Old School

A Short Story

Photo by Thomas Griggs on Unsplash

Over breakfast that morning, Jim’s wife said, “The folding shower seat arrives today.”

“Great,” Jim replied. “That was fast.”

“Have you arranged to have it installed, Honey?”

“I’ll get hold of Old School. I bet he’d do it.”

His wife gave him a puzzled look. “Old School? What’s that?”

“Ha, ha,” Jim chuckled. “Not what, who? That’s what I call the old guy who talks a lot.”

“Oh, yeah. I almost didn’t have him fix the valves in the hall bathroom because he wouldn’t stop yacking when I called him. Josefina recommended him.”

“That’s the one. I call him Old School because he tries to repair things before he opts to replace them. He saved us a bundle on those sink valves by fixing them. They still work three years later. He repaired the kitchen faucet last year. A new one would have cost ninety bucks.”

Jim’s wife sighed. “Well, okay, as long as I don’t have to hear his stories.”

“I like his stories, especially the one about how he learned to install toilets by installing one hundred and twenty of them in an apartment complex. But don’t worry. He’ll be stuck in the shower in our bedroom.”

*****

“Papa, are you going out again?” Art’s daughter confronted him.

“I have a small job scheduled for this afternoon.” Art put on his faded and stained ball cap and headed for the door.

“But you already worked three hours this morning. Isn’t that your limit?” The daughter called after him. “I don’t want you having a heart attack or stroke. Can’t you go tomorrow?”

“I told them I would come today. Don’t worry. It’s not much work. Piece of cake.” Art pulled the door open and turned to his daughter. “I’ll be alright.”

“But Papa, you…”

Art closed the door behind him, cutting off his daughter’s pleas to stay. He normally would have scheduled the job for another day. Two or three hours of labor exhausted him. His knees and lower back ached by that time and made additional work impossible. He was hurting now, but he didn’t want to reschedule. Jim sounded as if he was in a hurry to get the shower seat installed. Art liked to please the customers. His livelihood in retirement depended on their referrals. This wasn’t a plumbing job. He’d drill a few holes and screw the shower seat in place. No problem.

*****

The doorbell camera chimed Old School’s arrival as he turned his junker vintage Mercury Marquis into the driveway. He kept his tools in the immense trunk, as well as in the backseat. Jim went to a window and observed Old School exiting the car, wearing the same faded and stained ball cap, frayed red T-shirt stretched taut by his barrel chest and ample stomach, and torn tan cargo shorts he had worn on previous jobs. He opened the trunk and pulled out a tool bag and a cushion.

Jim greeted him at the door.

“Come on in, Art. How are you doing?”

“Well, you know that eye that was giving me trouble, the one that the doctor operated on. I told you about that right?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“My depth perception is off. The doctor said I may need another operation.”

“Can they fix it without surgery?”

“I don’t know, probably not. Both my knees are acting up, too, but that’s just forty years of plumbing work. After I left the navy, my uncle hired me to work for him at Longhorn Plumbing. He taught me to always try to fix something first. If I couldn’t, then replace it. His sons, my cousins, closed the business a couple of years after I retired. I still joke that they couldn’t make it without me.”

“Ha, ha. Thanks for coming over. Follow me to the master bathroom.”

Old School’s phone rang on the walk down the hall.

“Oh, hi Bobby. I’m busy right now. What is it? Not right now. I’m working. When? I’ll have to call you back. Okay, I’ll call you back.”

“That was my son. He lives in LA. Does real well there with computers and software.”

Jim showed Old School where he wanted the chair installed in the shower. Old school examined the chair propped against the shower wall.

“Have you already adjusted it for height?”

“The seat needs to be nineteen inches above the floor. You’ll need to confirm that it’s the right height before you install it.”

Old School asked Jim to hold the chair against the shower wall while he measured.

“Yep, nineteen inches from the floor to the top of the seat,” Old School said.

Jim pointed to the mounting plates on each side of the chair. The plates had four holes, two each at the top and bottom.

“At least two holes, one top and one bottom, on one of the mounting plates must be anchored to a wall stud to provide a secure installation. Did you bring a stud finder?”

Old School rummaged through the tool bag and produced a rectangular box.

“Got it right here.”

He placed the stud finder flat against the shower wall and moved it back and forth. As it neared the left-hand side, a red light blinked. Jim assumed that indicated a stud, but Old School kept scanning. Again it blinked red as it approached the left side, but Old School didn’t seem to notice. Then he ran the stud finder vertically. About a foot and a half from the bottom of the stall, it blinked red.

“I’ll have to find the stud the old-fashioned way by banging on the wall. Like this.” Old School banged his fist against the wall of the shower stall. “When I get a solid response, that will be a stud.”

“But didn’t the red light on the stud finder indicate a stud?” Jim asked. “It blinked near the left side and about a foot and a half from the bottom.”

Old School ignored him and pounded on the shower wall.

Jim was losing confidence in the old man’s abilities.

“Here. This is it. Hear the difference?”

Jim could tell the difference, but still wondered about the accuracy of the location.

Old School marked the spot, then held the chair with the mounting plates against the wall and marked the placement of the holes. He matched a drill bit with the anchors and drilled the top two holes. Wood dust came out of one hole. Jim let out a sigh of relief.

When Old School tried to insert the anchor into the hole, it didn’t fit. The hole was too small. He abruptly walked out of the bathroom.

“I’ll be right back.”

Jim noted that this behavior was unlike Old School, who usually gave a detailed play-by-play as he worked.

*****

When he arrived at his car, Old School paused and took a deep breath. Why was he letting this job get to him? So what if he needed to drill new holes? There were only two. No harm done, but he felt like he was going to explode. Maybe his daughter had been right: fatigue and pain put pressure on him to complete the job in a hurry. That pressure made him anxious.

He grabbed a plastic jar full of drill bits from the backseat and returned to the bathroom.

*****

Jim watched Old School enter the bedroom carrying a plastic jar of rusted drill bits and proceed to the bathroom without speaking. Strange behavior for someone who always had something to say, Jim thought.

Old School pulled drill bits out of the jar to test in the hole. Each time he pulled one out, another one or two came with it.

“Dammit,” Old School growled under his breath after the third such experience and dumped the bits onto the ceramic tile that covered the bathroom floor.

Jim couldn’t believe Old School had done that. The bits, clattering as they landed, would surely leave scratched and chipped tiles behind.

Old School crouched and pawed through the scattered bits, selecting three. He then stood and walked to the shower stall, stepping on the bits in the process.

What’s the matter with this guy? Jim thought. Where did this careless behavior come from?

Then he noticed Old School’s flushed complexion and grim expression. A coating of sweat shone on his forehead and cheeks. The bathroom stank like a locker room after a football workout.

Old School found the correct-sized bit and re-drilled the hole, then inserted the anchor. He drilled the remaining three holes for that plate.

Jim saw a small amount of wood dust come out of the hole beneath the first one. It appeared Old School had found the stud.

After he drilled the holes for the other mounting plate, Old School inserted the anchors, pressed the mounting plates against the wall, and screwed them into it. One anchor pushed through the hole and into the hollow wall as he did this.

“Dammit,” Old School muttered as he struggled to remove the anchor from the inside of the wall.

Jim secretly questioned why the old man had used drywall anchors. Old School knew the wall was hollow from his pounding on it earlier. The job called for toggle bolts.

As this was going on, Old School’s phone rang. He tugged it out of the rear pocket of his shorts and snapped at the caller, “I’m working.” He turned the phone off and tossed it onto the vanity, where it came to rest next to the sink.

By the time he got to the last screw, he was gasping for air.

He hadn’t spoken a word except to cuss once in a while as he wrestled with the screws and anchors.

“Jesus!” Old School shouted and stomped out of the shower stall, across the drill bits on the floor, and out of the bedroom.

Jim entered the bathroom and checked the folding shower chair. Only half of that last hole showed through the corresponding hole in the mounting plate.

Old School walked in while Jim inspected the work.

“I’ll have to force the screw in at an angle.” Old School produced a screwdriver that featured a shank over a foot long. “This will give me some leverage.”

Jim stepped out of the shower stall and watched as the old man huffed and strained, twisting the screwdriver a quarter turn at a time. Old School paused for a while to rest during the ordeal but did not utter a word, no stories, no progress report. Jim assumed the old man didn’t have the strength to chat the way he used to.

When he couldn’t turn the screw anymore, Old School announced he had finished the installation and began collecting his tools.

Jim had already picked up the drill bits from the floor and put them in the plastic jar. To his surprise, there appeared to be no obvious scratches on the tiles, but dust from the rust covered the floor, so his relief might turn out to be premature.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Seventy dollars,” Old School said matter-of-factly. “I’ll be right back for the rest of my stuff.” He left the room carrying the tool bag and the jar of drill bits.

Jim slipped into the shower and unfolded the seat. Two screws worked loose as the legs met the pan of the shower stall. The chair wobbled.

Old School returned in time to see Jim folding and unfolding the unstable chair.

“It’s a little loose on that side, but it will hold,” Old School said.

Jim stepped out of the shower while reaching into the back pocket of his jeans for his billfold. He withdrew three twenties and a ten and handed them to Old School.

“Seventy dollars.”

“That’s it. Thank you. Don’t worry; it will hold. I made sure of that.”

Jim saw Old School to the door without saying another word.

*****

Old School had witnessed the disappointment on his customer’s face. There would be no more calls from Jim or referrals either. It wasn’t like him to leave a job in that condition, or to accept money for it, but he had no more energy to put into it. He should have listened to his daughter.

The seventy bucks in his pocket haunted him all the way home.

*****

“I think he needed the money,” Jim explained after he had warned his wife not to use the shower seat until he fixed it. “It wasn’t a total loss. He found the stud.”

“I married a generous man,” she said, but her expression told another story. “Tell me you won’t hire him again.”

“Never again.”

*****

Old School noted the bewildered look on Jim’s face when he answered the door.

“Did you forget something?”

“This.” Old School offered the seventy dollars he had received earlier. “I didn’t earn it.”

“You worked over an hour installing that shower chair. You earned it.”

“I know you aren’t happy with the job. I’m not happy with it, either. Please take the money.”

Jim accepted the cash with a thank you, then turned to his wife and said, “What did I tell you? Old School all the way.”