The Roof Done by Dark

Shingle bundles went up the ladder on shoulders, and the coil nailers popped in a rhythm you could have set a clock by.

Dusty ran the crew from the ridge. Every so often he would call out a measurement or tell somebody his line was walking off, and they would fix it without a word.

I worked the ladder most of the afternoon, carrying bundles up and handing them across to Cody and Jake at the edge.

By three o’clock half the street was out. Somebody had brought more lawn chairs. A couple of kids were playing in the red dirt by the culvert.

Mr. Hendricks had not moved from his chair in six hours except to get more coffee.

Around four, Gordon walked out to the end of his driveway and stood there looking up at the house with his hands in his pockets. He stood there a long time.

From the ladder I could see his face, and it was the face of a man trying to hold something very heavy without letting anybody see he was holding it.

Josie got tired around then and fell asleep across Marlene’s lap on the porch. Ava kept sorting nails long after there were any left to sort, moving them from one can to another and back.

At one point I heard her ask Marlene, “Can Mommy see the roof from heaven?”

Marlene did not answer right away. Then she said, “I expect she’s got the best seat on the street,” and Ava nodded like that settled it.

By late afternoon the sun had come down low over the pasture and laid long shadows across the yard. The trees threw thin broken shade.

The new gray shingles had climbed all the way up both sides, and all that was left was the last course at the ridge and the cap.

I came up the ladder with the last bundle of shingles on my shoulder.

My red T-shirt was soaked through and my tool belt felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Dusty leaned down and took the bundle from me.

“That’s the last one,” he said. “We’ll have the cap on before the light goes.”

I stayed at the top of the ladder and looked down. Marlene was in the yard with the tea pitcher again. Gordon had come up beside her.

The girls were on the porch steps, Ava awake, Josie rubbing her eyes. The street had gone quiet, the way a crowd goes quiet at a ballgame before the last pitch.

Gordon walked across the yard to the foot of the ladder. He took off his seed cap and held it in both hands against his chest, and he looked up at me.

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out the first time.

“Son,” he said.

That was all. In twelve years of me marrying his daughter and giving him grandbabies and sitting across from him at Thanksgiving, Gordon Ruhl had called me Ryan, or boy, or once when I backed into his mailbox, something I will not repeat. He had never called me son.

He tried to say something else after it. I watched him try. His jaw worked and his eyes filled and he shook his head and looked down at the red dirt, and he could not get it out.

Above me I heard the last nails go in on the ridge, pop, pop, pop, and then Dusty called down, “That’s it. She’s done.”

Marlene set the pitcher down on the porch rail and came and stood beside her husband. She put her hand on his back. Then she looked up at me.