It wasn't until Friday
that Dave found out what his punishment would be. A truck arrived and
delivered a large trash bin, dropping it off in the Mancuso's back yard,
closest to the basement doors.
"Look at the size
of that thing!" Maia exclaimed. "I've never seen anything
that big before! What is it?"
Her twin brother, in a
superior voice replied, "We have them at school, silly. It's to put
lots of trash in. When it's filled the truck will come back and pick it up and
dump it."
Everyone looked at Cam
for an explanation.
"Dave here has
generously volunteered to clean our basement. Haven't you, David?"
Dave's mouth hung open
for a moment as he debated asking Cam for that whipping instead, but then his
curiosity got the better of him. He'd always wanted to rummage through
the basement, spiders or no spiders, and he grinned.
"Oh! Can I
help?!" Marcus cried, “You never let us play in the basement!"
"David won't be
playing, he'll be cleaning, and he's old enough to know what's dangerous
looking or not."
"Whoa,” Hunter
breathed. "Jeez Dave, you must have screwed up royally! Last
time dad gave me a nasty clean up job like that..."
"Hush you!"
Lissie said, brows furrowed, “What's going on with David and dad is their
business. Now unless you'd like to take charge of cleaning the garage
again, I suggest you mind your own business." She arched her
eyebrows significantly.
"Yes ma'am,” Hunter
said, a glint of mischief if his eyes as he looked at his friend. Dave
would tell him what was going on after Hunter got out of school.
When the kids were out
and the kitchen cleaned to it’s usual standards and Lissie had gone to work,
Cam up his arm companionably around Dave's shoulders and led him downstairs,
around to the left and into the darkest corner of the basement. He handed
the boy work gloves, goggles, and something that looked like a surgical mask
lined with paper towel.
"This is the worst
section, so it makes sense to start here. Hop to it!" He said,
handing the teen an old laundry basket and giving Dave a light swat to the
backside to get him started before leaving. "Don't forget we have the
early bird dinner shift! I'll call you in plenty of time to get washed
and changed." He grinned.
Dave sighed and turned
on the light, which did little to make the back room much brighter. He
shuddered at the sight of the wolf spiders, daddy long legs and spider egg sacs
that decorated the rafters. He searched around for bug spray but came up
with nothing more than cans of green spray paint and shellac. Armed with
those he went to work in the back room, painting and shellacking spiders and
sacks with abandon. He opened the small windows when the smell became too
strong for him and went to work knocking the petrified spiders and stiff webs
off of the rafters with a ceiling brush.
He found an old boom
box, plugged it in and tuned it to the most bearable station that would come
in. It was country music, but it wasn't that horrible, twangy, whiny
stuff he'd grown up on, and he found he rather liked it. He opened the
doors leading to the back yard and began to fill the dumpster with old, warped
furniture, broken bits, broom handles that no longer had brooms attached to
them. Bushel after bushel of broken drywall, wood, and chunks of broken
cinder block that to Dave's eye had come from nowhere in the basement.
Before his shift began,
Dave had the entire section of the basement done. He looked at it with
pride. He was sure that Cam and Lissie would find nothing to complain
about here. He wondered if they knew what they had stored down here, and
grinned to himself as he thought about the wonderful discoveries he'd made, and
his plans for them once he'd gotten the mess cleared up.
Before he knew it, Cam
was calling him to clean up. He dusted off his clothes, put them, the
gloves and the mask in the washer, then walked into the shower, loving the
warmth and grimacing as he noticed the grimy water circling the drain. He
couldn't help a laugh when he remembered some bit of trivia he'd heard about
how Alfred Hitchcock had used Hershey's chocolate syrup as the 'blood' in
the famous shower scene in Psycho. He should have just had Janet Leigh
clean out a basement beforehand, in black and white it would have given the
same effect.
"Come on, monello!
We have to get going soon!" Cam called down.
"Coming!"
Dave replied, feeling happier than he had in days.
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