“Agreed,” she said, still frowning. “So let’s figure this out.”
“We could if we had some coffee,” Mack said.
She glared at him. “Is that your way of telling me to leave you alone?”
He chuckled, his laughter infectious, bright, and loud. Everybody stopped and stared at him.
Doreen figured it was to see how she took being laughed at. Mack was always teasing her. It was just not evident to these guys yet.
Mack shook his head. “If I thought getting you to make coffee would keep you out of trouble,” he said, “we would have cheerfully delivered you coffee every day to have you butt out of our lives.”
She promptly put her hands on her hips, then glared at him and said, “Mack Moreau. You behave yourself. I’ve been a big help.”
“You have, indeed,” he said. “You’ve also been a big pain in the butt.”
At that, all the men laughed. She nodded and said, “Okay, you’ve got me there. Because of that, I’ll go put on coffee.”
And she dashed into her kitchen to put on coffee. Inside, she couldn’t believe how great it was to have a neighborly visit like this, with everybody pitching in to help.
Chapter 6
Saturday Midafternoon …
The hours blended into each other as Doreen did her best to help by bringing water and refilling coffee. She understood now what Mack had said about the hidden costs of having a group like this because the coffee disappeared pot after pot. She’d no sooner make a pot than she was emptying it and putting on another pot. By the time midafternoon had arrived, the men appeared extremely proud of themselves. She, for one, didn’t have a clue what they had done to be proud of. All the cinder blocks were partly in the ground, and they had string lined up, and they were all standing around, looking mighty pleased. She looked at Mack and shrugged in question. He grinned back at her and said, “I put a dozen beers in the fridge. It’d be a really good time to bring them out now.”
“Good timing because we just ran through, like, our eighteenth pot of coffee,” she joked.
The men groaned. “Did you say beer? You mean, you had beer in there the whole time?” Arnold asked. “What are we doing drinking coffee then?” The guys joked and laughed back and forth, but it was obvious that they had a lot of respect for each other. She went into the kitchen, exchanged two room-temperature six-packs for the cold ones in her fridge, and brought them outside. Those disappeared almost immediately into greedy hands.
As they cracked open the tops and took their first drinks, she asked, “So could somebody explain what this was all about?” She gestured with her hands to the stringed-off area.
The captain stepped up and gave her a really clear understanding of why this foundational part of the new deck was so vital and why they’d spent the time that they did. The fact that they’d dug a drain underneath the tarps so all the water would go into the wells where the sump pumps were also amazed and surprised her. They’d left the tarps atop that added feature to slow the weeds. The captain continued, “You’ve got two sumps going on here, so we wanted to make sure that any of the water that came in through here would slip down toward the sump pumps.” A pipe stuck out of the end of the ditch where they had dug down to meet up where the sump pumps were.
“Wow,” she said, understanding the basic logic. “That’s perfect.” She was absolutely thrilled. “So what happens now?”
“Now we’ll lift all those big timbers,” Chester said, wiping his brow. He had a beer in his hand, and she almost wanted to ask if he was old enough to drink it. That was a compliment, but the kid looked sixteen. She didn’t know why she hadn’t noticed that before, but it was amazingly obvious now. A shout came from around the house, and Mack walked over there, then lifted a hand in greeting and turned back and said, “Now we’re talking.”
And additional guys came, whom she more or less recognized, and one of them was the guy from yesterday. He came, took one look at their progress so far, smiled, and said, “Hey, we came just at the right time.”
“Didn’t you though,” Chester growled. “All the hard work is done.”
The two men exchanged slaps on their shoulders, and everybody offered their greetings.
Mack held up his beer and said, “We have cold beer, if you want one.”
The guys rubbed their hands together. “Perfect timing,” one said. “We just arrived, and the beers are already out.”
Doreen disappeared into the house and pulled out another six-pack, hoping it was cold enough. If she didn’t have Mack’s coaching, she wouldn’t have a clue. Because, at her house with her husband, the butlers and caterers were always around to handle things like that. She understood filling somebody’s wineglass and lifting flutes from a tray, but deciding when somebody would have a beer was something that she didn’t get. She also wasn’t so sure that beer was something she wanted to drink. It smelled awfully strong. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever had one or not. It was a long way away from champagne.
The six-pack disappeared pretty quickly, and the new arrival mentioned something about pulling the deck a little farther out in order to have adequate space for people to sit and for a better alignment of the deck with the house. That started another heavy discussion. She sat here, wondering if anybody would ask her about it, but the thing was, she didn’t really care because what she really wanted was a big deck and didn’t care how far out or over it went. Mack was explaining about
