Every time he used the barn toilet, he used an entire roll of toilet paper, clogging it every day since he got here. His hands were chapped, cracked, and bleeding regularly from hard water and too much soap. He had yet to break the seal on the toiletries I bought him, and his face was one constant contortion. But amid this digression, I had noticed odd progress-if you can call it that. I woke Saturday morning to the sound of an engine running and another high-pitched sound I couldn't quite place. Like a mower or go-cart. I climbed upstairs, walked side of the house was soaked. Mutt stood at the edge of the back porch, wearing protective safety glasses and yellow earplugs stuffed into each ear, and both hands gripped the biggest pressurewasher wand I'd ever seen. He had braced his legs against a column and looked like he was holding a flamethrower. At his feet was a thirteen-horsepower Honda engine on wheels connected to some sort of pump that fed water through a hundred-plus feet of pressurized hose snaking around the porch.
