Pinhole, Higher Learning
Copyright© 2024 by Fanlon
Chapter 5
At breakfast Saturday morning, Dad was pushing me to finish my food so we could get to work hanging the drywall downstairs. He made it a race to see who could polish off their plate first and I wasn’t one to back down from a food challenge with my dad. Countless times we had eating contests at tailgates when we went to Husker games. Those were usually with hot dogs, or sometimes chicken wings. On extremely rare occasions, we’d score slow cooked baby back pork ribs. Just the thought of Larry’s ribs made my mouth water.
I shoveled my scrambled eggs into my mouth as fast as I could. I started choking when I then stuffed an entire slice of toast on top of all the eggs already there.
Dad started laughing, his mouth just as full of food as mine, making his cheeks bulge outwards like a squirrel hoarding nuts. He had to slam a hand over his mouth to keep his food in. He didn’t see any imminent danger to my life, but Mom was on her feet, behind me, and banging her fist against my back so fast that I didn’t even see her get up.
“I know you two boys are excited to get to build stuff down there,” Mom complained, her voice laced with unveiled sarcasm and anger. “I don’t think you two even know what your food tasted like. Honestly, you two are ridiculous. Not everything has to be a competition.”
I blinked the tears out of my eyes from my choking and sudden coughing fit. I could just make out the blurry image of my dad who looked thoroughly chastened. I gave Mom a weak smile and she just rolled her eyes. She wasn’t at all impressed with me, or her husband, at that moment.
“Now, finish your food and try actually chewing instead of inhaling it this time,” Mom suggested, but it sounded more like an order than anything.
I picked up my fork, swallowing what was left of the chewed food I was holding in my mouth. She watched me, her eyes hard, but when I only scooped a small portion of eggs she nodded and started eating her own eggs again.
Dad finished off his plate first and smiled triumphantly at me as he set his fork down. He at least had the wherewithal to not mention his supposed victory. Mom’s eyes were locked on him, and his smile vanished the instant he noticed her.
“Seeing as how you’re done first, does that mean you’re the one who has to do the dishes?” Mom asked.
“Nope, that’s why we decided to have kids,” Dad countered. grinning cheerily. “They get to do the dishes, take out the trash, and mow the lawn so we don’t have to.”
“Oh really?” Mom replied, one eyebrow raised in question. “I seem to remember you saying something about always wanting a—”
“Fine, fine, fine. You win,” Dad exclaimed, waving his arms, and cutting Mom off mid-sentence. “I’ll do the dishes.”
“Thanks honey.” Mom grinned, her voice soft and innocent, as if she hadn’t manipulated Dad just then.
Dad got up, cleared his place, and turned into the kitchen. Seconds later, we heard the water running in the sink and Mom looked at me, winked and I chuckled. She looked awfully proud of herself, and I had to admit I was always impressed when she flexed those particular muscles, so to speak. She was a master at getting what she wanted, whenever she wanted it from Dad. Regardless of how it happened, I didn’t have to do the dishes and that’s all I cared about.
Come Sunday morning, we had made shockingly substantial progress. All the drywall was hung and ready for the finishing touches. To my utter delight, a black, rotating door Dad had found was also installed and ready to use. It was just like the one from school. I don’t know why, but that one thing had me excited, made it feel ... perfect. I was going to have a real, full-fledged darkroom all to myself.
Aside from the mudding and taping of the drywall, we needed to finish installing the industrial sinks—two of them, side by side. Then there was the lighting. For that, there were two different switches, one for normal white light and one for red light, the same setup from Mr. Watts’ darkroom at school. That would be installed Monday when Phil and his son came back to finish the job.
“All we have left to finish is the dirty work,” Dad said, a proud smile on his face.
“Dirty work?” I asked, not sure what he was referring to. The whole project had been dirty. There was saw dust, scraps of wood and all sorts of other trash strewn around the basement.
“Taping and mudding the seams,” Dad answered. “Trust me, this is going to be the dirty work. The grunt work and we,” he said, pointing to me and then to himself, “we are the grunts.”
I started laughing and he just smiled.
“We should be all done with that today,” Dad said proudly, his arm wrapping around my shoulder as he squeezed me in tightly. “There’s more after that, but we will have to wait for the mud to dry before we can sand it all down so it’s smooth and doesn’t show any seams.”
The doorbell rang just as Dad said seams and both of our heads jerked in the direction of the door. When it opened a second later, I had a good feeling of who it was: Dana.
“Hello!” Dana called out as she closed the door behind her. “Josh?”
“Down here!” I yelled and heard feet hammering the stairs as Dana raced down them, coming in our direction.
“Hello young lady,” Dad said, smirking. Dana stopped mid step, her eyes scanning the area feeling that she had just walked into a trap. Dad bent down and picked up a mud knife, offering it to her handle first. “You’re just in time.”
For the next few hours, Dana and I were mudding the new drywall. It sounded easy when Dad explained how to do it to the both of us. It wasn’t. We covered every screw and where all the drywall butted together in a thick layer of the whitish mud stuff. During the process, Dana got globs of the stuff in her hair and then she must have gotten an itch on her cheek which deposited a large smear from the edge of her eye all the way down to her neck. I knew better than to make fun of her about it, I knew I had a few smudges of my own on my face.
When Mom came down and told us it was time for lunch, both Dana and I were thoroughly covered in mud. The room was done, for the moment. Now we just needed to wait for everything to dry.
“Oh wow, all done?” Mom asked, her eyes scanning the unfinished walls.
“Yup, we did decent work,” Dad answered. Dana and I grumbled at the we comment.
“I don’t know what you two were doing exactly, but you both look more like painters than mudders,” Mom grinned, and then laughed at her own joke.
It wasn’t funny, not to us anyway. Dana and I just rolled our eyes at my mom. I didn’t think ‘mudders’ was really a word, and if it was, it didn’t do the job Dana and I had been doing all morning any justice. Dad just chuckled. He, on the other hand, was spotlessly clean. Which wasn’t surprising, seeing how he was the one who was overseeing the job.
“Go upstairs and get cleaned up, lunch is on the table,” Mom said, and turned to head back upstairs shaking her head, still giggling to herself.
Dana and I headed upstairs after we snapped the lid back on the five-gallon bucket of premixed mud. I was first to the sink. I turned on the water, feeling it run over my hands as I waited for the temperature to warm up. It didn’t take long, but long enough for Dana to come into the room next to me.
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