18

It was Thursday morning and the van moved slowly from the north over the sun-dappled road along the ridge in the trees. Earlier, it had rained and now, two hours after noon, the gravel was the color of cinnamon. The man in the passenger seat held a pair of binoculars to his face. He was careful not to rest them on his nose, and when he saw beyond the junipers what he wanted to see, he said, “Right here,” and the man behind the wheel steered the van over a bed of pine needles under light branches that dripped rainwater over the windshield, that scraped the van’s roof until it came to a stop.

The man in the back belched and took an immediate sip of his Narragansett. He was sunburned and blonde like the man behind the wheel, but much bigger in the chest, arms, and belly. On the inside of his right forearm was a tattoo of a long blue mermaid with flowing hair and outward-curving breasts. The man in the passenger seat ducked his head and aimed the binoculars through an opening in the branches over the sun-bright field to the wood frame of the new house. He could see the kid working on the north face of the roof. His shirt was off. He was driving nails into the plywood sheathing, probably missing his rafters too. A rope flew out from the south face of the roof the man couldn’t see, uncoiling itself to the ground where Chick Donovan caught it and tied it around a roll of black roofing paper.

“There’s the son of a bitch, that’s him.”

The man in the back leaned forward between the front seats.

Through the binoculars Tom Burrell came into view as he leaned out and pulled up the roofing roll hand over hand, his thick shoulders and arms gleaming with sweat. The kid had hit a good rhythm with his hammering, four whacks a nail. The man behind the wheel pulled a can of beer from its cardboard case on the floor. The man in the back belched again. The engine ticked with heat.

It was a day that couldn’t make up its mind on how it wanted to go. First rain in the morning, then hot sun through lunch and after, then, at a half an hour to cleanup, came gray clouds again, a short wind, and a few splatterings of cool rain that felt good on Leo’s upturned face but when they touched his sunburned back he got instant shivers and he climbed down Chick’s new ladder to find his shirt.

Chick and Tom were in the driveway discussing whether to quit now or later. If they quit now, Chick said, half of the roof will be tar-papered overnight and the other half won’t. Tom got in his two nickels about there being some wind. Who can say what it’ll do later? Better to have half a roof of paper blown away than the whole thing. Chick agreed he was right and they decided to stop for the day.