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you, but if your uncle comes by and catches me, he’ll have my hide. Still, I feel kind of stupid just sitting here with my thumb up my ass.”
    I laughed like he wanted me to, and that did feel kind of good. “I’ll be okay.”
    “Uh-huh. You got enough of that Gatorade? Last thing I need is you getting heatstroke.”
    I told Justin I would be okay and got to work. A line of crows marched along the barn’s roofline but rose in a chorus of harsh caws as I began to climb. Hauling that can of solvent, wondering if everything was going to hold, was the hardest part. The vibrations of my footfalls shuddered into the palms of my hands as I climbed the ladder. Those crows swarmed overhead, and I kept thinking:
This is when the whole thing crashes down and I break my neck.
    Once I was up there, I plugged into my iPod, fitted on the goggles, and got down to it. After a few nervous minutes, I settled into a rhythm brushing on softener, but I was sweating like nobody’s business, the perspiration pooling around my waistband. Justin had brought along a book, and he pretended to read in a wedge of shade along the north edge of the barn. Maybe twenty minutes after I got started, I glanced over and Justin’s deputy’s hat was down over his eyes, his arms crossed over his chest. If my earbuds hadn’t been in, I’d have probably heard him snoring.
    The sun beat down on my back and head and arms; I was baking and basting at the same time. In maybe thirty minutes, I’d sweated through my clothes. Even the backs of my knees were wet, and my hands were clammy in their latex gloves. I chugged from a couple quart jugs of Gatorade Rain, but that made me have to pee. I might’ve just done the point and shoot—that high, the arc might’ve been kind of cool—but I was in enough trouble. So I was up and down.
    I paced myself. I’m not a real athlete or anything, but my arms are pretty good. I brushed on softener working a left-toright swath. By the time I reached the end, it had been about an hour, and then I could go back and start scraping. A couple hours of this, though, and my shoulders started to really ache and my arms were sore. I started to wonder if maybe I could get my hands on a cordless sander or power washer. I had to have
something
because doing this all by hand was going to take until sometime next summer.
    My fourth time down, Justin woke up, yawned, stretched, smacked his lips a couple times, squinted up at me, and said, “Hey, you’re doing okay.”
    “Mmmm.” The right swastika was maybe half gone, a mess of red and gray flakes snowing the grass below. A big irregular splotch of weathered gray board flowered along the barn like a fungus. I shrugged and worked my right shoulder. The muscles between my shoulder blades felt tight. “But I’m never going to get done this way. I’ll be here for years. Way more than eight hundred hours of community service.”
    Justin grinned. “Yeah, Eisenmann’s one cruel SOB. But I got a cousin who does a lot of carpentry. You want, I’ll see if maybe he’s got some kind of machine for next time. I don’t know a lot about painting, but there’s got to be a better way than doing this by hand.”
    “Yeah.” I armed away sweat. I reeked of greasy sunscreen I didn’t need because of the coveralls. “That would be great.”
    “Come on, it’s lunchtime. My treat.”
    But I shook my head. “If it’s all the same to you, I think that I should keep going. I’m kind of worried that getting started again would be a hundred times worse.”
    Justin said I was probably right about that. He said he’d go into town, grab some sandwiches and drinks, and be right back. “You’ll be okay, right?”
    “Sure. Just me and the barn swallows.”

    The muttering started up as soon as the red dust ball of Justin’s cruiser was out of sight.
    I was on the scaffold again when that happened. Suddenly, my arm froze, the edge of the paint scraper pressed against old wood, and I started