Jed Wolf

I woke up this morning late for work wishing I was as dependable as my sprinklers.

The well pump wakes me every morning at 7:10, barely enough time to let out my whiney cats, hit the coffee button, check my appointments, pet their butts, give them their fucking fresh water and hit the shower.

Wincey and Pablo require distilled water daily and incessantly whine ‘till I empty yesterday’s, wipe their water dishes, dry them then pour what they require every morning from a new gallon. If they were my kids, I’d abuse them I think as the coffee maker groans and sputters slowly filling it’s fragile carafe.

It’s 89 degrees at sunrise in Florida. Ninety per cent humidity reminds me I’ll be selling swimming pools behind sweaty masks again today. Like Sampson with alopecia, masks make me impotent. How can I read my client’s expressions or rely on visual cues? Without a face, charisma is homeless.

I’m hard of hearing anyway and read lips. Eye contact is all a salesman has in a pandemic but this morning’s bulbous bags under mine could use a bit of surgery or perhaps a DIY squeeze I wonder, like drinking bleach might cure Covid.

Ice cubes hurt and it’s too hot to jump in the pool. So I shower, don my trusty shades and head into the Amazon hoping I’ll feel better by the time I take them the off to talk business.

Most of my client’s live in a formerly remote suburb of Jacksonville called “St. Johns.” Disguising thousands of square miles of scorched earth, dystopian communities with h’omage to nature names like “Paradise Quay” and “Sandhill Preserve” shimmer in the relentless sun. Since Covid, everyone wants backyard “sanctuary,” and all must procure their pools from masked men like me.

St. Johns is about a forty five minute drive. Weary of texting traffic on US 1 and I 95 though five or ten minutes longer, I choose back roads by GPS before they’re gone.

Rural Floridians love their Trump signs and go to great lengths to make sure they’re noticed inside cow pastures and a-top their trailers before they’re gone as well, so it’s ironic to be relieved that HOA’s don’t allow political signage, I think as I pull into folksy sounding “River Creek.”

I remind myself that Ben Ambroso and his wife want a “meat and potatoes ” pool as I pull into 5768 Cavelanche Place.

Wondering if there are sink holes, I tell myself to focus and keep my bright ideas pedestrian. I figure they’ll probably want a rectangular pool to fit their unimaginative lives.

Big dogs bark as I ring their bell. Likely Rottweilers or Pits, I think while noticing the crepey skin on my inner arm, I tuck my shades into my breast pocket to appear less mummy-like.

The door opens and there, holding back his rescues with a pajama’d boy squirming between his big legs and a tiny girl peeking out from behind them stood Quasimoto.

He wasn’t wearing a mask as I took in the tableau, glancing at his visage from six feet away – his kids, dogs, marine tee shirt and heartbreaking face entirely framed by raised, jagged scars.

I couldn’t ask him if we were wearing masks as I knelt down to ease the anxious dogs.

Trump supporters often thrust out their hand to shake mine but not Ben. A million thoughts raced through my head while saying, “You must be Ben and who are these animals?”

Thankfully not using the word creatures, I pet the dogs while one of their tails whips the too-old-for-diapers boy’s face.

I look up and introduce myself to Mutt, Pookey, Ash, Justin and Ben. All are strawberry blonds.

Throughout my life, before we all went gray, my most sensitive friends have been strawberry blonds.

Just as Ben caught me glancing at his jagged hairline his wife appeared from behind yanking Justin backwards, who’d been enjoying the slapping tail on his face.

“This is my wife,” Ben said stepping out of her way then passing her their loopy son. “Hello,” she said in that universal spinning-too-many plates kind of way that makes people lovely, “I’m Andresa.”

He scooped up adorable Ashley, carried her upside down giggling and showed me around the side yard to the back.

Clients and I often choose not to wear masks when we social distance outside but when we retreat indoors from the grueling sun or onto a shaded lanai, I wear mine.

Though Ben looked more normal with his, clearly his raised scars and saggy eye took center stage.

I launched into my prepared pitch telling them it seemed like they knew what they wanted, when Ben interrupted saying their only concern was a child fence. “As you might have gathered, Justin,” who was about to drop my tape measure in a blow up child’s pool, “is special needs. He can finally sit up in that without tipping over so we figure it’s time for the next level. We have two older ones as well.”

After about forty minutes discussing gate locks, water depth, swim harnesses and Covid 19, Andresa said, while massaging Justin, “it’s been quite a year.”

I took that as permission to ask what had happened to Ben, then sat beneath a small tree and listened.

Last year, Ben was a marine preparing for deployment to Afghanistan when the left side of his face suddenly dropped. At first doctors in Jacksonville thought it was Bells Palsy, a temporary weakness on one side of the face so they allowed him to be deployed, but active duty was miserable and his condition worsened so he retuned to get some tests. They opened up his skull and while searching for cancer they discovered a mass of blood vessels pressuring nerves so they removed it and sent him home with antibiotics.

Andresa is from Brazil and they had a trip planned for years which doctors agreed he could go on as long as he remained on antibiotics. On the long flight with the family Ben’s face began to swell. He was in tremendous pain and by the time they landed, puss oozed from his eyes and nose. Ben was immediately flown to a hospital in Brasilia.

I first learned of futuristic-sounding “Brazilia” as a kid, an entirely planned city built on scorched earth, designed in 1960 to be the new centrally located capital of Brazil. I marveled at it’s name again when I heard it saved Ben’s life. Renowned for plastic surgery and great architecture, the specialists there took off Ben’s entire face, scraped the infected tissue away and sewed it back on.

The phone rang. Their two other children who’d supposedly been social distancing at the community pool needed to be picked up.

I thanked them for the whole story which they seemed to enjoy telling. “Most people just salute me and say thanks for your service,” Ben said as he walked me to my truck when for some reason I came clean about my baggy eyes, impotence, alopecia and demanding cats which made him laugh and say, “We all manage to shine brother, we all manage to shine. Now tell me about your military discount.”