The base went in first. Six inches of crushed rock in the bottom of the trench, raked out and wetted down and run over with the plate compactor in two lifts until it rang under your boot. Quint always said the whole wall lives or dies on the base.
That plate compactor weighs about a hundred and fifty pounds, and we had to walk it down the plywood on its own handle with two men holding it back.
It is the only piece of equipment we used all week that Lyman did not take, because it was in my truck bed.
By noon Wednesday we had the base in about half the trench. Eunice came down the porch steps at twelve sharp with a big tray.
Ham sandwiches on white bread, a bag of chips, deviled eggs, and a gallon of sweet tea with a stack of plastic cups.
“You’ll sit down,” she said. “All of you. I don’t care how far behind you are.”
We sat down on her porch steps, all four of us in a row, filthy to the elbows.
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She sat in her chair in her blue cardigan with her hands folded and said grace over us.
It was short. She thanked the Lord for strong backs and asked Him to be with Quint.
Dewey held his cap in his lap the whole time she prayed. He was twenty-eight years old and had a red beard down to his collarbone, and he looked about ten.
“Mrs. Pfaff,” he said, when she was done. “I’m sorry about all that this morning. In your driveway.”
“Dewey Ruble,” she said. “You failed your multiplication tables in my class twice, and you never once quit coming to school. Eat your sandwich.”
Wednesday afternoon I called Quint. He could talk on the phone by then if he went slow.
The nurse held it for him at first, and then he said he wanted to hold it himself, and I could hear him getting it up against his ear with his good hand.
I did not tell him about his father. I had decided that on the drive over. I told him we were getting the base in and asked him about the first course.
“String line,” he said, slow. “Off the high end. Bury it. Whole first course. Level both ways. Every block.”
“I know,” I said.
“Bury it,” he said again. “Danae. The first course. Don’t let Dewey rush it.”
“I won’t.”
He was quiet for a while. I could hear the machines in his room beeping softly, and somebody talking out in the hall.
“Where’s the machine,” he said.
I looked down the slope at Dewey and Gus, setting the first block of the first course on the compacted base, the kid holding the level.
The trench where the skid steer had been parked was just a flat patch of crushed grass now.
“It’s not here,” I said. “We’re doing it a different way. You rest.”
He did not ask again. I think he knew. I think he might have known before I did, because he knew his father.
The first course took us the rest of Wednesday. You cannot hurry it.
Every block goes down on the base and gets checked front to back and side to side with a four-foot level, then tapped down with a rubber mallet until the bubble sits dead center.
If one block is off an eighth of an inch on the first course, it is off a half inch by the fourth course and you can see it from the road.