The Roof We Closed in One Day
He wanted $6000 down, to order materials and hold a start date. She wrote the check on October 6 and he cashed it that same afternoon.
He started on Monday, the thirteenth. Tuesday and Wednesday his crew of two young men stripped the south slope and the addition right down to the decking. Wednesday evening, Troy stapled a blue tarp over the open section and told Rosalind they would be back Thursday to start laying underlayment.
Thursday morning nobody came.
Thursday afternoon she called. No answer. Friday she called four times. At ten after four on Friday he finally left a voicemail, timed so that she was in the grocery store and could not pick up.
She played it for me on her kitchen counter the next night, on speakerphone, and I will give it to you word for word.
“Hey Rosalind, Troy. Listen, materials have gone up on me something fierce, so I’m gonna have to pause the job until I can get a revised number to you. Don’t worry about the tarp, it’s good. I’ll be in touch.”
That was all of it. Fourteen seconds. No apology, no date, no mention of her money.
I told her to call me if it rained.
I got there at 2:05 Monday morning.
Her porch light was on. The rain was coming down in cold sheets and the thermometer on her porch post said 41. I could see the problem from the driveway. Cheap staples had pulled out of wet decking and a corner of the blue tarp had folded back on itself like a dog-eared page. The whole south slope and the addition were open to the sky.
Rosalind was in the doorway in Mel’s old flannel shirt, the gray one with the torn pocket. She had her hair tied up in a dish towel and her arms crossed against the cold.
“I’m sorry to get you out of bed,” she said.
“Roz. Stop.”
I walked straight past her to the back bedroom. The roasting pan was nearly full and she had set out a stockpot, a mixing bowl, and a laundry basket lined with a trash bag. The drywall ceiling was bulging in two spots, a brown-edged stain spreading across the white.
I put my hand flat against the ceiling. Wet, but not collapsing. We had maybe an hour before a section came down.
“Hold the ladder,” I said.
“Loren, it’s two in the morning and it’s pouring.”
“I know what time it is.”
I will not pretend this is the part I am proud of. A man of sixty has no business on a wet roof at two in the morning, and I knew it every rung of the way up. I tied a rope around my waist and hitched the other end to the chimney, and with a headlamp and a drill I pulled that tarp tight over the stripped slope, running furring strips along every edge and screwing them down through the tarp into the decking so the wind could not get a grip. It took an hour and ten minutes. When I came down my hands were numb and my beard was dripping.