Now legs dangling above the sawpit, already in the shade of the spruce the winter evening spreading like inkstain but him with the sun on his face. The team, not restless, slipped weight foot to foot. The sledge full. Chimney smoke rising from the house below in a thin vapor. A cloudless sky. Paused for his father’s voice to come down from the spruce. It never did.

What child remained in him walked side by side with his father. Where affection came from the man in even reprimand tonicked with dried humor. A man with two daughters already, too pleased with a son finally to expect perfection, and so was to know the boy. His eye sharp as a raptor upon Norman’s back always gentled when the boy turned in confusion with the bent nail, the flung tool, the short-sawn board. Never once he could recall praise; something made right was made right. Otherwise, the job remained. At ten he first rode the sledge to the village pond one January to join in cutting ice. They pulled up short and surveyed the men already out, sawing and using great tongs to lift the blocks, the dripping pond water freezing as it fell. After watching a short time his father stepped down, wrapped the lines on the left upright front pole of the sledge and took out the saw and their own tongs and looked up at the boy. “Question is, which of us takes the bottom end of the saw. Flip a coin?”