The Barn the County Raised in a Day

And I saw my husband, who did not cry at his father’s funeral and did not cry on the hospital bed in April when they told him about the stent, sit down very hard on the end of a sawhorse and bend over until his forehead nearly touched his knees.

“Alvis,” he said into his own hands. “How did you…how did you remember?”

“I wrote it,” Alvis said. “I was the one with the pencil that day. I’ve known every one of those names by heart for fifty-four years.”

I came closer. I could not help it. I stood behind my husband, and I looked at what was written on that board in Alvis Crowe’s tall, shaky hand.

It was a list of names. Nineteen of them.

Ennis Tidwell was at the top. Under him was Virgil Pettus, Lyle’s father. Doyle Hargett, who had been Ferrell’s daddy. Hubert Cantrell, who had been Dub’s. The old preacher, Brother Odell’s own father, Amos Sparks. Alvis himself. Thirteen more, one after another, in a column, in the order they had written them in nineteen seventy-one.

At the bottom, a little apart, in a different, bigger pencil that looked as if it had been copied from something written by a child:

Wendell Tidwell, nail boy.

“That was the first ridge board,” Alvis said. His voice was thin and very steady. “Nineteen men and one boy. You carried the nails in a Folgers can, same as that little fella yonder. You wouldn’t let anybody take it from you. You stood at the foot of the ladder all day and asked every man did he need nails.”

Wendell made a sound I will never forget.

“The old board burned with the barn,” Alvis said. “I’m sorry for it. I made you a new one. I put them all down just like they were. Even Hubert’s name, and Hubert couldn’t spell it the same way twice. I did it at the kitchen table, over three nights, and my hand shook the whole time.”

He leaned down, slow, with a hand on the sawhorse. He put that flat carpenter’s pencil in my husband’s hand, and he folded Wendell’s fingers around it with his own.

“Your name goes under the old ones,” he said. “You’re the foreman of this barn, Wendell. And every soul in this yard is going to sign under you.”

He took the pencil. He bent over the board.

Under the old names, in his own square print, he wrote his own again: Wendell Tidwell, foreman.

Then he stood and held the pencil out to the nearest man, who was Dub Cantrell.

Dub signed. Ferrell Hargett signed. Lyle Pettus signed, and he made little Tucker sign too, with his tongue between his teeth, in letters as big as a hand.

They signed in a line that went all the way around the barn and out into the road. Reba Hargett signed. Chief Daws signed with his helmet under his arm. Kayla signed, and Brandon, and Jace, who was six and made a drawing of a horse.

I signed last. I held that pencil a long time. Then I wrote my name at the very bottom, Rhonda Tidwell, and under it, small, I wrote, I am sorry I lied and I would do it again.

By the time the last name went on, there were two hundred and eleven. I counted. I count everything.

It took the rest of the afternoon to cover the roof. The tin went up in sheets, passed hand to hand from the ground to the ladder to the rafters, men on the roof with screw guns whining in the cold.