The Life of John Smith Chapter 10

Chapter 10 A New Life Begins

Carol and I did not immediately get back together. She persuaded our biology teacher to reassign us so we did not have to work together. She was assigned to work with Jeff, a jock. He was probably the sharpest jock on the team. My new partner was Andrea, a nerdy, boyish looking girl who was almost a straight A student and had recently transferred in from another school. So, neither of our grades suffered especially since I was no longer distracted by Carol.

I had to answer for skipping school. Mother refused to cover for me, so I was given four days of after school detention which meant, each day for the rest of that week I spent an hour in an after-school study hall. It did not seem like punishment since I had studying to do, and I was not missing out on anything.

I made several phone calls to Brenda to enlist her help to get Carol and me back together but each time she insisted I give her more time. More time turned into more than three months and for some reason as Summer progressed no one answered the phone.

Luckily mother arranged to get me a summer job at the local grocery store which kept me busy afternoons and evenings. I had to take mother to work at nine, goof off till one, work to five, pick up mother and take her home, eat and be back at work by six, and get off work at ten. Most of the time I bagged groceries. I noted that the pigs, that was the fat women, bought more prepared meals and ice cream. The hotties, that was the slender women, bought more fresh vegetables. When I was not bagging, I was pushing a broom. Not a mentally challenging job but I was sure on numerous occasions, had I pursued it, I could have had sex with numerous pigs and some of the hotties. Then there were the greys, that was the older women. Some of them would even give me their address, telling me they had work (wink, wink) for me.

One particular woman who looked like a hotty but was a grey with dyed hair by the name of Nancy Newman was more insistent than the others. She began coming in every other day buying one or two items and slipping me notes. Her notes were on flowered stationary with her name and address printed at the top. One day in July, before work, I drove by her place. It was a small house with a two-car garage. The garage was almost as large as the house. After receiving a fifth or sixth note insisting, she had some important work for me, I decided to head out to work a couple of hours early and stop by her house.

She answered the door in a bathrobe with her auburn hair wrapped up in a towel. “Excuse my appearance. Just now out of the shower, wish you had called to tell me you were coning,” she said as she gestured that I come in. I noted she looked a little older since she had yet to apply her makeup.

“Thought I’d come by on my way to work to see what you had for me to do,” I said.

She led me through her house to the garage. As she went, she explained, “My husband was a carpenter. Lost him in an accident nearly five years ago. He had a lot of tools. Thought if I could get them cleaned up, I could sell them.”

The garage was filled with tools, lumber, and other materials. They were haphazardly piled on each other. There was no room for cars. I looked at the tools. They look used but generally clean. “Won’t take much to clean these up,” I offered.

“What I was thinking was, with the good weather this time of year, maybe you could set them out in the drive. I could get a large sign made up and we could sell them right here,” she said.

“I’m off on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’ll come by next Tuesday about nine and see what I can do,” I told her.

“Oh, you are a god send. I see your name tag says John Smith. Can I call you John?” she asked. I consented, and she asked me to call her by her husband’s nick name for her which was Nanny.

On that Tuesday I took mother to work, telling her I had extra work to do, then went to Nanny’s. I started stacking the lumber in neat stacks on half of the wide drive and arranging the tools in the garage. Nanny kept interrupting me with lemonade and snacks. While I took numerous breaks, she told me she and her husband married young, had no children, and no brothers or sisters. “It was a few days after our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary that he fell on the job and died,” she said with a look of loss on her face.

I did the math: married young, maybe 17 to 20, plus 35 years of marriage, plus 5 years since his death, she was about 57 to 60. With her all dressed up, with makeup, and auburn hair, she did not look older than my mother who was about 40. The way she was dressed, I could see she had a body very much like my mother’s.

Before it was time to pick up my mother, I had things all arranged. She asked me to come by the next day to put up the sign she was having prepared. I was there about nine. She invited me to ride with her to the sign maker. He instructed me to drive its attached stake into the ground. The sign was clear and simple. It said: FOR SALE CARPENTER TOOLS & LUMBER.

We sat around and talked until noon and no one stopped. We were sitting down for a bowl of soup when a man in a pickup stopped and looked at everything. He offered her $50 for most of the lumber. She took it. I helped him load up the lumber and he told me he would be back for some of the tools. She sold tools that afternoon worth about $50 dollars. She insisted I take $50 dollars for my work. I told her that was too much. “Come back when you can and help me when you can but take the fifty now.”

I spent my mornings with her for the following two weeks and on a Wednesday about noon she told me to take the sign down. As I was stowing it in her garage she said, “Some of those men made me uncomfortable.” I asked her what she meant, she said, “They looked at me like I was for sale along with the tools.”

“You are an attractive woman,” I responded.

“Well, thank you John. And you are growing into an attractive young man.” I thanked her, and she asked me to have lunch with her. As we finished eating, she said, “You know there was another reason besides the tools that I invited you here. I hope you don’t run out of here screaming when I tell you.”

I wondered what she was about to tell me; that she killed her husband or that she barbecued young men and ate them. She did not make me wait long. She said, “Five years is a long time to go without a man.” She paused. I was sure what was coming. “You know…my husband took me to bed almost every night and… what is it the young people say? Screwed my brains out.” She paused again, then asked, “John, will you come to bed with me?”

Because I had thought about this and because I could never spend time with any women without thinking about it, I reached for her and we embraced with lots of tongue.