They were delivered on a Friday. The next morning Archer awoke to find the bed beside him empty. He got up, washed, dressed, and wandered through the house looking for Llona. He found her out in the backyard.
She had set up a tall ladder which reached to the flat roof of the house. As Archer came out, she was halfway to the ladder, balancing a basket and climbing shakily. The basket was loaded with squares of tile.
“What are you doing?” Archer inquired.
“I’m bringing the tile up to the roof so I can start working on it.”
Areher looked at the stacks of tiles which had been delivered. They covered the patio and were piled up waist-high. “You mean you’re going to carry them all up the ladder?” he asked. “It’ll take you all year. You’ll be an old lady by the time you’re through. An old lady with a broken back.”
“You want to do it?”
“Hell no!”
“Then shut up and stop making snide remarks.”
“But you’re going about it ridiculously.”
“Oh? Well, maybe I should just stand down there and toss them up on the roof one-by-one. How would that be?”
“Just about your speed.”
“Well, just what would you suggest?”
Archer stood a moment, appraising the situation and scratching his head. Then he snapped his fingers. “Simple,” he decided. “Just old-fashioned Amurrican ingenuity. Come on down off that ladder and leave it to Thomas Alva Hornsby.”
Stubbornly, Llona climbed the rest of the way to the roof and deposited her tiles there. Then she climbed down and stood, hands on hips, and looked at Archer. Her posture said she was skeptical and waiting to be shown.
Archer showed her. He went to the garage and rolled out a small barrel. He fetched a couple hundred feet of strong rope from the basement. Finally he came up with a pulley wheel.
With Llona watching, he moved the ladder until it lined up with an overhanging eave at the corner of the roof. Then he climbed to the top of the ladder and investigated the beam which jutted out from the side of the building to support the cave. There was just enough room between the beam and the eave for his purposes.
Archer came down the ladder, collected the pulley wheel, a pair of metal braces, a hammer, and some very large nails. He went up again and secured the pulley wheel to the beam, making sure it could turn freely in the space between the beam and the overhanging eave. Then he fetched the rope, strung it through the groove in the pulley wheel, and let both ends fall to the ground below.
On the ground again, he cut off some of the rope and fashioned it into a harness which he attached to the barrel. Then he tied one of the ends of the pulley rope to the harness. Pulling on the other end of the rope, he pulled the empty barrel up to the roof. He lopped off the excess rope, leaving enough to tie the end of the pulley rope to the back doorpost cemented into the patio.
Archer moved the ladder out of the way of the pulley set-up and propped it against the house. “Up you go,” he instructed Llona. As she was climbing he lowered the barrel to the ground and started filling it with tiles. When it was full, he hauled the barrel up to the roof and secured the other end of the rope to the doorpost. “You empty it, baby,” he called.
Llona removed the tiles and stacked them on the roof. Archer lowered the barrel and they repeated the process. It took them most of the day, but in this fashion they moved all the tiles to the roof.
The next day they started laying the tiles. Monday Archer went to work and Llona continued the job by herself. She had to fit it in between her other household tasks and it took her about three weeks to complete the project.
Now it was done, and the bikini-clad Llona stood on the roof muttering at herself for having ordered too many tiles. Diverted now from her anger at the Air Force training plane which had so rudely buzzed her, she set about gathering up the excess tiles and stacking them on the roof near the beam where the pulley wheel was secured. When this was completed, she climbed down the ladder and pulled the empty barrel up to the roof. She secured the other end to the doorpost, climbed back up the ladder, and started loading the excess tiles into the barrel. There was really an overflow, but Llona stubbornly insisted on jamming all the tiles into the barrel so that she wouldn't have to make more than one more trip down the ladder. It wasn’t easy, but she managed to cram in all the extra tiles.
Back down on the ground, Llona untied the other end of the pulley rope from the doorpost, preparatory to lowering the tile-filled barrel to the ground. But Llona had overlooked two factors: the overloaded barrel was much heavier now than it had been when Archer had packed it more sensibly and hauled the tiles up to the roof; and Llona herself weighed about fifty pounds less than Archer did.
The disparity became immediately obvious. As Llona released the rope from the doorpst, it jerked hard. She had to struggle to hold onto it—-which may have been her second mistake. The barrel started down and Llona started up. Slowly at first, but then both picked up speed.
Halfway up the side of the house, Llona and the barrel met. Descending at a nice clip, the barrel was slowed by the contact just long enough to tangle with Llona’s arms and legs. Panicky, she pushed it away from her. With it went both parts of her and a fair amount of scraped skin.
Now the barrel hurled toward the ground. Naked, Llona shot toward the roof. Both reached their destinations simultaneously.
Llona cracked her head on the overhanging roof eave. The barrel crashed to the cemented patio and its bottom split open, spewing tiles. With the tiles pry longer in the barrel, the Law of Gravity swung into reverse. Llona was now heavier than the barrel.
She started downward like a dropped stone. The empty barrel hurtled upward. This time when they were parallel, she desperately tried to reach out to grab it, hoping to slow her descent. It didn’t work. The barrel claimed some more skin as it proceeded up the length of her naked body, but it kept right on going.
The unlucky nude hit the ground hard. An Air Force training plane zoomed very low and almost crashed into the Hornsby clothesline as the pilot confirmed to himself that the shapely lady was indeed bluejay-naked. That was the last thing Llona remembered. The landing had jarred her and she had let go of. the rope. The result was that the barrel came crashing down and bopped her smack on the top of her curly blonde head!
Llona was just coming out of it when Archer arrived home to find her sprawled out naked in the backyard. “Christ, Llona!” He lit onto her angrily. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Nude sunbathing where the whole goddam Air Force can see you!”
“I wasn’t sunbathing,” she said groggily.
“No? Well what do you call it? A USO burlesque show?”
“Please, Archer. I have a terrible headache.”
“You do? Well what about those poor pilots? Think of the headaches they must have from eyestrain! Just what the hell did you think you were doing?!”
“Not what you think,” Llona told him weakly. She went on to explain what had happened. “And now I have this headache,” she concluded. “You bastard! Stop laughing!”
“I’m sorry, honey. It’s just—” Archer started laughing again. When he was finally able to stop, he took out a handkerchief and wiped the tears from his eyes. “I am sorry. But you have to admit it’s pretty ludicrous. I mean the picture of you --”
“I hurt my head!” Llona said angrily. “Instead of standing there cackling like an idiot, you‘ should be taking me to a doctor!” She stamped her foot, her face went suddenly vague, and she fainted.
Archer rushed her to the doctor. “Concussion,” the doctor diagnosed. “She'll be feeling faint and weak for a few days, but it will go away."
It didn’t go away. A week later Lona was feeling worse than she had when the accident first occurred. Over her “mad” at Archer, and not wanting to worry him, she consulted the doctor on her own. He recommended a specialist. Llona also went to see the specialist without telling Archer.