The Shed We Raised Ourselves

Delbert is seventy-four years old and lives half a mile down the road. He has set more fence line than anybody in Madison County, and he farms a quarter section with a tractor older than I am. He and Alvin Ostby went to school together.

He answered on the fourth ring, a little out of breath, like he had come in from the porch. “Delbert, it’s Glenda Ostby. I need to borrow a post-hole auger.”

“For what?” “A machine shed.” He was quiet a second. I could hear his television in the background, turned low. “You and the boys?”

“Us and the boys.” “What happened to Garth? Garth said at the Co-op he was on it.” “Garth,” I said, “bought a boat.”

There was a pause you could have driven a combine through. “Well, now,” said Delbert. “Bring a thermos Saturday. I’ll bring the tractor.”

First Saturday, October the tenth, the sun came up pink over the corn stubble and the frost was on every blade of grass. We were out there before seven.

Delbert showed up at ten to, with a three-point auger on the back of a tractor older than my marriage. He parked it in the black rectangle where the shed had been and climbed down slowly, one hand on the fender. He looked around at the ashes.

“Alvin put the northeast pole right there,” he said, pointing with his chin. “I held the level for him.” “We’ll start there, then.”

Russ had set up a lawn chair in the yard with a blanket and a cushion and a thermos of his own. He could not do a thing but sit. He had a chalk line and a tape measure on his knee, and when Tanner came over he handed them across without a word.

“Square it with the old corner stake,” he said. “Three, four, five. You remember.” “Yes, sir.” “Do it twice.” We dug eleven holes that day, down the east wall and across the north end, by auger and by hand.

Four feet down, because the frost line in this part of Nebraska goes to forty-two inches and you set a pole below it or the winter heaves it right up out of the ground. Delbert ran the tractor like he had been born on it.

Jake ran the shovel behind the auger, cleaning out the loose dirt, and Tanner checked every hole with his granddad’s plumb bob, a brass one that had survived the fire because it hung on a nail in the farmhouse mudroom.

That night I could barely lift my arms. Jake fell asleep at the supper table with a forkful of potatoes in his hand. But when I went to put him to bed, he woke up enough to say one thing.

“Mom, are we gonna finish?” “We are going to finish.” “Okay,” he said, and went back to sleep. The second Saturday, the poles came.

I had found them on a Wednesday by calling the electric cooperative, which was tearing down an old line shed outside Neligh.

They had eighteen treated poles, six-by-six and better than anything at the lumber yard, and they were selling them as scrap at forty dollars apiece.

I wrote a check for seven hundred and twenty dollars out of the money I had been saving for the boys’ truck insurance, and paid for a rented flatbed with my egg money.