Pool_1

"The good part?" awe, in actual speech coming from Benny, was displaced by dread of what Benny meant. It turns out that Benny wasn't one of those fellows who don't say much, but when they do, it don't mean much. It meant plenty. The good part was bringing the horizontal vats to the all tile steam room just off the deck where steam hoses awaited. With Jake pointing, and each of the other four crawling with a steam hose in one hand and a flat curved metal object in the other, the vats got systematically scraped, steamed, and scoured, from the inside. "First you crawl in. ... Use the scraper in big sweeping motions. ...Get all the swill that clings to the sides .. use the steam...use plenty of steam!" he yelled his instructions to Marcus, from a distance. Scrape, steam, scrape, steam until your lungs burst and nasal passages screamed for mercy from the super heated vile feted-steam inhalations. Like cleaning an unflushed dirty toilet from inside it. Rising on hot putrid vapors purging an overturned vat was heard, "Oh God. Oh God... No children here! .. This isn't the covenant! .. Forty years in the desert, ... not a summer of steamed vomit!" He was rambling, "Hi. My name is Vomitus. Vomitus Macaluso! I am your ass hole." Whirling through his nauseated head, "Uncle Charley must be the anti-Christ." With the vats cleaned and erected, a job that somehow stretched to an apparent eight years, Marcus peeled off his clothing to his briefs and tossed them with disgust into the garbage. He clawed at water from a nearby utility sink trying to pull it to his body to get that ooze from his hair, his ears, his face, his belly button, his buttocks, from him. It clung better than a scab. He just kept at it until Jake pulled him away. He wrung his underpants under the tap and even tried steaming them. He learned that smell can be permanent.