I positioned myself to one side of the tree; he stood on the other. I checked that the handle was as close to the top as possible, and then we counted down from ten. At zero we let the weed-tree loose and it sprang back up, almost to its full height, sending the paint tin sailing through the blue Brooklyn sky. We watched its black shape fly high, fly in a long slow curve over the back yard fence and then begin to fall­­and as soon as the big ten-gallon can started falling, I could see it wasn't going to make the roof.

"Oh man," my friend said.

"Oh man," I whispered.