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Learning to Fall: another dollar.
"N.B.," Dad said this morning while he ate his apple butter bread and granola pudding, which made me just about throw my stomach right out the door. "I've got a job for you and your creepy little friend. A job for money."
"Honestly, Philetus." Momma only said 'honestly' when she was upset by something Dad or me or Zit Head said. We all waited on the lecture to come, but she just shook her head and walked out the door.
So after school Terry and I got to go down the street to where Gill and Dad had their store. Gill was there sneering at Terry and for a minute I thought Terry was gonna' go after Dad's partner like a terrier on a great dane, but he didn't.
Instead he leaned over to me and said, "it is best to keep your friends close..."
"and your enemies closer," I finished his sentence and we laughed and just then Dad handed us some putty knives and sandpaper and a wire brush.
"If you boys can scrape away all the loose paint in the old theater here," Dad waved his big hands all around the room, which used to be a theater back around the second world war. "We'll pay you by the hour, a dollar and a half each."
We knew right then that we'd be rich in no time.
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