Welcome back! So good to see you again…
FIVE
Ten days had passed before Will got a phone call from Bertie Blom. He was torn between tears of joy and answering with a demand of, “What took you so goddamn long?”
He settled himself before simply saying, “Hello.”
“Mr. Holliday?”
“Will,” he corrected, then added, “Please.”
“If I’m your employee,” Will heard back, “it’s going to be ‘Mr. Holliday.’”
Will couldn’t tell by the tone of his voice if the man was serious or not. He didn’t ask.
“The well is going in this afternoon, the septic system should be good to go by the end of the week.” He heard Blom clearing his throat, then: “With your consent, of course.”
“Yes,” Will said. “Good god, yes.” He was now fairly sure Blom was yanking his chain.
“Were you aware the waste line was emptying straight into the river?”
Will did not. It came as a bit of a shock. “Guess that’s why I was never allowed to play in it,” he said.
“One good reason, I suppose,” Blom told him. “There’s also been a contractor down there a couple of times. He looked it over top to bottom and said he can have a crew all set and ready the minute he gets your ‘go ahead.’”
“Do you know the guy?” Will asked. Under the conditions he’d laid out he wasn’t sure if he had any right to sound picky. But, he was standing at the edge of the tee box of the seventh hole, waiting for the foursome ahead of him to tee off. It had him looking straight at the hotel. The view suggested it was time he learned about running with the first idea that jumped into his head.
“Not well enough to invite myself to dinner,” Blom said, “but enough to tell you I’ve never heard a single complaint about the work he’s done, and he’s done plenty.”
“Then by all means, go ahead.”
“He should be able to get at it tomorrow,” Blom told him. “He said he was pretty clear about what you’re asking for, but he also had a couple of questions.”
“Fire away,” Will told him.
“Well, Mister Holliday, he didn’t leave them with me. I apologize.” Will was going to ask him, “Apologize for what?” but Blom kept talking. “If you’re comfortable with it, Mister Holliday, may I forward him your telephone number? Of course, should you wish to protect your privacy and prefer I remain your liaison, I completely understand and will be delighted to remain so, at your pleasure.”
Fuckin’ A. “Have him call me.”
“As you wish, Mister Holliday.”
Will was about to hang up, when he heard, “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mister Holliday?”
“No.”
“Very good, sir. Enjoy the rest of your day. I will try not to disturb you.”
The group ahead of him were piling into their carts. “Great. Thanks.” His thumb was on the “end call” button when Blom added. “It’s you who should be thanked, Mister Holliday. This opportunity to have earned your trust has meant a great deal to me.”
Will killed the call, quite sure he wasn’t risking offense.
Will didn’t speak to Blom again. He did however, speak to the contractor. The man called him less than an hour later, catching Will during his ride back to the hotel. His name was Ken. Ken was all business.
“How far do you plan to take this project?” Was the first thing he heard, and before he’d even learned the man’s name.
“Pardon?”
“Is this Will Holliday?” The man was so brusque and so the antithesis of Blom that Will could only stammer out an affirmative. “How far do you plan to take this?”
It wasn’t so much a question as a demand. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I hope you’re sure about something…”
Was he getting scolded?
“…because if you’re not sure of how far you want to take this project, we can save me some time and you a shitload of money.”
“No, uh…” Will was at the entry to the hotel. He fumbled in his pocket at the hotel door, trying to fish out a five for the driver. All he had was a ten. The bellboy had already come out and snatched his bag from the back of the cart. He was waiting for him at the door. The driver sat in the idling golf cart, pretending to be watching something going on in the parking lot. It appeared he’d set some dubious precedents. “Gimme a sec, please, just a second.”
Will told the cart jockey to wait a minute, not that he was giving any indication of leaving, and strode up to the bellboy. He held the bill up, but made no motion of handing it over. “Split that with your motorized colleague, there. If you can’t do it fifty-fifty, then it’s all his.” The bellboy shouldered the bag and lurched off to the cart, taking the bill from Will’s hands. Will put his ear back to the phone.
“You read what I put down at Blom’s, right?” he asked.
“I did.”
“I can explain further, if you need it.”
“I just want to know if you’re half-assing this job or are intending to see it through.” Will pulled the phone away from his face. What? “Are you there?”
“Yeah…”
“This isn’t the first time some guy’s come up from the Cities, sees a great deal on a rundown place and decides it’s the bumpkin’s life for him,” Will heard. “Country life, fresh air, wide open spaces and he won’t be listening to sirens all night. What a great place to raise the family! I’ll work from home! All that crap. About two months into fixing it up, and now all he can smell is cow shit and fertilizer. He’s still got to go into the office once a week, and drive an hour to see a movie or get a cocktail with more than three ingredients, and what’s he going to do in a blizzard? The neighbors are running the biggest meth lab between Sioux Falls and Minneapolis, have five crazy dogs and like to burn shit. The bored as hell local kids think his mailbox makes for great target practice. So, the For Sale sign’s back up—and will be ‘til the next decade. If I’m lucky I settle for twenty cents on the dollar.”
Well, then. “It’s not like that,” Will told him. “I own it, outright. It’s been paid for almost one hundred years. It’s my grandparents place. Bertie told me you’ve been out there already. If you don’t think I’m serious, you didn’t look upstairs. You’d have to think I’m some kind of goddamn moron if you believe I knocked all that shit down for fun. If you’re worried about getting paid, well, one, you’ve got my word. Two, I’ll give you a number to Don at the Venlo bank. There’s an account set up for the house. It’s worth three times more than the place is worth if I sold it tomorrow. If my word’s not good enough, you talk to him. I’ll give him the go ahead and he’ll tell you how much is in there. If you won’t take my word for it, or a check from me, I’ll make it so he pays you. How’s that for ‘how far I want to take it’?”
It was quiet at the other end for a moment. Then Will heard, “I’ll take your checks. Glad to hear it. That place ought to be put back into shape.”
The contractor went on to inform Will that he could do what he’d gotten from Bertie. Getting running water into the kitchen and downstairs bedroom wouldn’t be all that difficult, but if Will was going to rehabilitate the entire house, it would be better, and less expensive, if he were given a green light to continue with plumbing and wiring the upstairs. “We can cap it all off,” he told Will. “When the time comes, it’ll be just a matter of hooking it up, plumbing and the electricity.”
While the man went on about windows, roofing, tuck pointing, Will’s mind drifted. He’d just committed himself. How’d that happen? What he’d been telling himself about “seeing this thing through” had never made it out of his head, which meant he’d reserved the option to bail out at any time. Now he’d just declared his earnest intent, and even fibbed to convince this stranger. That “account set up for the house” was just his checking account.
The man was still talking, but Will had completely lost track. “Sir,” he interrupted. It broke the flow.
“Sir? It’s Ken, Ken Maartens.” ‘
“Sure, Ken, everything you’re saying makes perfect sense. Run with it.”
“And the crew for crap upstairs?”
“’Upstairs . . .?”
“Like I was just telling you,” Will was told—again, apparently–, “I got offered the use of a clean-up crew if I took this job” – Will couldn’t recall making any mention of a clean-up crew, must be Blom’s work— “they can get going on cleaning out the demo crap upstairs right away. They’re operating apart from me, like I said. You’d be paying them separate. It just comes down to what your priority is, time, or money.”
Will was getting confused. “Uh… time.”
“Good enough. I’ll be in contact pretty regular.” Ken was gone.
Will looked at his phone for a minute. He felt an odd sensation that was a mix of elation and despair. He didn’t want to fixate on it too much, lest that pendulum stop swinging on the wrong end of the spectrum.
When he entered the hotel, the bellboy was standing with his bag, ready to go up to the room. Will found this aggravating. “Still here?” The young man nodded. “Run it up, why don’t you? Badger housekeeping to let you in, or kick down the door…” He stood in the lobby until the kid was on the elevator, then he was off to the bar. He had some thinking to do.
Moving along, yep. Building up to a surprise Chapter 5 finish! Hang on t’yer seats…