-defense classes one night a week.

  It won’t make me Bruce Lee, but hopefully I’ll be able to handle myself a little better.

  When Joe first woke up after being roasted by Mt. St, Helens, he had decided he would leave JD and Bobby to their own fates. He had done everything he could to rescue them. It had been for naught and he ended up dying himself.

  But, as the news reports about St. Helens rumbled back into his consciousness in the spring of 1980, Joe began to revisit the idea. Over time, it became less about JD and Bobby, and more about Merlin, Sapphire, and their kids.

  They listened. Yeah, they were taking a foolish chance by being there, but they heard me. They got out of blast radius and to safety. Or, at least I think they did. They weren’t there when we ran by on the way to our cars.

  As May 18 approached, Joe made up his mind to jump into the breach once more. That Friday, he went to the hardware store and bought a new flashlight, two packages of batteries, and two cans of mosquito repellent. He even took the Oldsmobile into the garage and had it given a once over.

  Not taking any chances, this time.

  He pulled out of the alley behind his house early that Saturday and repeated his drive up through Portland, into Washington. This time, he remembered to stop for a burger before he turned off onto Spirit Lake Highway. As he drove, he constantly caught glimpses of the mountain before it disappeared behind the hills again.