At 7:00 am Charlie calls in sick, rolls over and goes back to sleep. I’m getting ready to go to the gym then sit with perfect people and feel bad about myself. They call it Bible Study. I call it patience. I hear a knock at the front door.

<>“Can I work?” the Country boy says. “The school says I can get credit if you fill out these papers.”

“You can always work,” I say. “You know what to do.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen the list.”

<>Charlie got up about an hour or so after I left. He’s in the bathroom trying hard not to be sick. He looks out the window and sees the Country boy pushing around the unstarted rototiller.

“What are you doing?” he yells.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“Hang on.”

Charlie managed to recover long enough to go outside and start it right up. This happens every time. “Don’t mess with the adjustments,” Charlie says, but he does. Last time Charlie had to come home on his lunch break to start it. The Country boy floods it every time.

Within a half an hour, the Country boy comes in. “I ran over a pipe,” he says. “It’s open and you can see down there. It really stinks.”

“Hmm,” Charlie says. “Open pipe . . . stinky . . . you think you hit the septic pipe?” He goes outside to check.

The Country boy sticks his nose down close to the pipe. “That really smells,” he says.

“Septic systems usually do.” Charlie noticed it looked pretty full. When we started demolishing the downstairs, we found dried toilet paper everywhere. Not a good selling feature. There’s one more thing to put on the list.

“I have papers to fill out,” the Country boy said. “The school will give me credit for working for you.”

“I’ll fill them out once you start working.”

<>“Hey, I’ve been working.”

“I’m paying you for flooding the rototiller and destroying the septic tank pipe?”

<>He went back and finished rototilling the front yard in about a half an hour. He came inside and said, “Make me some sandwiches.”

“I’ve never heard of an employer providing an employee’s lunch every day. It’s only 10:30 am,” Charlie said, “but okay.”Charlie made sandwiches then went back to watching the History Channel. The Country boy sits down next to him and eats his lunch. When he’s done, the Country boy continues to enthusiastically watch TV.

Charlie doesn’t notice much, as he’s sick, but he does notice the Country boy is enjoying the History channel a lot more than enjoying work.

“You’re not?”

“You must be easily distracted if you’re this excited about ‘the History of Cannons.’”

“It has fertilizer in it,” Charlie says. “It might irritate your hands, especially if you have cuts or anything. I’ll get you the spreader.”

“I’m not using this,” the Country boy says when he sees the little spreader. “It’s wimpy. I’ll do it by hand.”

“Told you,” Charlie says.

“I think I’ll paint.”

“Good idea.”

I came home with Taco Bell for Charlie and the Country boy.

“Sure.”

“He just ate two big sandwiches,” Charlie said. “The thought of eating all that would make me sick if I wasn’t already.”

“Two lunch breaks and it’s not even 1 pm?” Charlie asks him.

“They ask us to pray for their kids going off to College. I’ve got two kids who were in Gifted and Talented programs but didn’t graduate from High school.

“I’ve got Jenn living with us who was a meth, coke and alcohol addict. She’s worked solid since she was 16 but never made more than $800 a month. Now she’s pregnant, unmarried and has to figure out how to support herself and a baby on that."

“Oh by the way, her semi-ex boyfriend lives in the Sunset Transit Center and she doesn’t think anyone else would want her because she has twenty tattoos. You want to pray for me? Where do I start?”

“I got kicked out of my church because someone told the Pastor I was making out with his daughter,” the Country boy said. “He invited me back when the hearsay wasn’t true, but I was so frustrated I punched two holes in my Mom’s apartment wall.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t hit a stud,” Charlie said.

“At least you’re still praying,” Charlie said. “You might want to pray for the vegan. I found an old Auto Trader ‘For Sale’ sign, a big yellow one. The vegan came home early from school to go skateboarding.

<>“I wrote, ‘For Sale $1, Call 555-I'M GAY’ and put the sign on the rear window. I thought he would notice, but he didn’t. I haven’t seen him since.

“By now he’s driven up to the Skatepark and everyone there must have noticed his big yellow sign.”

“His car’s probably gone with a dollar in the parking spot,” the Country boy said.

<>“I’m not paying you to make fun of my laugh.”

“You’re not?”

The Country boy got up and went back up on the ladder to paint under the eaves.

“F*ck you guys!” the vegan yelled. He threw the ripped up ‘For sale’ sign at Charlie and stomped up to his room.

The Country boy, seeing another excuse to stop working, came down from the ladder. Charlie’s laughing so hard he’s holding his stomach, trying not to be sick.

“I’ve never seen him mad like that,” the Country boy said.

<>I notice the Country boy has a good coating of buttercream-colored outside paint frosting his hair.

“You look like Lt. Dangle from Reno 911,” I say. “All you need is a mustache."

“It’d better come off,” he said. He ran up to the bathroom mirror to look.

Charlie went up to the vegan’s room. He had his door locked. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you’d notice before you left.“ Charlie held out his hand to shake.

“That’s okay,” the vegan said.

“I’m not paying you to relax,” Charlie said.

“Oh, this’ll be good,” Charlie said.

The vegan works for an hour, tops. That’s all he can stand to do for his own family at his own house for his own gas money. One would think the Country boy would be a positive influence on the vegan’s duration of work. One would be stupid.

Exactly one hour later, the Country boy and the vegan disappeared. They left everything on the ground, so Charlie once again had to go find them and tell them to clean up. They got the hose and sprayed the brushes and rollers and each other. This pushed the vegan to finally change out of his good clothes. There wasn’t a spot of buttercream on him anywhere.

For the next hour or two, they stayed in the vegan’s room with the door closed. The vegan’s room is right next to the bathroom where Charlie eventually became ill and wasn’t quiet about it. If the Country boy and the vegan were outside working, they wouldn’t have heard anything.

Instead, the Country boy got school credit for hearing his employer barfing in the bathroom. That might have been the hardest work he did all day.

A little help? [] 12:07:21 PM