Soon, a wheelbarrow packed with dirt was all that remained of the hole. The dirt would help to conceal the out-of-place crushed stones when he was done. Winston found his three-inch circular hole bit and battery-operated drill in the barn and bored a hole for the pipe. The hole, drilled through the floor two feet from the outside wall, would be difficult, if impossible, to completely conceal, and he recognized this as a liability. He pushed the PVC pipe through the hole and into the pit, secured it inside the apartment with the pipe strapping, and filled in the pit with the remaining crushed stones. A layer of green garbage bags to assist in quelling the anticipated odor, the remaining dirt, and a few squirts of flat black paint across the bright white PVC pipe to tone it down, and Winston still wasn’t satisfied with the results. The pipe was just too damned conspicuous to his eye, yet it was critical to their safety — he kept rationalizing that it was just not feasible to hoard their shit inside the apartment, crammed into plastic bags or even sealable bowls. Back inside the barn, he found a couple of unused wooden pallets used to stack cord wood on, a dozen ancient concrete cinder blocks, and an old, metal basketball hoop and its rotted backboard he was saving for someday. He stacked those items over and around the pit, hoping the entire ruse would remain undisturbed and fool any prying eyes that might spy his plumbing handiwork.
Inside the apartment, he cut the PVC pipe (which hung mid-air by pipe strapping) at knee-height, about three feet from the wall, and installed the forty-five-degree flange. Essentially, what Winston had created was a crude version of the plumbing found under every flushable, household toilet, only his creation “floated” several feet in the air and was meant to have waste poured down its throat. He tested the contraption by taking a long, satisfying leak into it. And it worked brilliantly.
Next, he carefully notched eight observation slits into the apartment’s walls with a knife (four at his eye level, and four lower on the wall, at his eye level while kneeling. Two slits faced the house, two slits faced the driveway and road, two faced the woods, and two faced into the barn) — he would have a clear view at all angles without the risk of being tempted to sneak a peek out the barn door.
Three years earlier, a late-November hurricane had threatened the Georgia coast with massive destruction. The meteorologists had promised a storm the United States’ southeast region had never seen before. The storm’s name was Linda and it ended up fizzling out in the Atlantic, but a week before the storm was slated to hit Georgia, Winston had bought a stack of aluminum sheeting down at Calef’s and fabricated hurricane shutters for the house’s windows. He made twenty-six such panels, which were now stacked neatly in the barn, in a variety of sizes ranging from two feet by two feet to three feet by six feet. Winston arranged those panels along the apartment’s road-facing side, low on the wall (the tallest height being three feet), and screwed them to the wall’s studs stacked four-deep, which would give them approximately a quarter of an inch of armored protection — not enough to stop a large-bore bullet, but thick enough to slow it down.
Winston was nearly done — just a few more items were needed. He walked in on May finishing the packing and was surprised by the sheer volume of stuff she had gathered to take into the apartment that was neither food nor water.
“You wan’ me ta call U-Haul?” Winston asked as he rooted through a kitchen drawer. He pulled out a handful of dishtowels — the ones with the black roosters on them.
“It does seem like a lot,” she replied, and spying the towels in Winston’s hands, said, “excuse me, but what do you think you’re doing with those?”
“I need ‘em.” Winston smiled widely. He was busted.
“Oh no you don’t. Those are my good towels. Use these.”
May reached under the kitchen sink and pulled out a dozen stained cleaning rags and handed them to Winston while simultaneously jerking her good dishtowels from Winston’s strong clutch.
“Those nasty ol’ things?” he remarked, scrunching his nose in disapproval.
“They’ll do for whatever you need them to do.”
“Okay, you win, Mother.”
“Lunch will be ready soon.”
“We can start moving the supplies out there this afternoon. We’ll have to move in by tomorrow. Maybe tonight.”
“I’m ready.”
Winston took the old cleaning rags into the apartment and, using brads, tacked the rags above the observation slits to make flaps that concealed their movements and any light that may show from inside the apartment. He looked around and thought the apartment to be complete, and then he had an idea. In the basement three-quarter bathroom was a traditional shower with a shower curtain. The curtain rod was an older-style tension rod that measured seventy-two inches at its greatest width, but could adjust down to forty-one inches. Winston loosened the rod and took the entire unit — rod, curtain liner, and shower curtain (with a gloriously vibrant yellow and black monarch butterfly print) into the apartment and adjusted the rod to its shortest position. It just barely fit the apartment’s three-foot width. He tightened the pole and May could now have her privacy. Still, he dreaded the prospect of explaining their waste dilemma to her.
May called out a welcomed interruption from the stump. Lunch was ready — a can of heated Franco-American for Winston, a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich for her, and the last of a bag of out-of-date potato chips shared between them. The weather was warm and belied the impending threat. It was just past one in the afternoon.
“It’s done?” May asked.
“As done as it’s ever gon’ be.”
“We’ll be safe in there?”
“I reckon.”
“I trust you.”
Lunch ended all too quickly and Winston was excited to show May his handiwork, so he took her by the hand and led her into the barn. She couldn’t believe how well the wall came out, and that she couldn’t tell it wasn’t the actual outside wall — from inside the barn, his false wall was an exact replica of the outside wall. Inside the apartment, he explained where he thought things should go and why: toiletries, Ziploc bags, and Tupperware were to be stacked behind the shower curtain, food and drinking water along the false wall, their wall-to-wall bed near the door, and any other paraphernalia scattered judiciously throughout the apartment. He demonstrated how the deadbolt on the door worked and how they could see outside through the observation slits. Then, Winston explained their waste situation.
“I like the privacy, Winston, but I’m not sure I can… I can… I’ll be able to, well, I don’t think I’ll be able to do my business down there!”
May became agitated.
“Fortunately, neither of us will be doin’ are business down there. It’d sho’ as hell clog the pipe in a matter a days. Nah, we gon’ hafta do are business into a bucket or pail or somethin’ and then, stay with me May, we’ll hafta mash it with a fo’k and some water ‘til it’s liquefied. Then we can pour it down this here drain. But the mos’ important part of this is no toilet paper. It’ll clog the pipe up. We’ll have to use water an’ a rag. It’s got to be this way.”
May’s face contorted as if she eaten a mouthful of sour grapes, “you mean, you’ll have to mash it up.”
Winston had known for a long while that he’d be relegated to doing the shit work.
“Alright, Mother, I’m a be the official shit mashah.”
Winston scooted past May and into the main area of the barn. He scooped up an old pitchfork, turned his cap to the side, and marched throughout the barn, as if he was the leader of an imaginary marching band.