Pros

by Doug Love

My fixer-upper buyers, Brad, Bob, and Bill crawled over, under, around and through a 1920’s “handyman’s dream,” a two-story house they were in the process of buying. Today was inspection day, and as fate would have it, the hottest day of the year.

I leaned against a side fence in the shade, perspiring and panting after helping Bill raise his extension ladder to the attic access door up in the gable end of the weathered old house.

A voice from behind me said, “I hope those boys know what they’re doin’ buyin’ that old piece of junk.”

With effort, I turned around, wiped the sweat from my eyes, and looked over the fence to see a large man wearing cut-off jeans, work boots and a Caterpillar cap.

“Oh, they know what they’re doing. These guys are pros,” I said.

“Then they’ll know better than to turn the power on before they .…“ Blam! An electrical explosion that sounded like a lightning strike came from the direction of the garage at the back of the property. “…check for rusted fuses and loose electrical wires.”

Sparks shot from a frayed old electrical wire draped across the metal garage roof.

Bob ran out the back door yelling “Kill the juice! Kill the juice!” Bill poked his head out the attic access door like a turtle, with pink bits of insulation stuck in his hair. Brad ran around yelling “Where’s the power box? Where’s the power box?”

The big man in the Caterpillar cap appeared on the scene, striding purposefully to the sidewall of the fixer-upper. He calmly found the power box, and killed the juice.

“Pros, huh?” he muttered.

Three hours later, inspection day was ending. Bob, Brad, and Bill staggered out of the house dirty, streaked with sweat, and overheated.

“One last thing,” said Bob. He turned on the swamp cooler mounted on the front wall of the house. It vibrated and squealed and tumbled off the front wall of the house like a dropped safe. Its waterline snapped creating a great fountain arching over the front yard, cascading down like a waterfall.

The big man in the Caterpillar cap appeared again, rolling by in his pickup truck just in time to see Bob, Brad, Bill, and me whooping and jumping about in the spray shooting from the wall of the house. The big man slowly shook his head.

If I read his lips right, he muttered, “Pros, huh?”