by Dan Patterson
“Hey. Hey, you awake?” Gerald Conner called to me from the hall. It was before 5 o’clock on Monday and no, I was not. Me and the blanket had a good thing going on and I was not about to ruin it.
“Hey. The heat’s off again. Get up and help me bleed the line. Hurry up, man.”
I made a noise to get him to be quiet and opened my eyes in the dark bedroom. A little light filtered in under the curtains and I could feel the cold sharp on my nose that my friend the blanket had kept off the rest of me. Me and Gerald had shared the little house outside of town for nearly three years, rented from his uncle in Richmond. We’d take care of all the maintenance, yard work, and so on for the old place and his uncle gave us a break on the rent. It had all the comforts of home for two bachelors in their twenties, two bedrooms and one bathroom upstairs and we had put in another bath in the unfinished basement, but we hadn’t gotten around to getting heat down there yet. Now there was no heat anywhere.
“I’m gettin’ up” I said. “How long has it been off?” I shouted. I pulled on yesterday’s damp clothes from the chair and immediately wished I had better options.
“Most of the night I guess. I don’t know” he said and he sounded none too pleased. That made two of us. Gerald has a streak of high-and-mighty in him and he’s a finicky sort but we got along good anyway; I try my best to get along with everybody unless they push too hard. He sings in the choir at his church and was always trying to get me to go. I get it, I really do. But everything isn’t for everybody, I told him, so we just left it at that.
“Well let’s go see what we got” I said as I stepped into the hall. Gerald was standing in the kitchen with the oven door open, element glowing orange in the dark room like some sort of a monster’s mouth.
“I’m about to dang freeze” he chattered. “I am about ready to build a fire in the middle of the bedroom. Dang!”
“Alright. Come on and let’s see what’s going on” I said. The thermostat read 50 degrees and that’s as low as it went; it had been cold all week, in the 20s at night. “Grab us a flashlight and I’ll get some tools.”
He went one way and I went the other, turned on the lights and went down to the furnace in the basement, Gerald a few steps behind.
“Well we know it ain’t out of fuel, we just put 50 gallons in it week before last” he said. And we had, and that had taken my stash of fun money for the next little bit, not that I had a whole bunch fun or money lately. We fooled around and found the line plugged with some trash again, drained all that out, bled the line, put it back together and fired the furnace up. After some gagging and coughing the old thing lit off and was running like a sewing machine in no time.
“We’re gonna have to do something about that tank, probably drain it and blow the lines. I don’t want to have to do this no more” I said with my nose dripping. Gerald agreed.
“But not this morning, we got to get to work” he said. It was past 6 and now we’d have to hustle. I worked as a technician for a cable company and Gerald was at a trucking terminal as a mechanic helper; we’d met in tech school a few years before and both got decent jobs right away, then shared this old house to save on expenses.
I went in to get ready and heard Gerald already in the shower and decided it was too cold to chance using the basement bathroom, so I put some things together for lunch until he got out. I guess he was too chilled to be in a hurry because he used enough hot water to scald a hog. By the time I could get in the shower there was no more hot water and it was getting late, so I went on in to work after a quick cold water shave and sink wash up, and my hands still smelling like fuel oil. And no breakfast.
Monday started on the wrong foot and never recovered, so by quitting time I was past ready for an attitude adjustment, preferably served by a baby doll that would at least pretend to be glad to see me. I pulled into the parking lot of “Cue Tease” in a misting December rain and stepped across the puddles to the door. “No Cover Before 6!” the sign said and that was fine with me. Some times this place would be a cool spot to hang out but other times, depending on who was working and who was in the place, it was a giant depressing crap hole that just made things worse. I stepped inside and saw I was in luck; a friendly blonde I knew, Stacie, was bartending and there were only a few regulars inside.
“Hey Charlie! Long time. You doin’ good, baby?” I felt better already. Stacie had waitressed at a diner across town where a bunch of us went when we were in tech school, so when I saw her again in here last year it was like seeing an old classmate. She’d had a kid but they didn’t marry and for all I could tell they weren’t together, but she didn’t let on much either way. After the baby she’d started working out and she didn’t mind showing off the results, so my dreary Monday got much brighter all of a sudden.
“Hey. Yeah it has been a while; how you been doin’ girl?” And I stuck my hand out.
“Oh come here” she said, and came around the side of the bar. A warm hug from a pretty girl does more than anything to cheer a man’s spirits and I was now very well cheered. She pulled away quickly and dashed back, elbows on the bar and she had to know I was not looking at her eyes.
“What will you have?”
“It is half past beer-thirty so something on tap and on special if you have it” I said.
She took a chilled mug and put it under a tap “Special on Handyman’s Brew, I think you’ll like it” and filled the mug before I could say anything.
“How come I don’t see you in here much any more?” she asked with a pouty face. A real cute pouty face.
“Oh. Yeah, well. Uh, I spent way too much time and money on myself having too much fun a little while back and it kind of caught up with me. You know” I said and threw a look at a slender brunette practicing her pole moves in the mirrored wall on the stage. “So I try to stay out of trouble as much as I can now”. The details weren’t pretty so I just let that one hang but I could feel my face get hot.
I took a healthy swig of the beer and said “That hits the spot”, and took down about half of the rest without breathing. Four guys were playing cutthroat on the table behind me and one of them caught her eye and held up an empty bottle. She got some drinks for them then came over next to me and leaned one arm on the bar, and her already tight blouse got tighter. The buttons held, but I was hoping. We chatted a minute and I finished the beer. There was a big glass jar on the bar with a few bills in it and a handwritten sign “Help a girl out. Family in need!” so I asked about it.
“That’s for my family, momma’s sister, my aunt Elaine. She’s staying with momma while her house is getting painted but the people she got to do the work stole a bunch of stuff from her and never showed back up. Then when we went in to check on it the roof had started leaking, so that has to be fixed before we can finish the painting. So, you know, lots to do and one thing leads to another and it’s all just a big ol’ mess”. She sounded stressed about it.
“Well what does a good roofer tell you it will take to fix it?” Me and Gerald had done some side jobs in the past and had been on a roof or two.
“They all say not fix, but replace” and when she said that she wrinkled her face. “And we don’t have the money to pay what they’re asking. Before he died my Uncle Jack got the stuff together to put a new roof on, but he had started having heart trouble and couldn’t do it. And that’s been ages ago.”
She picked up the empty mug and filled it without me saying anything. I looked at her and she said “Oh don’t worry about it, it’s on special anyway so I’ll do a two for one for an old friend”. Mischievous smile with the tip of her tongue touching her upper lip. I was further cheered.
“So.” She said, drawing it out. “If you know someone who can do some work like that and maybe help us out?” She looked at me like a kid waiting on her allowance.
“Well yeah. I’ll ask around, but me and my roommate could maybe take a look at it after work one day, see what it needs, you know…” I meant maybe we could maybe look at it and see if it was maybe something we could maybe do on the side. Maybe. But that’s not how she took it. Not at all. She came back around the bar and hooked her arm around my neck and said into my ear “Oh thank you thank you thank you. Thank you SO MUCH! That would be GREAT!”
I was returning the hug and caught one of the pool players in the mirror looking at us with a hard stare. We released each other and she was kissing close, but the pool player was still staring so I stepped back and said “Glad to help if we can. Of course I need to talk to Gerald and see if he’ll go with me to look at it. Jobs like that’ll take two or more you know, and I can’t swear we can even do it.”
“Oh I know, but you’re so good with things like that. I bet you could do it with your eyes closed. It’s a really small place and she’s just not been able to keep up with it like she wanted. This will mean so much to her. And to my mom.” She drew out ‘so much’ again for emphasis.
“Well ok”, I thought. Before I could say anything else she said “Give me your phone and I’ll put the address in under my name and number”. Another killer smile and now I had the address and her number. Sweet.
“Don’t call though. I don’t use the phone much, so text instead ok?”
“Oh ok, sure” I said and looked at the address. “Where is this?”
She gave me the general directions. It was in an old neighborhood once working class and family, now some vacant houses, lots of rentals, and high crime. Things had gone the wrong direction for that part of town and this old lady probably had lived there all her grown-up life and the neighborhood just changed around her.
“I’ll go by there on my way home. Ok to look around? Nobody will call the cops on me, right?”, and I was only half-kidding.
“That’s the last thing anybody’ll want to happen around there” and she laughed. “Good neighbors though, really sweet, and they won’t be any trouble.” The DJ was making introductions and the entertainers were parading around the stage, all dressed up. More smiles. Me and my credit card knew way too much about smiles like that.
“Oh gosh! I’ve got to get the VIP room ready for the football game” she said and hurried away. “Let me know what you think, ok? As soon as you can. And thanks again!” She made a telephone with her fingers and a kissy face as she turned. More cheer.
Some Poindexter in a suit coat that didn’t fit, probably the manager-of-the-month, came over with the tab, thrashing his gum with his mouth open. It was two beers full price. It was time for me to go and I didn’t want to start anything, but I didn’t leave much tip either.
It was a good twenty minutes across town to her aunt’s house and I parked by the curb in the dark. Houses on either side were lived-in but tired with some cars parked in the yards and makeshift fences in the back. One had an old couch on the front porch, and another had a pile of kitchen appliances in the back yard. But the place across the street was all lit up with decorations and Christmas lights, a big cartoon snowman held a sign that read “Good Boys and Girls Live Here”. It was a small mildewed brick house on a small lot just a little higher than the street, a short driveway to a clapboard garage, and some neglected rose bushes all along the side, all of it lit by a street light mounted on the garage gable. There were a few shingles missing and there was a sag in the middle on the left side. I got out and walked around the house for a quick look and stepped off the dimensions; flat yard and the eaves were an easy reach with a short extension ladder; we could get a truck right next to the house. Cake job, really.
The old garage door was stuck shut but I could squeeze through the side door. My little flashlight was getting dim but some mice, or rats, or something squeaked and scattered out of sight. Too cold for snakes, I hoped.
Stacie’s Uncle Jack had four pallets of shingles in the back of the garage and they had been there for who knows how long. But they were off the dirt floor and covered with a canvas tarp. And if I was a snake I know right where I’d put up during in this weather, so I left the tarp alone and played the light along the bottoms of the pallets. The bottom layers of the first rows were all bent from sitting so long, and some of the paper had been chewed off but nothing real bad. I tried counting the bundles best I could then saw some rolls of tarpaper sitting on their ends. Several buckets of roof tar were neatly placed beside them but I picked one up and shook it and it was solid as a rock.
I went to the car and punched in Stacie’s number and it rang once before I remembered to text, so I disconnected and sent her a short message. “Hey. Looks like a simple job. Found the old shingles. Will talk about it and let you know. How much?”
My phone pinged just as I sent the text, her number calling.
“Hey”
“Why did you call this number?” A guy’s voice, aggravated.
“What? I was calling for Stacie about a doing a job. Maybe I got a wrong number. Sorry to bother you.” But he didn’t hear that because he ended the call. Some people, I guess.
I put the car in gear and thought about going back to see if Stacie put her own number in my phone wrong, but the phone rang again from a number I didn’t recognize.
“This is Charlie.”
“Hey sweetie it’s Stacie. Did you just call my phone?”
“Yeah, by mistake. But I just sent a text about the house. Some dude called back all pissed and asked why I called. I didn’t know you were seeing somebody.”
“Oh no no no. He’s not my boyfriend that’s just a guy that works here. They make us put our phones up while we’re working and he must’ve heard it”. The DJ was announcing drink specials for the game in the background. “I’ve got to go, but let me know what you find out, ok?”
I started to answer but she hung up.
I talked about it with Gerald that night, gave him the little I knew about Stacie’s aunt, the house and whatnot.
“Would be a good way, well might be a good way, to make a few extra bucks” I said not wanting to get over my head.
“Yeah, but how many bucks and how much trouble?”
“We need to go look at the place in the daylight, get on the roof, see exactly what we’re dealing with before we get into it”, I said. “Besides, you’re always talking about doing good works and here at Christmas this might have been put here in front of me for a reason. Right?”
“Well. Could be. Could be. In John it says ‘Those who have done good will rise to experience eternal life, and those who have continued in evil will rise to experience judgment’. He was quiet for a minute or two with his eyes closed. “We all ought to do more good. Everybody. We don’t none of us do enough of it, Christmas or not. Let’s go look at it tomorrow; I’ll meet you there after work and we can see what we can do. Alright?’ And got up and went to his bedroom.
So we did that. I borrowed a ladder from work and we got on the roof with flashlights, made measurements, looked it over real good, talked about what it would take, and came up with a few ideas. We made a sketch of the roof and put the measurements on it, calculated all the materials and made a list. From what we could tell Uncle Jack had bought enough of most everything. I sent a text to Stacie with what we came up with and got back a “will talk to momma”. Later she sent “grate thanks momma says thank” so we had a project in front of us.
At work the next morning I talked to the boss and he said use the ladder as long as I needed it. A buddy at work, Raymond, a lot older than me, overheard me and asked about it.
“Doing some side work?” he said.
“Well kinda I guess. Got a little job to do for some family of a friend” I told him.
“Good for you” he said and nodded. “What sort of work?”
“Putting a roof on a lady’s house. She’s older and needs it done so they can get the inside painted.”
“Is it leaking?”
“Yeah, they say it is. So we’ll get her a roof on at least”.
“Good, good” he said. “Whereabouts is it?”
“French Hills on the East side. Older neighborhood off Centennial Parkway.”
“Oh yeah. Yeah. Cassion and Verdun and Liberty streets are in there. I know about right where that is. Well, let me know if you need any tools or anything”, and we went on about our day.
I got to the house just after work and started spreading two big tarps next to the house and used a roofer’s shovel to pry some shingles loose and give us a place to start the tear off. The old house had three layers of roofing from where it had been replaced over the years. The old stuff was so brittle it just broke apart when I scooped the tool underneath and I made real good progress. Gerald came by and not much later we had one of the tarps piled with old junk off the roof. About an hour into it our muscles were complaining and it was supper time so we tacked the other tarp over the bare place and left the tools in the old garage.
All the next day I had second thoughts about getting us into this. All it would take is one screw up and this thing could get out of hand fast. I had talked Gerald into helping and he seemed good with it now, but if he decided to bail out I was on my own. The power and water to the old place had been turned off so we would have to work without and I had not counted on that problem. And the weather, and the materials, and I hadn’t even called about a truck yet, and who knows what else could trip us up. Busy all day at work but I left a service call that took just a minute and instead of going back to the shop went by the house on Marne.
“What in the hell?” I thought. “Just what in the hell!” I said. The tarp on the roof was there but the one that had all the scrap we took off was missing. The tools were still there, all the materials were too but I couldn’t make sense out of it. I had to call Gerald to let him know what I found, and I told him. I was probably too excited.
“Calm down man! If somebody took the tarp but they also took the trash. They can have the blame tarp if they got rid of that junk for us. Dumb butt.”
I had to admit he was right. “Well. Yeah, but still. Ok. I’m going to go ahead and get started.”
“I can be there in a little while.”
I put the tarp from the roof on the ground next to the house and it wasn’t thirty minutes later that a diesel pickup with a trailer hooked to it squeaked to a stop. Two boys about 10 and 12 got out of the back and then Raymond stepped out.
“Hey man. What are you doing out here?”
The he got the tarp out of the bed and I saw what had happened.
“I took a half-day off and thought me and my boys’d come see how you were getting along.”
“Hey boys.” They did head nods. “Well I guess we’re getting a decent start on it but it looks like some kind hearted soul made off with the old junk we took off yesterday.”
“Yeah well I was sorta out this way taking care of some other stuff and we picked it up for you.”
“Aw man you didn’t have to do that. Thank you!”
“Yeah. Yeah, no problem at all. Glad to help. You boys get them rakes out and clean up this old yard. Rake it in a pile and put it on the trailer.”
“Yes sir.” They said and went right at it. Raymond pulled the truck around and backed the trailer next to the house, then spread the tarp on the bed. He got an old mattock out of the truck and climbed on the roof without saying anything else.
I worked one side and he worked the other, but he went back where I had been and yanked the old nails up. Gerald pulled up, all smiles, and said hello to everybody like he’d known them a long time. I introduced Raymond and Gerald started piling the old shingles on the trailer, the boys started quarrelling, the younger one not wanting to be bossed around.
“Hey! You boys get to work, now, and I mean it” Raymond said. And they did.
We had about a quarter of one side of the roof off, nails and all then Raymond got down and unhitched the trailer. “We got to get back. I’ll leave the trailer and you let me know when it’s full and I’ll run it over to the landfill.”
I was on the ground by then. “Here, let me get you some cash for that and all your trouble. That was a big help, man. How much was it?” I had my wallet out and he was waving it away.
“Naw, naw now you don’t owe me nothin’, we’re glad to help ain’t we boys?”
“Yes sir” they said. “I’ll see you at the shop in the mornin’” and he drove off.
I didn’t get to see Raymond at the shop, the boss sent me on calls before I left the house and I was all over the place all day. In the back of my mind I was really looking forward to getting back on that old house. By the time I got off work Gerald was already there with two other guys and they had more of the old roof off. One of the guys Gerald brought had made a simple rack to work from and that made the going much easier. There wasn’t room for me and the yard was picked clean; the rose bushes had been trimmed down by somebody and there was a new layer of clean mulch in the beds. About then a trio of loud-piped Harleys blasts into the yard, and it maybe 40 degrees outside, right up to where I was standing. The bike in back had an American flag about the size of a bedsheet and they all shut down at once. MIA POW patches on their jackets, red sweatshirts underneath. Big dude with a grey pony tail gets off the lead bike wearing club colors and a do-rag, looked pissed, black semi-auto on his left hip cross-draw. He steps up to me and sticks his hand out, big smile, “Hey I’m CL, you must be Charlie. Some of us heard about all this and we come out to help” and before I could say anything he yelled at the guys on the roof. “Hey! Y’all come on down and get a break, we got you.” The other two strode over and scooted up the ladder while CL looked the job over, and I just stood there in my shoes.
“Gerald. Man. I mean. Dang man. What’s going on?”
“I don’t really know. I only know the one guy from work and that’s a dude from his neighborhood” gesturing at the two sitting on the trailer. They looked beat.
“Where in the world are we going to get the cash to pay these guys? I mean, look, there’s Raymond and his two boys yesterday, and these two guys, and then these bikers show up! And I haven’t heard the first word back from the chick that is supposed to be paying us in the first place. Dadblame it!”
Gerald didn’t say anything but he had the same thought, I could tell. I went on working and worrying.
It got too dark to work so we all started moving toward getting things straightened up. The three bikers were in a huddle, one on his phone. I stood next to them and called to the two guys Gerald knew.
“Hey I really appreciate all the help from everybody. Really. But look, I can’t pay anybody anything, boys, and I’m sorry as I can be.”
“No man, no. No worries. You’re helping somebody and we’re just helping you. No worries.” CL and his biker friends smiled, everybody nodded and I felt like a turd on a birthday cake.
Gerald was walking to his car and I stopped him.
“Man this has me feeling bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“All these guys pitching in, everybody coming by like this. I don’t know, man, I just don’t know. It ain’t right. It just ain’t.”
“Aw quit worrying about it” he said. “It’ll be alright.” That didn’t help. It wouldn’t be alright.
I sat in my car and stewed about it. No, there was no other option. Only one way out of this.
I thumb-typed to Stacie, “We will get the roof on. You buy supplies if need. No pay to me” and sent it. I felt like a fever had broke.
I called Gerald to talk it over.
“Hey man, I just don’t feel right taking money for that roof job if all those boys are helping for nothing. I messaged Stacie and told her not to pay me but I didn’t say anything about you.”
“If you talk to her or whatever tell her I said the same thing. It don’t change anything. I bought my guys lunch today and they were happy with that. Shoot man, if we keep up this pace we’ll be through in a day or two anyway.” He didn’t seem as let down as I was about the money, but he was more that way than I was. I could’ve used the extra money, but the deal was done. Another message to tell Stacie Gerald agreed, too and she sent back “!!?? r you sure? thanksyou.”
It was a while before I got out there the next day, and two of the three bikers were there and the trailer was piled with the old junk. One of the guys was looking at something on the roof and frowning. “This ain’t good and I was afraid we’d find it” he told me from on the roof. “Water has run down in a crack and gathered ‘till it rotted this whole section out”, waving at a big area. While I thought it over CL said “I got one of mine coming.” Gerald and his two came in so we all worked on the other side and about a half-hour later the third biker came in leading a one ton truck that had seen better days. It had a big generator mounted in the bed and when the old guy limped out of the cab CL said “That’s his dad” pointing to the biker. The two of them laid out a set of cables hooked to several outdoor power outlets and a stand with some work lights. They talked to the others about running the generator and then got it started. The biker got back on the Harley and the old guy limped over and hiked a leg over the seat, whacked the biker’s helmet, and off they roared.
An old lady from next door had been watching us the whole time, I’d bet we were probably more interesting than TV. Well, she came over walking very slowly taking small careful steps, rocking back and forth, with two big grocery bags one on each arm and all bundled up in her good coat. When Gerald saw her coming he jogged over and met her. He took the bags on one arm and her on the other and they came over to the driveway where we all were.
“I come to bring y’all some food” she said. “I seen all y’all out here working on my friend Ellie’s house and I wanted to do what I could do for you.” Her glasses were down on the end of her nose and she would look through them if she was talking to you and over them if not. We put a piece of plywood on two sawhorses from the truck and set the bags down. Sandwiches neatly wrapped in paper towels, pimento cheese and baloney, and they looked better than a roasted turkey this far past lunchtime. Everybody came over and the second biker, I never did get his name, hushed everybody while he talked to the neighbor for a minute. One of the guys said he was starving and went for a sandwich but he was stopped short.
“Hold it here, now. First we want to all thank Miz Horton for her kindness, making this fine food for us.” He put his arm around her as he spoke and she leaned into him like he was her grandson. He kept his arm tight around her, tall skinny white boy biker and a short black women easily his grandmother’s age. “And she tells me Miz Ellie is one of her closest friends and looks forward to having her back close by.” “Honey”, he said looking at her, “we’ll do our part to get her back as soon as we can.” She strained up and kissed him on the cheek and tried to hug him back.
“We’re going to give thanks, now. Bow your heads.” And he made the sort of prayer a biker would, straight talk and to the point, no frills and no nonsense. Miz Horton raised her arms and swayed back and forth, speaking quietly all the time he said the blessing. We all made a point to speak to Miz Horton and thank her personally, and tell her how good those sandwiches were. She talked with us a few minutes then she said she was “’bout wore out”, so Gerald and the biker walked Miz Horton back to her house and got her inside and settled.
Somebody came up with two power saws and we went to work on the rotten wood. A sheet of plywood and three 2 x 4s appeared and me and CL cut everything and got all that ready to put in, but before we finished someone from up the street brought over an air compressor and a nail gun, he said his dad used to work with Jake at the plant. Man, we fired that compressor up and went to town. While we tore the rest of the old roof off and fixed a few more rotten places they turned on the work lights and it was bright enough to play football. We didn’t find a stopping place ‘til way late and we had new roofing on about half of the house.
That went on for another few days, after work and into the night. Raymond took two more loads to the landfill that week and would leave his boys to help. One of the bikers and the nail-gun neighbor took the garage doors down and put them back in operation; we moved all the shingles out next to the house and that neighbor, J’Malle I learned, cleaned the garage out and swept the dirt floor clean. We’d work along, people coming and going as they could, generator going, lights bright on the yard. Miz Horton next door made some more visits and we got some lawn chairs for everybody to sit in.
We were finished by Friday afternoon. I felt like I’d graduated from high school again. Everybody from around the house came by and gathered around and talked in the cold air while we got all our tools and things out of the way, there was a pot of Russian Tea, the biker’s dad saw Miz Horton and found out “they went to different schools together” and knew some of the same people, and they talked about the old times late into that darkening afternoon. J’Malle wore a Santa cap and brought his two little kids over wearing elf pajamas under their coats, and one of the string of blinking lights from across the street found their way over to decorate Raymond’s trailer.
After a while things settled down and everybody went back to what they’d been doing. Stacie and her mom got her Aunt Ellie got moved back in and I went by to see them while they were all there a month or so later. The gum chewing dude, ‘he’s not my boyfriend’, was there and Stacie was draped all over him. He had a toothpick stuck in his mouth and didn’t say the first word to anybody. That’s the last I saw of any of them.
In the spring, when daffodils were blooming, breezes were warm and after a hard wet winter it seemed like every day was soft, easy, and hopeful, I drove back to have a look at all we had done at Christmas; I had the windows down thinking about it on the drive over and it all seemed like it had been in a different life.
The sign in the yard read For Sale and a layer of straw was spread over where the garage had been. Every single stick of the roof we’d put on was in the back of a big dump truck in the driveway, it’s ten tires making deep channels in the spot where we all ate pimento cheese and baloney. And four or five guys were bustling around in and out of the house. Something had happened but I wasn’t sure what. Maybe somebody had bought it to renovate and resell, who knows? I didn’t hang around to ask questions. Besides, it didn’t change anything.
/////Logos Literature 