Then a big man in a seed cap, maybe forty-five years old, walked up and took his cap off. “Miss Bernice,” he said. “It’s Booker. You probably don’t remember me.”
“Booker,” Mom said. “You sat in the back and put your gum under the table and I made you scrape it off with a butter knife.”
He laughed so hard he had to put his cap back on. “Yes ma’am, you did.”
And that was how the day started.
They split up without anybody really running it. The ones with scrapers and wire brushes went first, taking the loose paint off. The ones with brushes came behind.
The little kids got the bottom board, because they could reach it sitting in the grass, and they did not mind getting paint in their hair.
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The tall men took the top board. The women mostly took the middle two.
Somebody set up a card table by the gate with Mom’s lemonade and a roll of paper towels, and somebody else ran an extension cord from the barn for a box fan.
I asked Sherman how much paint it would take. He had figured it before he came. “Three hundred feet, four boards, both sides,” he said. “That’s twelve hundred feet of board each way. Rough wood drinks it. Twelve gallons for one coat, if they don’t slop.”
They slopped. He went back to the store at ten and brought six more.
Down at the far end, Dean worked on the posts by himself for the first hour. He dug out around the first leaning one, rocked it loose, and pulled it. The bottom was rotted to a point.
He dug the hole out deeper, set a new post, and put the level on it.
Then he poured gravel in a few inches at a time and tamped it with the bar until the bar rang. I could hear it from the gate. Thunk, thunk, thunk.
Two of the men walked down to help him, and then two more. One held the post, one held the level, and Dean tamped. They did not talk much. Men like that do not need to.
By noon the three leaning posts were straight and solid and two more soft ones had been replaced besides, and the boards were nailed back on with new galvanized ring shanks.
Dean came up to the card table, drank three cups of lemonade standing up, and went back down to paint.
Around ten thirty, the pastor drove up. He had on blue jeans and an old T-shirt from a church softball league, and he did not come to the porch to say anything to Mom.
He just picked up a brush off the tailgate and went to the far end and started painting.
I took him a cup of coffee later. He said, “I heard about it Tuesday.” That is all he said about it. He painted until four.