As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth by Lynne Rae Perkins

Author:Lynne Rae Perkins
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

Del’s old western cowboy voice said, “I reckon your sink is leaking, ma’am.” Or his detective voice said, “How long has your sink been leaking, miss?” Or, he just said, “Is there a leak under your sink?” But it sounded like the other two.

Ry turned his head toward them.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “All I did was walk across the room.”

Del grabbed him under the armpits and pulled. Sharon helped from the other side to guide his foot and leg back up through the hole. They moved around the hole in a circle, bouncing gingerly to find out how far-reaching was the rottenness of the subfloor.

“I noticed it was soft in spots,” said Sharon. “But I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“Do you have any tools?” asked Del. He kneeled down and wiggled a piece of wood. It broke off in his hand like a stale graham cracker.

“I’ll call someone,” said Sharon. “Tomorrow. First thing.”

“Do you have any wood?” asked Del. He leaned out and reached across the hole to open the cabinet under the sink. The floor of the cabinet had warped into a rippling landscape of rolling hills. Tilting villages of buckets and cleaning products nestled in the valleys. A drop of water fell from a joint in the pipe to a small puddle below it. A lake in the tilting village.

“I don’t suppose you have a wrench?” asked Del.

“Actually, I probably do,” said Sharon. “Jerry was going to fix it before I told him to get lost. He left everything here. I was going to try to figure it out myself. I just haven’t had time.”

It was midnight. An owl hooted beyond the open window as Del laid a couple of two-by-fours across the hole to kneel on. Crickets chirped in their sleep as he and Ry moved all the cleaning junk out of the cabinet into a corner of the kitchen. Sharon led Miles away to put him back to bed.

Del fixed the leak first. It wasn’t that hard to do, and he explained it to Ry as he went along. He had Ry use the wrench so he would know how it should feel. Then he scored the linoleum with a utility knife outside the rottenness and had Ry start to yank it up inside that boundary, while he used a saber saw to cut away the warped floor of the cabinet. With the saw, Del cut the subfloor along the edge of the linoleum and, together, they ripped that up, too. It was mesmerizing and satisfying work to rip up the nasty stuff and toss it onto the growing pile. Ry almost hated to stop to use the bathroom, but he had to, so he hurried off.

“I’ll be right back,” he told Del. He wasn’t sure where the bathroom was, but the house was tiny; it couldn’t be hard to find. On his way there, he looked into a softly lit room and stopped. Miles and Sharon were fast asleep. Miles was under the covers, Sharon was outside them, curled around her child.

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