He lumbered about the cabin like a bulldozer, checking exposed wires, knocking over furniture, frightening the Siamese. “You got cats,” he observed as they flew about the rafters. “With this kind of wirin” they could electrocute themselves.”
Qwilleran clenched his teeth and kept his mouth shut.
Just before leaving, the electrician said, “Who’s the carpenter out there? One of them hoboes? Don’t know why you summer people hire them bums. I was wirin” a garage for some folks down the shore, and the damn carpenter stole my tools and took off! I ain’t got no use for carpenters. Plumbers, they’re okay, but carpenters! If I was president, I’d have “em all shot at sunrise!”
Shortly afterward it started to rain, and Iggy had an excuse to quit for the day. His teeth flashed a thank-you when Qwilleran paid up, and he headed toward the rattling gypsy wagon that served as a truck.
“Wait a minute!” Qwilleran yelled. “You didn’t put the boards under cover!”
“Won’t do the suckers NO HARM,” said Iggy.
“Nevertheless, I want the siding INSIDE!”
Iggy finished his cigarette, flipped the butt on the ground, and carried the lumber into the new wing.
“Koko, you and I are the only sane ones left,” Qwilleran said when the carpenter’s truck had coughed and exploded its way down the drive. “And it won’t be long before I go off the deep end.”
Koko was prowling irrationally, as he did before a violent storm, and his instincts were on target. High winds soon lashed the lake into a fury. Trees bent to the ground, and even the tall pines swayed alarmingly. The cabin windows were drenched with rain, July hail pelted the roof, and sheets of water blew through the new addition, only half of which was sided. Then a black cloud looming over the dune dumped bolts of lightnirig and volleys of thunder. The entire cabin shuddered, and … the submersible pump stopped pumping.
So, it was back to the telephone. “Mrs. Glinko, this is Qwilleran.”
“Don’t tell me! Somethin” blew out!”
“Whatever. All I know is-we’re not getting any water.”
“Drink beer. Ha ha ha.”
“No jokes, please.”
“Allrighty. Keep your hair on. We’ll dispatch somebody.”
As Qwilleran was scurrying about with bath towels, mopping up the horizontal downpour that forced its way through closed doors and windows, Arch Riker phoned from Pickax and asked casually, “Getting any rain up there?” !
“Rain! We’re inundated!” Qwilleran said. “The lake’s rising! Tree branches are dropping like bombs! And the pump has conked out. The plumber’s on the way over here. We’ve already had the electrician and the chimney sweep today … I don’t know, Arch. I’ve had it with country living. I’m ready to throw in the towel.”
“How’s your building project progressing?”
“In slow motion. It’s a long story. I could cheerfully murder the guy who’s working on it now.”
“Can you stand some good news?” asked the editor. “The whole staff thinks your copy for the weekend edition is great stuff-especially the story about the old lady and her cat. It’s better than fiction. Why don’t you do more memoirs?”
“I knew I’d wind up on the geriatric beat,” Qwilleran said sourly.
“It was your choice,” Riker reminded him. “You could have been an investigative reporter Down Below, but you opted for Pickax and the Klingenschoen bucks.”
“Why don’t you get the Historical Society to do oral histories for you?’”
“Because you do “em better.”
“Well, I can’t talk now, Arch. Here comes the plumber.”
Joanna swaggered into the cabin in her heavy boots. “Your pump get hit?’”
“I don’t know. You’re the plumber. All I know is-there’s no water.”
“Prob’ly burned out the motor.” She kicked aside the mudrug, swung open the heavy trapdoor as if it were a cereal boxtop, and disappeared into the crawl space. Minutes later she emerged from the lower depths, covered with cobwebs.
“Gotta go and get something,” she said. She drove away mysteriously, returned with whatever it was, sank down under the floor once more, and soon shouted, “Try the tap!”
Water gushed from the faucet, and Qwilleran was grateful. Unlike Iggy, Joanna had done the work with no stalling, no mistakes, no excuses, no mumbling, no cigarette butts. Then she surprised him by saying, “I haven’t seen Clem lately.
He did the drains under the new place. Want me to do the finish plumbing?”
“It sounds like a good idea, but I have a different builder now. I’ll mention it to him when he comes tomorrow,” Qwilleran said. But Iggy did not report the next day … nor the next … nor the next.
CHAPTER 11.
A DAY WITHOUT Iggy should have blessed the cabin with tranquility, but Qwilleran felt only anxiety when the carpenter failed to appear on Friday morning. Where was he? Why had he not returned? Would he ever return? The skeleton of the east wing was rain-soaked and forlorn. Qwilleran spent the morning glancing frequently at his watch and listening for the explosive arrival of Iggy’s truck, but he found the woods surrounding the cabin disappointingly quiet except for peeps amd chirps, buzzing and chattering, as birds, insects, and small animals went about their daily business, whatever it might be; Qwilleran did not pretend to know.
Following the storm of the night before, the wind had subsided and the lake was settling down. The woods still had the verdant aroma of a rain forest; trees were dripping, the ground was scattered with fallen tree branches, but the sun was making an effort to shine through a milky sky.
Qwilleran was in no mood to write. He passed the time by picking up the storm’s debris-piling large branches behind the toolshed and breaking twigs into suitable lengths for fireplace kindling. The carpenter had left scraps of shingles strewn about the property, and Qwilleran stacked them in neat piles along with their discarded wrappers. Every time a heavy truck rumbled down the distant highway he stopped to listen, regretting that he had spoken harshly to Iggy.
In midday, before he had taken time to drive into Mooseville, he was surprised to receive a phone call from Nick Bamba. “Say, Qwill, do you know you’re blockaded?”
“Blockaded! What do you mean?”
“I just drove past your place, and there’s a big tree down across your driveway.
Also, the K sign has blown away.”
“That explains it!”
“Explains what?”
“It’s like this,” Qwilleran said. “I was expecting a workman, but he didn’t show up today. It’s obvious now that his truck couldn’t get through.”
“But wouldn’t he call you?”
“Not this one! He wouldn’t have the common sense, or he wouldn’t have the coins to put in the phone box. And without the K on the post, I doubt whether he could even find the driveway. It took him half a day to find the lumberyard, and they have a sign that’s ten feet high. So thanks for telling me about the tree, Nick.”
“That’s okay, Qwill. Here’s Lori. She wants to talk to you.”
Lori Bamba was not only Qwilleran’s part-time secretary; she was his advisor in matters pertaining to cats. She had three of her own, and Koko and Yum Yum knew it. Whenever she telephoned, Koko sensed who was on the line. Now he jumped on the bar and purred throatily.
“Hello, Lori,” said Qwilleran. “Koko wants to say a few words.”
He held the receiver to the cat’s head, and there were yowls and musical yiks and cadenzas that Lori seemed to understand.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Qwilleran said, pushing Koko away. “What’s on your mind, Lori?”