'70
Spring Sale
Herb was always handy with tools — well, most of the time, unless his thumbs got in the way. This Saturday he finally wrapped up the job of painting their bedroom after incessant prodding from his wife, Sadie, who had selected the paint at Sears two years ago, hoping he would get around to covering up the discoloration loitering for thirty years. Sadie had painted the room then─ still a youngster of thirty-six. To Herb painting was for women and faggots. A man was designed to do something more utilitarian with his hands than to waste their strength on meeting the cosmetic needs of women. Their bedroom served them well regardless of the original cream color now sick yellow with puffs here and there of nicotine mist and sharply outlined variations from changing family pictures on the wall and furniture locations over the years. Sadie, however, reminded him that the bedroom had been freshly painted when they moved in forty years ago and was apparently conducive to a more vital life, since they had conceived five children within six years. "Though I surely don't long for anymore children and certainly don't wish to carry on like honeymooners in bed, it would be pleasing to gaze up at soft pastels before drifting off to sleep."
Anyway, he dumped all the rollers, brushes and cans and roller pans in the garbage can out back, muttering good riddance to them. He strolled through his yard and checked the ravages of winter. He raked up some twigs and acorn shells that the squirrels left behind. "Why can't those little buggers shell them in their nests?" he grated to himself. "If those bushy-tail rats shake the bunches off my grape trellis again this year, I'm putting poison around."
For thirty-five years, he had been threatening to do that, but Sadie would never allow him "to offend God's creatures"─but more importantly, she observed, it was too dangerous with the children, and divers dogs they had had over the years....
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