“Lord, Send Someone to Fix This Roof Before Snow,” She Whispered... Not Knowing He Was Behind Her
Chapter 10
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Ezra worked from a plank scaffold he had hung off the eaves on rope, and Willa fed him from the ground. She loaded shakes into a bucket, and he hauled them up on a line. She did it without being asked and without remark, and by mid-morning, the bucket came up in the same rhythm his hands wanted. The ladder stood against the eaves, footed in a hole he had dug the day before and lashed to the rafter end with a doubled rope.By dark, the north slope was shingled to the halfway line.Tuesday broke without a sunrise. The sky lay close over the foothills, gray and low and the color of an old pewter plate, and the wind blew steady from the northwest with a dry bite in it.Willa stood in the yard with her face lifted, sniffing the air like an animal. "Noon," she said. "Maybe sooner.""Then we'd better not talk."They did not. She stopped picking at 9:00 and took the bucket line on the ground, and between them, they sent up a shake every few seconds. Courses closed over the dip where the old roof had sagged, and the dip disappeared under straight, clean lines.At 2:00, the first flakes came—a few, dry and small, blowing sideways—and Willa looked at them and said nothing, and sent up the next bucket.By 4:00, he was at the ridge. The north slope was done but for the last two courses and the cap, a narrow band along the top where the shakes met the peak. He sat back on his heels and wiped his face. The light had gone yellow and strange; the flakes were thicker now and wet. They stuck to the new wood and began to lay a white thread along each course.He climbed down.Willa was waiting at the foot of the ladder with the hammer in her hand."There's an hour of light," he said. "Twenty minutes of work. I can—""No, Miss Prior. It's snowing.""I know it's snowing." Her voice was low and entirely steady. "I said the last course is mine. I said it Saturday, and you said, 'All right.'" She looked at the ladder. Her good hand had closed on the rail, and the knuckles were white. "I have been afraid of that ladder since the 9th of June. I am going to be afraid of it tonight, and I am going to go up it anyway. And you are not going to carry me or talk me out of it.""I wasn't going to.""Then hold it."He took the rails. He set his boot on the bottom rung and his weight against the wood. Her eyes went to him, searching his face the way a person searches the sky before crossing open water."Is the ladder all right?" she said.It was not a question for him, but she had asked, and her father had asked, and he did not mean to answer carelessly."It's footed in a hole a foot deep," Ezra said. "It's roped to the rafter. I'm standing on the bottom rung, and I'm not going to move." He held her eyes. "It's all right, Miss Prior."She nodded once. She put the hammer through her belt and a fistful of nails in her coat pocket, and she began to climb.