Storage

I apply a cold washcloth to the back of Danny’s head as he whimpers into the bathroom mirror. “Read a book and hold this on your head,” I say, and then work on the yard. I push the mower at northwest-to-southeast angles, mulch bag attached. Next I put on my leather gloves and pace the lawn for outlaw leaves, bending and squinting down, parting the stubbly grass blades with a forefinger. When I spot a diced leaf-fragment, I snag it like an eagle spearing a trout and deposit it in a garbage bag in my left hand. Next, I move toward the three pine trees that flank the side of the house on the corner, the side that faces me. My three pine trees are rooted in circular rock gardens, which I cleanse of leaf fragments, and then I strain leaves from the gutter. I sit on the curb, ass on shaved lawn and boots in the street, reaching down between my legs to haul up sopping leaf clumps before they clog the street drain. A guy can never be too careful. The last time I let the gutters go, I had to have the basement floor drain snaked. The utility room flooded like a trailer park.

 

Dad had two of everything in his garage—lawn mowers, weed eaters, power washers, paint guns, air compressors. He had smaller junk, too, like tools and boat-parts, life cushions, depth finders, fishing pole, and spread stuff like bolts, wire spools, trailer hitches, out on workbenches and rusted metal shelves that he spray-painted gray. He liked to see his stuff without having to dig through shit, everything in plain view: nuts and bolts, trailer hitch balls, electrical outlets, plumbing pipes.

“You need storage bins,” I told him a week before he died when we were in the garage getting bungee cords to tie down the wood-chipper in the trailer I’d brought over to help him clear some brush and chip garden mulch.

“I hate digging through bins,” he said. “I don’t have time for that shit.”

“A lot of storage bins are transparent,” I said, while scanning a tool-wall covered with metal saws, screwdrivers, pliers, rolls of electrical, masking and duct tape.

“I know it,” he said, “but I’d rather see what I need without all that shit in the way.”

 

I’ve been remodeling our split-level rambler where we sit up on a rise and look almost straight out over into a cul-de-sac that’s called by all the folks who live there “The Sac.” Most of my containers are polyethylene. Right now I’m converting our basement into a playroom. I’m building a storage shelf system from one-by-twelve pine planks in order to accommodate the largest bins, one of which will house Danny’s Hot Wheels race track and another a Hot Wheels train set and a bin of Thomas the Tank Engine toys: cases of die-cast trains and track; wooden trains and track; a depot. He doesn’t play with these anymore so when we have time, my wife says she’ll set up an eBay account.

At the funeral home, I arranged for the funeral, and from the laminated three-ring binder that the funeral director handed me, I chose a pine casket stained almost red. This casket would then fit into a large rectangular cement container. The pine still smelled wet and fresh like it was just cut. I don’t like thinking about the tomb, but that’s what it is. Call it what it is. Instead of the body going into the earth, it liquifies. I don’t know what happens after that.

 

Since we moved in here six years ago, just before Danny was born, I replaced the door locks, installed a new garage door opener, dishwasher, garbage disposal and under-sink water filter, painted the kitchen, living room, dining room, both bathrooms; wallpapered both kids’ rooms and decorated both with wild jungle themes, complete with a rainforest mural of monkeys and curly green snakes that fills three full walls airbrushed by my wife’s friend who has a B.A. in fine arts and works as a receptionist at Land O’Lakes; replaced the kitchen counter tops with marble, replaced the linoleum kitchen floor with hardwood, laid new carpet in the dining room and living room and upstairs hallway that connects the bedrooms; painted the house exterior a darker beige; finished drywalling the garage interior, dug up a twelve-by-ten section of the lawn for a garden, which I later tilled, dug down further, walled with landscaping logs and poured in fifty bags of white sand for a kid’s sandbox; next I built a fire pit in the yard, and I’m just now finishing the basement playroom with wall-to-wall storage shelves.

 

After I get done with the lawn, I powerwash the deck and manage to clean the top portion. Then I clean up and take Danny to Dairy Queen. On the way we stop at Menards for a particular hose adapter so I can fix the leak in my power washer, and on the way home, pick up a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken from Rainbow Foods and eat the bird on the deck and look at the clouds for a minute. Danny goes off to his room to play PS2. My wife is at her sister’s scrapbooking. The boxes with the detachable lids are the best even though more elaborate models now exist with attached lids, the advantage of which is that they do not get detached and lost. However, I like the option of completely removing the lid should I choose to.

Five hours before he died, Dad said, “I need my teeth.” His lips curled over his gums, flapping in and out with the pressure from the breathing machine. He’d called an ambulance the day before after stomach pain made him fall off his deck and break four ribs on a retaining wall that I just put in last summer. “I need them for the morning,” he said, “or I can’t eat the toast.”

 

Since Dad was Catholic, we had the nurse call in a priest. The one on-call was a short fat guy with a high-pitched voice like Doogie Howser M.D. He stood on the other side of the bed and said, “Hi, Chester, I’m Father Lyle.” He yelled like Dad had a hearing problem.

At 11:21 p.m., the doctor called the front desk and asked for me. He asked if I wanted any “extra measures.” We pulled the tubes and gave him more morphine and turned down the lights and listened to him breathe. Then I kissed his cold forehead and heard a sound deep in his lungs, a long sandpapery breath like the white noise from a radio between stations. It came from somewhere deeper than the lungs. I held hands with my sister and the priest, each of whom held hands with Dad. When we hit the Lord’s Prayer, I moved my lips. The last thing Dad said was, “I’m nervous,” and the nurse said, “I can take care of that, Chester,” shaking a transparent vial of morphine like a dealer.

I sit on the deck and drink coffee. I can’t total it all. The clouds look like clouds. If Dad were looking down on me, which he’s not, he wouldn’t like to see me crying. It’s a safety issue. Wear your protective goggles, never drink before work, go easy on the coffee, get plenty of sleep, keep your personal life out of the house you’re working on. Since I’ve got a couple hours alone, I’m going to put the new attachment on the pressure washer and finish cleaning the deck before the sun goes down.

Scott Wrobel has published or has forthcoming stories and essays in Identity Theory, Night Train, Pindeldyboz, Great River Review, and Minnesota Monthly, among other publications; he is also the recipient of a 2006-7 Loft Mentor Series Award. “Storage” comes from the soon-to-be-completed book, Cul De Sac: Stories about Suburban Guys. Visit www.scottwrobel.com for more information on the mysteries of power-washing stain off of decks.

 


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