I would read it to him and he would check it against his cut list. Twice he caught a mistake before we made it. Once he caught one after, and we pulled six nails out with a cat’s paw and did it over.
We built the wall flat on the deck, headers in, sheathing nailed on. By two in the afternoon it was finished. It was thirty-six feet long and it weighed more than the three of us together.
We called Dad. He told us to nail two-by blocks to the deck along the bottom plate so it could not kick out. He told us to raise it in stages and put a brace in at each stage. He told us to count out loud.
We counted out loud. On three we lifted it to our knees. On the next three we got it to our waists and Mira slid a brace in. On the last three we pushed it up past our heads, and it stood.
It stood there against the blue sky, square and straight, and none of us said anything at all. Then Annika put her level on it and said, “Plumb,” and Mira let out a whoop they probably heard in Kalispell.
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My arms shook so hard that evening I could not hold my coffee cup. I drove home and fell asleep on the couch in my work clothes.
The Second Saturday
The second Saturday, it rained until ten. We sat in Mira’s truck with the heater on, eating gas station donuts, and watched it come down on our open walls.
“If it rains like this in October,” Annika said, “we’re done.”
“Then it can’t be October yet,” Mira said. “We just have to beat it.”
When it cleared, we went to work on the back half. The kitchen wall, the bathroom wall, the hall, the three bedroom partitions. Interior walls are lighter and shorter, but there are more of them, and every one has a door.
About noon, a pickup slowed on the county road and stopped at the end of our gravel. An older man got out. He was our neighbor from a quarter mile down, a retired logger I had waved to for two years and never really met.
He leaned on the fence post and watched us for maybe twenty minutes. He did not say a word. Then he got back in his truck and drove off.
“Well, that’s encouraging,” Mira said.
An hour later, he came back. He had a case of bottled water, a bag of ham sandwiches his wife had made, and a six-foot level that was older than all three of us put together.
“Yours is too short for that long wall,” he said. “Mine’s true. I checked it last week.” He set it on the lumber pile and walked back to his truck.
I ran after him to thank him. He waved me off without turning around. “My wife saw you out here last Saturday,” he said over his shoulder. “She said I was to bring you lunch or not come home.”