Homefires Read online

  HOMEFIRES

  Joyce C. Ware

  Chapter One

  The glint of sun on chrome winked out across the valley, fading in the hollows then flaring through a gap in the row of ancient maples along the distant fence line. As Annie’s left hand flew up to shade her eyes, the descending hammer in her right fell slightly short of its intended mark on the window casing she was constructing. Frowning, she smoothed the dent—hardly more than an impression, really—with her thumb.

  “The car of your dreams is coming back, Rob,” she called.

  A rangy man in his late thirties turned from the sun-blasted clapboards of the old saltbox house he was scraping, squinted to track the car’s progress, then reached for the gallon Thermos jug that Annie supplied daily, one for each of the four men she employed. “Fat lot of good it does me,” Rob muttered.

  Scales of paint flecked his shirtless torso; the red bandanna around his brow bore a darker, sweat-scalloped edge. Rob twisted the top off the jug and drank deeply. Escaping rivulets flowed around his jouncing Adam’s apple, down his chest, and beneath his faded jeans’ frayed, beltless waistband. He grunted as the cool water trickled over his hot flesh and turned an accusing eye on Annie. “How come you get to sit in the shade?”

  Switching the bill of her Green’s Hardware cap from front to back, she grinned up at him from the sawhorse she was straddling. Before she had a chance to answer, the soft, solid thunk-thud of the closing of an expensive car door turned their eyes beyond the stand of Norway spruce under which Annie sat. The car, a Jaguar, of the same dark, lustrous green as the storm-washed spruce, purred in a patch of shade extending over the town road. Exclaiming softly, the driver reached in and turned the engine off, but it was hard to discern a difference. Annie and Rob looked at one another.

  “What model is it?” Rob asked as the driver approached them, jangling the keys in his hand.

  The man, a stranger, slid the keys into the pocket of his rumpled chinos. “Don’t know. A friend lent it to me.”

  Annie pursed her lips thoughtfully. A friend lent it to me; not, I borrowed it from a friend.

  One of the men laughed. “You got any friends like that, Rob?”

  “Not last time I checked.”

  The men turned back to their work. The stranger stayed standing where he was, in the shade near Annie’s perch on the sawhorse, whether to watch her or enjoy the shade she wasn’t quite sure. Okay, she thought; showtime.

  She had this little routine—her Annie Oakley bit, the guys called it—that she’d worked up for prospective clients unsure if they really wanted to entrust their precious house to a female contractor. It was too hot for the leather workman’s apron she liked to use; but she had a supply of nails adequate for the purpose in her shirt pocket. Picking them out, she stuck them between her teeth, then set them, one by one, into the window frame and drove them home with a single, expertly placed blow of her hammer. It was impressive. And if the clients didn’t fall for it right off, at least it put her in the running.

  Tik-THUMP Tik-THUMP Tik-THUMP

  “Nice,” the man commented. “Very nice. But you really shouldn’t line up nails in your mouth like that. Suppose you hiccup?” His deep voice was solemn with concern.

  Suspiciously so, Annie decided. “Then I’ll get the guys to lower a magnet down my gullet.” She plucked the cap off her head and fluffed up close-cropped, silver-streaked dark hair with her fingers. “Anything I can do for you?”

  He stared at her. “You’re a woman!”

  Annie eased her trim bottom off the saw-horse and surveyed herself wonderingly— arms, legs, a quick peek down her shirtfront. Then, brown eyes beaming with gratitude, she tilted her foxy little face toward his. “Why, so I am. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.” She paused, enjoying his discomfort. “Are you in need of directions to somewhere?”

  “Actually, I stopped to ask about . . .” He hesitated, visibly struggling to regain his emotional balance, cleared his throat, and began again. “Last winter I bought some property up the road at the top of the hill. To build on. But what with one thing and another . . . anyway, the road and the well are being done this summer, and I noticed the work being done here and, well, I liked the look of it and I thought—”

  He stopped as Rob, attracted by his disjointed monologue, sidled closer. Relieved, the man turned to him. “Are you the one I should see about bidding on a house?”

  Rob hitched a bare shoulder in Annie’s direction. “Her. Annie Calhoun.”

  The man turned back to Annie. The Oh, God look in his eyes was unmistakable.

  “I don’t think I caught your name,” she said.

  “Benjamin Wilder.”

  He extended his hand a moment too late; Annie grasped it in her work-tempered grip a fraction too hard.

  “Benny? Benjy?”

  Her perky tone made him wince. “Ben.”

  “How big, Ben?”

  He stared at her, bemused.

  “The house. How big is it?”

  “Twenty-eight hundred square feet—and another fifteen hundred for my studio and sleeping quarters above the garage.”

  “Separate?”

  “Connected.”

  “Let’s see. Altogether that makes forty-three hundred . . .” She turned to Rob. “We can handle that, right?”

  “Piece of cake.”

  “I’ve already asked for bids from your competitors,” Ben warned her.

  “You’d be foolish if you hadn’t,” Annie said, “but just how competitive they are is another—”

  “Some of the technology is rather advanced,” he cut in.

  “Whatever you specify we can supply.”

  He rolled the sleeves of his blue shirt up long, sinewy forearms and stepped back into the shade Annie had gradually crowded him out of. “How did you know I designed it?”

  “I’ve been in this trade for sixteen years, Ben; on my own for four. When I go to the library I usually take a look at Architectural Record . . . you know, like a hairdresser riffling through Vogue. Your name has a way of turning up.” She slanted a curious look at him. “Isn’t domestic architecture a little out of your line?”

  “I can handle it.” His mocking tone discouraged dispute. “I’m not sure you can handle my timetable.” He counted off the particulars on his long fingers. “It’s a contract job. Bids are due the week after the July Fourth weekend; I’ll make my choice known by the following Tuesday; the exterior completed by Thanksgiving; occupancy by the first of the year.”

  Annie exchanged a glance with Rob. He shrugged.

  “Pretty tight,” Rob commented.

  “Pretty arbitrary,” Annie added.

  Ben ignored the question in her eyes. “That’s the way it is.” He wiped his sweat-beaded forehead. “Have you got any water?”

  “Yeah, sure. Rob?”

  Ben took the jug offered him, unscrewed the cap and gulped, not bothering, Annie noted approvingly, to wipe off the opening first. According to her brother, this sort of thing had become an issue even at Holy Communion.

  “Thanks,” he said, handing the jug back. He turned to leave.

  “Hey, not so fast! Where can I pick up the plans and specs?” Annie demanded.

  He turned back with a sigh, his blue-eyed gaze dimmed by fatigue. “You don’t give up easily, do you?”

  “Why should I? I have reason to believe I can do your job better, faster, and cheaper than anyone else in the area, and I’ve got satisfied customers to prove it.”

  He frowned. “All you know about my job is the square footage. Four years on your own is nothing in this business, Ms. Calhoun. You haven’t enough experience to back up your belief and I don’t have time for coddling.” He held up his hand to forestall the protest he rightly anticipated.
“Not that I’d want to, given all those jagged edges and sharp points of yours.”

  She stuck her hands in the rear pockets of her jeans and grinned. “That’s what happens when you hiccup with a mouthful of nails— they’ve got to go someplace.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. It was a good laugh, resonant and no-holds-barred. “Okay, you win. I’ll FedEx five sets up to you.”

  “As long as you’re doing the copying, make it seven. Subs hate sharing them.”

  He looked down at her, weariness clouding his eyes again. “You’re not going to get this job, you know. The probable low bidder’s got a shop and a two-decade track record—”

  “Not as good as it used to be,” Annie interjected, guessing who it was.

  “—and should you be foolish enough to cut your profit margin low enough to put yourself in the running, I warn you right now I don’t suffer fools gladly.”

  “So okay,” she said, hunching her shoulders, “I grant you I’m rushing in, but I’m no fool—of course, I’m not an angel either, but I imagine you’ve already gathered that.”

  Realizing this was as much of a concession as he was likely to get from this prickly female, Ben smiled, sketched a wave in the air that included the rest of the crew, and left.

  “I sure like that car,” Rob said, looking after him. “Have you gone crazy, Annie?” he added in the same conversational tone.

  “Look who’s asking,” she said as he poured the remaining water in the jug over his head and plunked himself into a weathered canvas sling chair under the nearest spruce.

  “It’s been a long hot day,” he protested.

  The other members of the crew trailed by, too dragged out by the ninety-degree heat to do more than nod their farewells.

  “Teddy?” Annie called, “you tell Ruthanne I said you were to take a long cool shower before you start taping that sheetrock.”

  Teddy stuck his head out the window of his pickup. “Yes, Maw.” His grin plumped his cheeks into rosy apples.

  “Look at him, red as the proverbial beet,” Annie said, dragging over another chair. “The way that girl drives him, he’ll have a coronary before he’s thirty. If she cared as much about Teddy as she does her damn decor--”

  “The room he’s working on is a nursery.”

  Annie, tempted to make a wry comment about the eternal springing of hope, remembered in time the galling reality that underlay her crew chief’s flat statement of fact.

  The miscarriages—three? four?—that Rob’s wife had suffered over the years had soured first him and then the marriage. The doctors, unable to determine the reason for them, had left him with no one and nothing to blame, and as Annie well knew, bitterness turned inward eventually devours the heart.

  She decided to change the subject. “To return to your question—” Rob blinked at her, having forgotten he’d asked one—”I’m as crazy as a fox.”

  “Vixen, technically speaking,” Rob drawled, eyes closed.

  “Sexist,” she responded automatically, un-offended. “I’m going to get me a beer. . . . Want one?”

  “Do you have to ask?”

  She returned with two tall cans almost too cold to hold. They laughed as the popped tabs sprayed them with an icy fizz.

  “So,” she said, “I gather you never heard of Benjamin Wilder, AIA.”

  “Can’t say I have, although he looks to have been around long enough so I should’ve.”

  “Nonsense. Can’t be more than fifty-five. Well-seasoned, I call it.”

  “Didn’t you tell me once that the male of our species reaches his full sexual potential at age eighteen?” Rob rolled the cold can across his forehead. “Ah-h-hh. And after that, it’s downhill all the way?”

  Annie swatted him with her cap. “A man doesn’t design buildings with his prick, dopey.”

  “Oh yeah? Then what’s all that stuff about the artistic impulse you keep laying on me? About this creative urge welling up out of ... of ... wherever the hell it wells up out of.”

  “You mean you were actually listening?” They grinned companionably at each other. “The point is, dear boy, that Benjamin Wilder is an important architect. He did the Black Panther Oil headquarters in Houston; a spectacular museum of Islamic art out in California for a refugee from Khomeni’s regime; one of the presidential libraries—I don’t remember which—and he won an award for a complex of government buildings somewhere in South America. He’s very good, Rob. Internationally respected. It would be an honor to work with him, and a veritable ostrich feather in our cap.”

  “For God’s sake, Annie, didn’t you hear his schedule? The only prayer we have of competing with an outfit like Art Bradburn’s is if the sun shines every day and every sub comes when he promises.”

  The faded canvas cover on Annie’s chair creaked protestingly as she turned to face him. A rigid finger shot out. “Bradburn is lazy, “she said, jabbing him in the chest, “and his men are slobs. “

  “Hey, that hurts,” Rob protested. “I’ve worked for Art, and I admit he’s disorganized, but the guys in his crews are as good as any you’ll find—they’re just not driven with whips like some others I could mention.”

  Annie thumbed her nose at him.

  “Okay, make a joke out of it. The thing is, if Art Bradburn defaults, sure, it may hurt him some, but he’ll recover. If you do . . .” At a loss for words, Rob tossed his beer from one hand to the other. “Jeez, Annie! We’ll manage without Mr. AIA. It just takes time, is all.”

  Annie avoided his imploring eyes. “You can afford the time; I can’t. You’re still in your thirties, Rob, but I’m forty-five years old, and a single woman to boot. The only thing my father left me is this property—” she spread her arms wide—”three overgrown acres and a tired old house. I actually had to shame my brother into lending me the money to start up the business after the banks turned me down. God, I hated doing that.”

  Her voice drifted off. She looked beyond him across the valley, up the road winding toward the hilltop where Ben Wilder’s house waited to be built. Her own pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Annie clutched his arm. “Don’t you see, Rob? Northwest Connecticut is the place where the smart money’s flocking. If we’re known as the builders of the Benjamin Wilder house . . .” Her fingers slipped away from his sweat-slick skin. “God! The cachet will be priceless.”

  “Cash what?”

  “Ca-shay. It means, umm-m, prestige. Honor. Mark of esteem. We’ll be top o’ the trades, me boyo.”

  “A pretty picture, Calhoun.” Rob unfolded himself out of the chair, drained his beer, and crushed the can. “I just wish you’d take your blinders off.”

  “I can’t afford to,” she said.

  “Don’t want to, more’s like it,” he muttered, dropping the can in her lap.

  She tapped the cans together. “Maybe,” she admitted softly. She squinted up at him. “Take Amy out to dinner, Rob. It’s too hot to cook.”

  “Maybe. See you tomorrow.”

  After Rob left, Annie briefly considered driving to the town beach for a quick dip, decided it was too hot, and followed the advice she’d given Teddy instead. The bathroom was the first place she’d done over. White tiled floor and fixtures—they were the cheapest—terra-cotta-colored towels and Formica counters for warmth, and baskets of ferns because she liked them. The deep shower stall, made to order, was one of her few extravagances. Edgy about being shut away in bathing cubicles ever since seeing Psycho, it allowed her to dispense with doors and curtains altogether. She sat under the cool spray, lit by the gold of the late afternoon sun filtering through the modern skylight above, whose placement in the antique salt-box’s roof had been artfully hidden from roadside view.

  The trickle of the iron-rich well water into her open mouth left a metallic taste. Like blood. Reminded, she realized her period was late. Again. At her age hardly cause for surprise, but given her conversation with Rob it was a reminder she could have done without.

  She pumped liqui
d soap on her washrag and smoothed it over her body. Not a bad one, all things considered. A little more heft now in the hips and thighs, but the arms . . . She held one out and shook it gently, looking for a betraying wobble. A wee bit softer than last year maybe, but compared to other women my age . . . It must be all that hammering. Cheaper than bodybuilding, and I get paid for it.

  She turned off the shower, squeezed the excess water out of her hair, then froze. Someone was at the bathroom door, prying at it, opening it....

  “I’ve got a gun in here,” she yelled, “and I’m not afraid to use it!”

  The noise stopped abruptly. A moment later a black paw pushed through the opening, gradually widening it to admit a shaggy black body and gently swaying tail.

  “Sylvia!” Annie knelt to cup the dog’s graying muzzle in her hands. “If I’d had a gun, I might have shot you, you silly old goop.” Unimpressed by Annie’s hollow warning, the old dog leaned against her wet knees and panted into her face. “Phew!” Wrinkling her nose, Annie leaned back. “Gas mask time, Syl. What have you been eating? Did Mario sneak you garlic sausage again?”

  The dog’s plumy tail picked up its pace, leaving a swath of dirt particles on the white tile. Having been introduced to the cellar’s coolness during an early hot spell, she wisely spent her summer days napping on its damp earthen floor. Except during lunch breaks, when she emerged wearing her I’m-not-long-for-this-world expression to make the rounds of the crew.

  Opinion was divided on whether Sylvia was alerted by food odors wafting down through cracks in the cellar door or by the noon whistle at the Zion Firehouse, three miles south. Whichever it was, her increasing waddle made Annie impose a drastic cutback in the crew’s offerings. Mario Peretti, however, could not be curbed, and since masonry topped the list of his several skills, Annie was forced to weigh her concern for the aging dog’s girth against Mario’s worth to her business.

  “Horns of a dilemma, that’s what you’ve put me on, Sylvia. Which would you rather be, fat and happy or a lean, mean machine?” The dog rolled over and presented her soft white tummy. Annie smiled and gently rubbed it. “I guess that means fat and happy, huh?”