The next day, he stopped at the Portuguese contractor-supply on
Ossington that he liked. They opened at five a.m., and the men behind
the counter were always happy to sketch out alternative solutions to his
amateur construction problems, they never mocked him for his
incompetence, and always threw in a ten percent "contractor's discount"
for him that made him swell up with irrational pride that confused
him. Why should the son of a mountain need affirmation from runty
Portugees with pencil stubs behind their ears and scarred fingers? He
picked up a pair of foam-rubber knee pads and a ten-kilo box of
lint-free shop rags and another carton of disposable paper masks.
He drove to the house on Wales Avenue, parked on the lawn, which was now
starting to thaw and show deep muddy ruts from his tires. He spent the
next twelve hours crawling around on his knees, lugging a tool bucket
filled with sandpaper and steel wool and putty and wood-crayons and shop
rags. He ran his fingertips over every inch of floor and molding and
paneling, feeling the talc softness of the sifted sawdust, feeling for
rough spots and gouges, smoothing them out with his tools. He tried
puttying over the gouges in the flooring that he'd seen the day he took
possession, but the putty seemed like a lie to him, less honest than the
gouged-out boards were, and so he scooped the putty out and sanded the
grooves until they were as smooth as the wood around them.
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