The Barn Our Gravel Road Built

Rollie looked down at her. He let go of the post with one hand, the brace was holding now, and he took the cup. He drank all of it.

Then he put his big hand on top of her head for a second, and gave her back the empty cup, and said, “Thank you, sis.”

That is what he called Wilma, sis. I do not think I had heard him call anybody that in three years.

Etta did not know. She just smiled at him and went back for more tea.

And then, with no speech from anybody, the yard started up again. The drills started. The hammers started.

Hollace swung the telehandler around, and the men gathered on the first truss, and somebody hollered for a tag line.

Rollie did not go home. He stayed at that southwest corner the rest of the morning.

When the first truss went up on the chain, swinging slow against that big blue sky, it was Rollie and Jory standing on ladders at opposite ends, guiding it down onto the posts.

At noon, everybody ate. Seventy people at three borrowed folding tables and on tailgates and on the grass.

The cherry pie from the mill man’s wife did make a grown man cry, or close to it. Ione counted the plates again and said seventy two.

Rollie sat on his own tailgate with a sandwich and did not come to the tables. After a while Hollace carried his own plate over and sat down next to him.

They did not say much. Hollace pointed at something on the trusses and Rollie nodded. That was all.

I brought Rollie a piece of pie. I did not say anything about the barn. I said, “Marva says Wilma’s coffee was always too strong.”

Rollie looked at the pie for a long time. Then he said, very low, “It was. It was terrible coffee.” And he ate the pie.

By three in the afternoon all fifteen trusses were up and braced.

By five the purlins were on across the top, and the frame of our barn stood there against the evening sky, square and plumb and new.

Jory walked around it twice and checked the corners with his tape.

People started going home a little before dark. Every one of them shook Jory’s hand. Most of the women hugged me.

A few of the men shook Rollie’s hand too, the way you shake hands at a funeral, plain and quick, and he let them.

The steel for the roof and the walls was still stacked on pallets. Jory had said all along it would take a second day.

You do not hang steel on a roof in a Kansas afternoon wind with tired men, not if you want everybody to come home.

When the last truck left, it was just us in the yard. The four of us and Rollie.

Owen had fallen asleep in the bed of Hollace’s old flatbed, which Hollace had told us to keep until Monday, and Etta was counting the leftover cups.

Rollie stood looking at the frame with his cap back on. Jory stood next to him.

After a while Rollie said, “That southwest corner. Your ground’s soft there since the storm. You want to put a second brace on it before you hang steel.”

Jory said, “Yes sir.” Then Rollie said, still looking at the frame and not at his son, “I’ll be here Saturday with the loader. You’ll want something to lift those steel bundles onto the roof.” And Jory said, “Yes sir,” again, and that was all.