The Wall We Finished by Hand

The skid steer was already chained down on Lyman’s trailer when I pulled into Eunice Pfaff’s driveway that Wednesday morning.

He had backed his one-ton dually right up to the slope and run it up the ramps himself.

I sat in my truck with the engine still running and watched him throw the last binder over the bucket.

The ratchet popped twice. Then he stood back and wiped his hands on his jeans like a man who had finished a job.

Dewey Ruble was standing at the top of the trench with a shovel in both hands, not moving.

Gus was beside him. Our new kid, the nineteen-year-old, had gone and sat on the tailgate of the crew truck.

I got out. The morning was cold and bright, and the oaks along Eunice’s back fence had gone to rust and gold in the space of a week. Somewhere down the road a dog was barking at nothing.

“Lyman,” I said. “What are you doing with that machine?”

He did not look at me right away. He checked the front chain one more time, gave it a tug, and only then turned around.

He had his reading glasses in his shirt pocket and his good cap on, the one from the sale barn.

“My name’s on that loan,” he said. “You know it is. I signed for that machine when the bank wouldn’t sign for my son, and I’m taking it home where it’ll be looked after.”

“Quint is in the hospital,” I said. “He has been in the hospital for one day. We have a wall to build for this lady, and that machine is how we build it.”

“There’s no we,” Lyman said. “There’s you and three boys who work for my son. You can’t keep a crew without him, Danae. Nobody’s going to blame you. Call the lady, give her money back, and quit.”

I looked up the slope at the house. Eunice was standing in her kitchen window with a coffee cup, and I knew she could see all of it.

A small brick ranch house, a wet yard, and a family falling apart in her driveway.

“Her money is already spent,” I said. “It’s sitting right there on those pallets. Every block for this wall is bought and paid for and stacked along that trench.”

“Then you’ll lose it,” he said. “That’s business. Quint will come work for me when he’s on his feet, and he’ll have a steady check and insurance, and he won’t be breaking himself on hillsides for retired schoolteachers.”

He said the last part loud enough to carry. I have thought about that a hundred times since. I believe he wanted her to hear it.

Then he climbed into his truck and pulled out slow, the trailer rocking on the gravel, the skid steer sitting up on the deck in its own mud.

He lifted two fingers off the wheel at Dewey as he went by, the way men do out here.

Dewey did not lift his back.

I should tell you how we got there, because it all happened fast and I am still sorting it out.

My husband Quint and I have run a landscaping crew out of Lebanon, Missouri, for six years.

We started with one truck, a borrowed trailer, and a push mower. By this fall we had four men counting Quint, two trucks, and the skid steer.

The skid steer was the reason we could bid real work. Without it you are a mowing outfit.