The Shed We Raised Ourselves

Every person in the yard turned around.

I did not move. I held the drill in my right hand and the sheet down with my left, and I looked down at Garth from the top of the ladder, over a shed his brother’s sons had raised, in front of the neighbors who had come to hang it.

I drove the first screw home. It went in with a short bright sound, and the head sat flat against the rib.

I drove the second. Then I laid the drill on the rafter and said it. “Garth,” I said, “I’m going to finish this sheet. It will take me about four minutes. Then I’ll come down and listen to whatever you came to say.”

I want to tell you what his face did, because it is the one part of the day that I think about most. I had not raised my voice. I had not said one hard word.

I had said I would finish my work and then I would listen.

And Garth Ostby, who had always been the loud one, the funny one, the one everybody forgave, sat there in his truck with a boat on the back and looked as if somebody had set a heavy thing on his chest.

He turned off the engine.

I finished the sheet. Screws down the ribs, and a bead of sealant at the ridge. Nobody spoke. Somewhere behind me a screw gun started up and stopped, because even the boy with the coffee can knew it wasn’t the time.

When I came down the ladder, my knees shook. Tanner put a hand on my elbow. I let him. I walked to the end of the drive.

Garth had gotten out of the truck by then. He stood by the fender with his cap in his hand, which is how I knew he was going to say something true.

“Glenda,” he said, “I was going to tell you. I was going to make it right.” “Were you?”

“I’m in a hole.” He said it fast, as if it hurt to get out. “I’ve been in it since March. The lumber yard in Neligh, they’ve got me on cash only. The steel supplier in Norfolk wants twenty-one thousand and I don’t have it.

Sylvia has been covering the mortgage on her teacher’s check. Those eight thousand dollars hit my account on a Friday and I owed it Monday and I thought, if I could just float it a few weeks, I’d get through.

Then the dealership called about the boat, and I don’t know what happened to me.” I let him finish. I did not say one word.

“I was going to square it by Thanksgiving,” he said. “I swear to God.” “Garth.” “Yes.”

“You are in trouble. I believe that. I am sorry for it.” I kept my voice level. I had practiced no speech, and I was surprised by how simple it came out. “But you bought a boat with my husband’s money.

You stood on our porch and told me spring. You watched my sons dig holes in a burned field and you did not once call to ask whether they needed a hand.”

His face went red from his collar to his hairline. “I didn’t know they were doing it.” “You would have, if you had called.”