“Lord, Send Someone to Fix This Roof Before Snow,” She Whispered... Not Knowing He Was Behind Her
Chapter 9
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"Yes.""I can do it properly.""Yes." She wiped her face with the heel of her hand, impatient, almost angry with it. "But I'll be the one who nails the ridge." She lifted her chin. "Not you. Me. Whatever else you do, the last course is mine.""All right.""You'll hold the ladder.""I will."She took the hammer then in both hands and held it against her coat. After a moment, she turned and walked slowly toward the house, and he heard the screen door, and then nothing at all.On Sunday, they did not work. It was an agreement neither of them had needed to speak: Ezra mended the harness in the barn, and Willa did not split a single shake.In the evening, she called him to the porch table. Between the plates sat a large black Bible with a broken spine, and beside it the hammer, cleaned and oiled, lying on a folded cloth."It's my father's," she said, touching the cover. "He read it every night. I stopped in June."She opened to a place she must have known by heart. He saw her find it, and saw her lips move before she began:"Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it."She read it flat, like a charge in a courtroom. She went on:"Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows; for so he giveth his beloved sleep."She stopped."He cut that over the door." Her voice was hoarse. "He told me the second half was for the builder: that you can't earn your sleep by working harder." A short breath of a laugh. "I have not slept a night through since June, Mr. Colton. I split shakes at midnight because lying down is worse."Ezra had no wisdom to put beside a verse. He sat with her while she read the psalm to the end in the lamplight, and when she finished, she closed the book and kept her hand on it."I don't think I believe it," she said. "Not yet.""You read it," said Ezra."I did.""That's more than most do."It was nearly full dark when the wind changed. It came over the ridge from the northwest, cold and thin, with a smell on it like iron. Willa lifted her face, and he saw her go very still."That's not the tenth," she said."No, ma'am. That wind has snow behind it.""Tomorrow, or the day after?" She was already on her feet. "It's coming early."Monday, he laid shakes from the eaves up. It was slow, exact work: each course lay over the seams of the one below, five inches to the weather, two nails to a shake, driven just short of the face so the wood could breathe.