The Shed We Raised Ourselves

By the time I got Russ and the boys out of bed and the volunteer fire department came from Tilden with their one pumper truck, the roof was already gone.

Thirty by forty-eight feet, built in 1979 by Russ’s father, Alvin Ostby, who put in every pole himself and hung every sheet of tin. Alvin had been gone nine years. Russ had never changed a thing in that shed except to add a second light.

The tractor lived, an old Ford with a cracked seat, because our oldest, Tanner, had left it parked out at the hay field the evening before. Everything else burned. The welder. The round baler Russ had bought used and nursed along for eleven years. The flatbed trailer. Every wrench and socket and hand tool my husband owned, including his father’s.

We have forty acres and a little rented. Russ drives a delivery route for the co-op elevator and I keep the books for the school district, and the acreage is what we do on the side so the boys will know how to do it. That shed was the only thing on the place that was truly Russ’s.

The adjuster came out the second week and walked the ashes with a clipboard. He was kind about it. He said a building that old is paid at what it was worth, not what it would cost to replace, and he took pictures, and ten days later he mailed a check for $8,000.

It arrived on the third of September, which was the day Russ went under the knife.

Garth came to the house on the fourth. He stood in our kitchen with his cap in his hand, which should have told me something, because Garth does not take off a cap for anybody.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “The claim, the building, all of it. You’ve got enough on you, Glenda. Let me do this for my brother.”

He said he built things for a living. He said he could get materials at contractor price, that he would give us a deal on labor, that he would have a crew out the minute Russ was home and walking. He said that was what family is for.

And I believed him. Why wouldn’t I? He is Russ’s brother. He was at my wedding. He held both my boys when they were a day old.

A few days later in the hospital, Garth came by with a deposit slip and the check. Russ was foggy on the pills and flat on his back. The check was made out to both of us.

Garth said the bank needed the endorsement so he could deposit it into his business account and write supplier checks from there, to keep the paperwork clean.

I held the pen steady in Russ’s hand while he signed his name on the back, a little crooked from lying down.

I signed under it. That was the whole thing. A signature in a hospital room. A deposit slip with Garth’s account number on it, and a promise.

I know what you are thinking, because I have thought it myself every night since. Why on earth didn’t I call the insurance company the minute I saw that boat? Why didn’t I call the sheriff?