The Sidewalk We Poured Twice

The neighbors

People started coming out about eight-thirty. Elm Street is that kind of street. When you run a breaker hammer at sunup, nobody stays in bed, and everybody wants to know why.

The man across the street was a retired mail carrier who walked his old beagle twice a day past Ilse’s house.

He came over in his slippers and a hunting jacket and looked at the chunks piled by the curb and the ruts still showing in the last ten feet.

He did not ask what happened. He looked at the ruts, and he looked at Brody’s face, and he went back across the street.

Ten minutes later he came back in his boots with a pair of leather gloves and started picking up chunks.

A young mother two doors down sent her husband over with a wheelbarrow before he left for his shift at the plant in Fergus Falls.

He made three trips with it to the trailer and then had to go. He shook Brody’s hand before he left and did not say one word.

Nobody made a speech. Nobody said Clint’s name, either. But everybody on that street knew whose pickup had been parked on Elm the day before, because a pickup with a name painted on both doors is hard to miss in a town like ours.

By nine-fifteen, the old walk was gone and the chunks were stacked in the trailer and along the curb.

We tamped the base with the plate compactor, reset the forms, shot the grade with the string, and set new stakes every three feet on the street side.

Brody checked the forms with a level twice. He did not trust the first time.

I did not tell him to do it. That was when I knew he was going to be all right, whatever happened next.