Send Down the Rain(50)



“What else can you do?”

He shrugged. “What you need done?”

Allie and I walked him through and around the restaurant. He asked, “You have tools?”

“No.”

This did not seem to faze him. He spoke rapidly in Spanish to Javier and Peter. The three nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay, what?” I asked.

He waved his hand across the restaurant. “We fix.”

“The whole thing?”

He nodded. Again, matter-of-factly. Catalina pushed open the kitchen door of the restaurant then and found us standing in the dining room talking about roofs and plumbing and all things electrical. She explained, “All three have worked construction. Peter has built houses. Victor can wire most anything. Javier is good with wood and plumbing.”

Allie tugged on my shirtsleeve. “We’d better check with the bank before we start work. What if we can’t work out a deal?”

I turned to the men. “If I drive you to a store, a big one with lots of tools and lumber, do you know what you need in order to get started?”

They nodded and Peter spoke for them. “Sí, se?or.”

Allie and I drove them to the Home Depot outside of Tallahassee. Each of us grabbed a cart. You can learn a lot about a man by how he values his tools and why he buys the equipment he buys. You can also learn whether or not he knows how to use them. Three hours later we had filled eight carts, placed an order for several thousand board feet of pressure-treated wood, and spent almost eight thousand dollars. Allie looked like a ghost. The store manager was beaming. Knowing we’d never fit all this in my truck, I struck a deal with him on a high-wall, dual-axle trailer. I also set up an account that would allow the men to buy what they needed without my being present.

When we returned, Manuel was sitting at the kitchen table looking at the kids’ beach pickings for the day, which included twenty-seven sharks’ teeth. As the moon rose above us, Peter and Victor and Javier worked into the night, setting up a staging area for equipment in the open space below the restaurant, where guys working in the kitchen used to wash the fryers.

Allie pulled me aside. “You really think they can do what they’ve said they can do?”

I smiled. “I guess we’re about to find out.”





28

The sound of demolition woke us the next morning. Hammers, reciprocating saws, sledgehammers—it didn’t take them long to make a giant mess. Manuel leaned on me and we walked slowly to the restaurant. Knowing they needed a dry place to work, his three cousins started on the roof.

Over the course of the week, hiring the three of them proved to be one of the wiser choices I’d ever made. By Friday they had gutted every piece of rotten wood and repaired the roof with new sheets of zinc. They worked from daylight to sundown, only stopping a few minutes for lunch. And they played music from their stereo that made everyone want to smile and dance. Including me.

By the end of the week, against our petitions, Manuel was slowly swinging a hammer alongside them. Catalina and Allie made a hundred trips to the Dumpster, and I paid cash for a used three-quarter-ton long-bed Chevrolet that allowed the three amigos to get what they needed when they needed it. We were in full-blown construction mode.


THE FAMILY, AS I’D begun calling Catalina, Gabriella, Diego, Peter, Victor, Javier, and Manuel, fixed us dinner on the porch. The place was swept and clean, but walls were missing. Wiring exposed. Pipes disconnected. They spread out a feast unlike anything I’d seen. It gave a whole new meaning to the word fajitas. Some of the best food I’d ever had. And then Catalina fried sopapillas. I forced myself to stop at eight.

Two weeks in, the three mess-makers, as Catalina referred to them, had finished the kitchen renovation. They’d rewired, replumbed, and were ready for inspection, proving that they obviously knew more about commercial construction than I did. I called the city inspector, and he made us correct a few things and then gave his approval and told me what licenses I’d failed to apply for. He left me with some pretty clear instructions about how to function as my own general contractor. Turns out he grew up eating at the Blue Tornado and was eager to see her reopen. I made a mental note to buy dinner for him and his family when we reopened.

Manuel recovered enough to travel with me to Clopton to start bringing back pieces of kitchen equipment, using both trucks and the trailer. Allie worked tirelessly alongside us. The first day we loaded the kitchen appliances, cookware, benches, and tables. Over the next couple days as the others worked to retrofit the new kitchen, Manuel and I made two more trips. On the second trip, as we were packing up, he pointed to the carnival rides.

“What do you plan to do with all this?” he asked.

“No idea.”

“You want to bring it to the island?”

“That’s a little bit bigger project than just renovating a restaurant. Can you do that?”

He nodded. “But do you have a place to put it?”

“I don’t, but Allie does.”

Allie watched the transformation with wide eyes and old tears. We would walk the beach, and each day, with each fallen tear, more of the hardship of her life washed away.

Rosco had taken to island life just fine. He was always at my heels except come time to walk the beach. As Allie and I started walking through the dunes, he’d tear off through the sand and head north up the coastline. Well after dark, when it came time to go to bed, he’d reappear and hop up on Gabby’s bed.

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