The Painter's Bad Day

By Peggy Backman

A police car carefully makes it way up Sandpiper Lane, a private dirt road, full of pot holes, with pretty little houses and well-trimmed lawns lining both sides. May watches out her window, as the patrol car slowly turns into her driveway. She feels her heart stop.

“I was afraid this would happen one day. How did they know? How did they find out?” she asks herself.

The policeman walks up the steps to the porch and knocks on the door. May pulls herself together, stands straight, takes a deep breath, and opens the door wide.

“Good afternoon, Officer. How can I help you?” she asks in a sweet voice.

“Good afternoon, Ma’am. Sorry to bother you, but we have a missing person’s investigation going on. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may.”

The police here in East Hampton are always so polite, May thinks to herself.

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May had been talking for months about getting some work done at her house. For a starter she decided to give the walls a nice fresh coat of paint. So one morning she made her way down to the hardware store to make her selection.

“Painters out here are just too expensive,” she complained to the woman who worked in the store.

The woman shook her head in agreement and strongly suggested that May make sure to get one who had insurance. “You never know when one of the workers will hurt himself, and then you know what that means. Everyone nowadays is always suing about something or other.”

May knew the woman was right, but money was tight right now. And she had never bothered about such things before. Friends had told her to stop by the train station and pick up a couple of day workers there:

“Just offer them a hundred dollars a day, and you’ll save a bundle of money,” one had said.

May didn’t have to think about this for too long. She had hired day workers before to take care of her yard.

“Most of them are really good. I’ve never had any trouble,” she reassured herself.

In addition, she knew that many of the so-called professional painters really wouldn’t do the work themselves anyway. Most of them would go to the train station and hire guys to do the work for below minimum wage. So she may as well just skip the middleman, and as her friend said, find her own workers and “save a bundle.”

So it was that May had found Errol. He was a fairly large fellow, spoke English well, and claimed to have experience painting. She thought about getting a second guy to help him, but Errol said he’d look at the place first and, if they needed someone else, they could get someone the next day. That sounded good to her.

Errol hadn’t exaggerated. He really did know what he was doing and took charge of the spackling, sanding and painting--singing as he went along. Everything was going smoothly until….

May never was sure what went wrong.

All she knew was that she was in the dining room rearranging some flowers, when she heard a scream—a piercing cry that went right to her bones. She spun around only to see Errol sailing through the air, the ladder going one way, he the other. It was all in slow motion, though in reality it probably took only a few seconds. Then there was the loud thud. May ran over to Errol, who was lying on the floor, his body twisted, contorted into a strange shape--legs, arms and head positioned in ways they were not meant to be. The tall stepladder that she had proudly purchased from the Shopping Channel was lying across the couch.

White paint from the spilled bucket began to form an abstract pattern on the oak floor. One edge was trimmed with a growing bright red design. This, as she would come to realize, was Errol’s blood, winding its way through the splattered puddle of paint.

Errol either had fallen off the ladder, or the ladder had tipped over. May was never sure. What she did know was that Errol’s body lay contorted on the floor, and he was badly hurt.

Blood covered his clothes and continued to ooze from the large gash on his head. Maybe he had hit the edge of the chair when he fell. Errol was moaning, but between moans he would yell at her, something about the ladder, and then cry out for his wife and children, then beg for help.

What to do? May didn’t know how to help him. To move him? Not move him? How to stop the bleeding? She had no idea. Whatever she had learned in the Red Cross course that she had taken at the community center had not prepared her for this.

“Call 911. Of course call 911,” she said to herself as she began to come out of her panic. May ran to the phone. As she started to dial, all sorts of images came pouring into her head. Mixed in with these frightening thoughts was the conversation she had had with the woman at the hardware store. May remembered the clerk’s grim face. “People are always suing nowadays.” You can’t be too careful was the message.

What if he sues me? People lose their homes over things like this. She couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned. But May had always been a supporter of immigrant workers and believed in making things easier for them. She respected their work ethic, and even thought that by hiring them she was doing a humanely good deed—in her own small way helping to feed their poor wives and children back home.

But this was different.

Thoughts kept swarming through her head: This is all I have. This is my home. I’ll be destitute.

May staggered into the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed, and wrapped her arms tightly around herself. Her body began to rock back and forth. She thought if she started to cry she would never stop.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. I am so alone. There is no one I can call, no one I can trust.

Help me! Help me! she cried out to no one, as she held herself even tighter.

It was at that moment that her eye caught a glimpse of the old hammer that was lying on the trunk near the bed. She had left it there, when she was trying to hang the pictures back up in the bedroom—on the very walls that Errol had painted just yesterday. May found herself eyeing the hammer, then tentatively picking it up.

No one knows he’s here, she reminded herself. Only me.

With right hand behind her back, May reemerged into the living room. Errol was still there on the floor, as she had left him—only now he was quiet. Everything was quiet. Was he dead? she wondered. She couldn’t tell. She stood staring, afraid to approach. Paint and blood were splattered everywhere. Her mind was reeling.

Suddenly she heard a noise. What was that? It’s outside. Who could it be? Out the window she could see the brown UPS truck in her driveway. The UPS guy had already gotten out and was walking jauntily toward the house with package in hand--of course, the new paintbrushes she had ordered from Amazon. Desperately May ran to the front door, stepped onto the porch, quickly closing the door behind her.

“Oh, a package for me. Amazon is so efficient. I just ordered that yesterday,” she said sweetly with a false smile.

As she went to reach for the box, May realized that her right hand was still behind her back clutching the hammer.

“Why don’t you just put it here on the porch. I’ll get it later,” she added, nodding toward a small table. Taking this in his stride, the driver did as told; bid her good day, and ambled back to his truck.

May lowered herself onto the edge of the porch, curled up into a semi-fetal position, her feet resting on the top step. “Wow! That was a close one,” she murmured, as she took a deep breath and watched the truck disappear around the turn.

Looking out at the flowers in her front yard, May thought about how much work she’d put into that pretty garden--the daffodils, the daisies, the irises, all mixed together; the colors so vibrant and fresh. All she had wanted to do was make her house beautiful, yes “House Beautiful”-- like in the magazine. For years this had been her own pretty sanctuary for weekends away from the city and her stressful job. Maybe someday she would even retire here.

The scene behind her in the living room was not real. It was just a nightmare, she told herself. She was sure that, when she went inside, her cozy house would be as before. But then, there was the hammer still clutched in her hand.

May stood up and moved toward the door. A chill went up her spine, a deep shiver. What if this was not a nightmare? She couldn’t believe what she had been thinking, what she had almost done?

May opened the door slowly. The light inside was gray--that color a room gets when the sun starts to go behind the trees and the inside lights have not yet been turned on. She could see a dark shadow on the floor. The painter had been working high up, reaching the very corners of the cathedral ceiling. He had fallen a long way.

Could it be that the shadow on the floor was moving slightly? She edged slowly into the room. He was not dead. His body was broken. But he was not dead. His soft moans began to anger her.

May didn’t think. She felt a moment of panic, but then, before she knew what was happening, she raised the hammer. In the dim light she could see the painter’s glassy eyes focused on her. Did she see fear? Death? It didn’t matter.

It was done.

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May hadn’t slept well for many weeks. She found herself staying away from the house and making plans to spend more time in the city. When she did come out, she no longer invited friends for the weekend. She had the excuse that the house needed a lot of work. For one, the floors had to be redone. Indeed, she had cleaned them, as best she could, and even hired a workman to refinish them. She gave him her Shopping Channel stepladder as a tip.

In the back yard, off toward the edge of the property, rose a mound of earth, covered with a new garden full of fresh colorful flowers.

So beautiful, so lush, May thought admiringly. It’s good I put that nice white fence around it; it looks so pretty, and it keeps the animals away.

At night May’s nightmares were becoming less frequent. The only one that seemed to replay, over and over, was that one about the policeman coming to the door. Would this never end?

“Good afternoon, Ma’am. Sorry to bother you, but we have a missing person’s investigation going on. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may.”

(C) Peggy Backman, East Hampton, New York 2010