“By early,” she said, yanking open the back door, “I
thought you meant seven or eight.”
“Early is early,” the handyman replied. “Isn’t this
early, pygolly?”
“It’s too early for me to have made coffee,” Judith
asserted. “You’ll have to wait a few minutes.”
But Skjoval Tolvang reached into his big toolbox
and removed a tall blue thermos. “I got my medicine to
get me going. I vas up at four.”
Coffee fueled the handyman the way gasoline propels cars. He never ate on the job, putting in long, arduous days with only his seemingly bottomless
thermos to keep him going.
“I’m a little worried,” Judith said, pouring coffee
into both the big urn she used for guests and the family coffeemaker. “Having a bathroom just off the entry
hall may no longer be up to city code.”
“Code!” Skjoval coughed up the word as if he’d
swallowed a bug. “To hell vith the city! Vat do they
know, that bunch of crackpot desk yockeys? They be
lucky to
it!”
“It was only a thought,” Judith said meekly.
“You vorry too much,” Skjoval declared, putting the
thermos back into his toolbox. “I don’t need no hassles. I quit.”
It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last, that
the handyman had quit over some quibble. Skjoval
never lacked for work. He was good and he was cheap.
But he was also temperamental.
Judith knew the drill, though it wasn’t easy to repeat
at six-ten in the morning. She pleaded, groveled, cajoled, and used all of her considerable charm to get
Skjoval to change his mind. Ultimately, he did, but it
took another ten minutes.
Luckily, the rest of the week and the Labor Day
weekend went smoothly. It was only the following Friday, when Skjoval was finishing in the toolshed, that
another fracas took place.
“That mother of yours,” Skjoval complained, wiping sweat from his brow as he stood on the back porch.
“She is Lucifer’s daughter. I hang the bathroom door
yust fine, but vhy vill she not let me fix the toilet?”
“I don’t know,” Judith replied. Indeed, she had been
afraid that Gertrude and Mr. Tolvang would get into it
before the job was done. Given their natures, it seemed
inevitable. “Did she give you a reason?”
“Hell, no,” the handyman shot back, “except that
she be sitting on the damned thing.”
“Oh.” Judith frowned in the direction of the toolshed. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Don’t bother,” Skjoval snapped. “I quit.”
“Please, Mr. Tolvang,” Judith begged, “let me
