Thankfully, still breathing after his truck-washing restitution, Shaney spent the rest of the day assisting Hudson on one job after another. He continued his adamant refusal to operate power tools, shrinking back when Hudson had tried to hand him a drill. Shaney had acted as if the thing were a snarling, vicious animal. Hudson had narrowed his eyes and asked, “Exactly why can’t you use power tools?”
“That’s classified,” Shaney had mumbled, resolute in his decision to keep Hudson in the dark about his unsavory past. Shaney had also effectively avoided any questions regarding the ‘electrocution.’
One bonus of spending time with Hudson in his natural habitat had been his transformation from the tense, tight-lipped, manly man to Mr. Personable and Charming Carpenter. The younger ladies adored him (and flirted endlessly, while Hudson seemed unaffected), the elderly women mothered him, and the men respected and admired him. The surly, grumpy man Shaney had known thus far was nowhere in sight. Hudson’s laugh, oh, God, his laugh, was loud and boisterous and straight from the belly, and caused a cute crinkle on the bridge of his nose. And he truly did donate his time and materials to help those who couldn’t pay. Three out of the five calls they had made already that day had ended with, “Your money is no good with me.” The man’s likability was astronomical, and Shaney was truly star-struck and headed for heartbreak. For today, though, he would stand in the glory of the selfless man—even on their last job of the day.
Shaney wiped the sweat and grime from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. He cautiously scanned the dark, spooky, claustrophobic crawl space beneath Mrs. Winters’ kitchen. Their job was to fix a leaking pipe. Shaney lay in the dirt on his stomach next to Hudson, who was on his back. Hudson’s arms stretched above him as he worked on fixing the leak while Shaney handed him all of the wrong tools. The thought of spiders and rats and snakes stole most of Shaney’s attention. Hudson seemed totally unaffected as he worked.
Shaney’s phone vibrated on his hip for the twentieth time. Todd again. His best friend’s texts and voicemails had rambled on about the symbols and energy and something about residual aftereffects and patterns. Shaney sent him to voicemail, again. He wanted the weird and creepy voodoo stuff to stay away from his day with Hudson.
“Shit,” Hudson grumbled. His perplexed look caught Shaney’s attention.
“Problem?” Shaney asked, as he smacked at his thigh as something tickled his leg. Probably “something” with a bunch of legs was scurrying around in his pants. Keep it together. Not exactly a stellar impression if he crawled out from beneath the house, screaming in terror. He’d worked too hard to make that good impression.
“Not sure how I’m going to reroute this pipe. Lying here on my back isn’t helping.”
Shaney crawled closer then flipped onto his back next to Hudson. Only Shaney would think lying side by side with Hudson in a creepy crawl space was romantic. Easy.
“Which one?”
Hudson gave Shaney a sideways glance, as if he doubted Shaney was capable of helping. True. Shaney knew zilch about plumbing but what could it hurt to try? Shaney grinned back, with an expectant ‘try me!’ look on his face.
Hudson quirked the side of his mouth and looked up at the labyrinth of pipes above their heads. “See these copper pipes. These are cold and hot water supplies to the kitchen. The white PVC pipes are for taking wastewater away. Whoever put in this hot water pipe here,”—he pointed to the leaking copper pipe—“placed it at an angle that’s causing the bend to leak constantly. Amateurs. I have to get the pipe from the point where it goes to the hot water tank in the cellar, to here,” he pointed above them, “with the least amount of bends. Bends equal potential leaks. So far, I’m at four bends. I can’t do a straight shot because the last idiot located the wastewater pipes too close to the joists. The cold and hot water feeds need to be hooked directly to the joists.”
Hudson shook his head, his eyes darting about, no doubt calculating the reroute in his mind and cursing the idiot who screwed the pipes up in the first place.
Shaney narrowed his eyes at the pipes, assessing their location. All together, they kind of looked like a bunch of roadways crossing one another, like those massive freeways in California all built on top of one another.
“Kind of looks like a system of roads, doesn’t it? Bunch of them crisscrossing one another and intersecting. If one road isn’t inaccessible, say due to someone accidently ripping the electric lines from their house and the live wires are laying across the road—don’t even ask about that one—you have to find a detour, which fucking sucks, because they generally take you on some of the shittiest roads ever. Unless you know the area, you don’t know how to—”