Before dark
The last of the snow came off the east end of the north slope at about a quarter past four in the afternoon.
The sun was still well up in the west, lower now and going gold, and the whole roof was bare green steel, wet and steaming, with long thin icicles already starting at the eave.
Nine thousand square feet. We had cleared it before dark, with an hour and more of good light to spare.
I sat down on the ridge with my rope still around my waist and could not move my arms. Bjorn sat down beside me. Neither of us said anything.
From up there, I could see the whole road. Every farm on it had smoke going up straight from the chimney in the still air, and every roof I could see was white except ours. Ours was green, the color my father picked out in 1979.
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Below us, the neighbors were loading their ladders. Halvard was rolling up his roof rakes, unscrewing the handles one section at a time. The cows were in the feedlot eating hay out of the bunk like nothing had ever happened.
And in the yard, by the water hydrant, my brother was standing exactly where he had stood most of the day, looking up at his son.
What a father says
Bjorn came down the ladder first. I held the top for him. Then I came down, and I stood at the foot of it, and I watched my nephew walk across the yard to his father.
I could not hear the beginning. I was too far away, and my ears were ringing from the cold. I saw Stellan say something, short. I saw Bjorn shake his head.
Then I walked closer, because I am his aunt, and because I was not going to let anybody be cruel to that boy that day, not even his own father.
“You should have asked me,” Stellan was saying.
“I did ask you, Dad,” Bjorn said. “At breakfast. I asked you to help, and you said let it go.”
Stellan did not answer. His face was red from the cold, and something else.
“Grandpa built that barn,” Bjorn said. “You told me that a hundred times. You told me how he built it with a borrowed auger and a lot of rope. Why would you let it fall in?”
My brother looked at his son for a long time. Then he looked at me, and then past me at Mom, who had come out on the porch in her chore coat.
“Because I owe the bank ninety-one thousand dollars,” Stellan said, “and your grandma signed for it, and I didn’t know how else to get her out of it.”