Folly

by Laurie R. King

  Next time Ed came, Rae vowed, her shopping list would be more of a challenge.

  The price for the lunch was giving Nikki a personal tour of the house and cave, but it was a small price. Besides which, Nikki would have talked her into the tour anyway.

  The small side cave was empty now, swept clean of death’s presence, and the main cavern had nothing but a crate of bottles and some rickety shelving to show that a human had ever been here. Jerry had not mentioned seeing the petroglyph of the orca and Nikki did not notice it now, probably because Rae stood in front of it holding the lamp.

  “Did you ever open that bottle of wine?” Nikki asked.

  “Not yet. I sent a letter to my lawyer asking her to find out what they’d be worth.”

  “Good idea. That’s all you found here?” Nikki poked around the edges of the larger cave as if hoping for another hidden entrance.

  “That’s all,” Rae told her. It was a flat-out lie, but she was not ready to share the contents of the diary or the strongbox with anyone, particularly a talkative woman who was related to half the local population. “I think Desmond had moved his stuff into the house by the time it burned down. This was just storage space while he was building.”

  Nikki nodded thoughtfully, took a last look at the crate of dust-covered bottles, and crawled out of the cave in front of Rae. The narrow path between the cave’s opening and the house had been swept clean—literally—by Jerry’s team, put through a sieve, and left for her at the garden site.

  She and Nikki worked their way around the house, with even the surefooted ranger bracing her left hand against the siding that Rae had nailed up along the back wall. They slithered down the hill, rounded the front tower, and walked up the steps and through the outline of the front door. Once inside, Nikki turned in a slow circle, getting a sense of the space.

  The back and left-hand walls, from the fireplace all the way around to the door and incorporating the front tower, were now solidly sheathed on the outside in cedar. The remainder of the front and the eastern wall were both still skeletal, studs and headers, fire blocks and cross braces. Nikki leaned out of the framed-in window space on the east and looked down at the ground, which on this side was a good ten feet below the windowsill.

  “How are you going to get the wood up on these sides?” she asked.

  “Once I get the second floor framed, I’ll put up some scaffolding, mount the siding from there.”

  “I was trying to picture you hanging out over the edge in a climbing harness or something. Not that I’d put it past you.”

  Rae laughed. “No, the climbing harness is for the roof.” She could see the young ranger trying to determine if it was a joke.

  Nikki chose to change the subject. “That’s a heck of a lot of wood you moved up here.”

  “Actually, Jerry Carmichael and his deputies moved it up. He claimed they had to search the ground underneath it, but they were just being helpful. Incredibly so.”

  Nikki shot her a glance, and when she looked back at the pile of lumber, there was an unhappy little smile on the ranger’s face. All she said, though, was “I think everybody’s interested in seeing Folly rebuilt.”

  “In that case,” Rae told her, “I’d better get on doing just that.”

  With the cage of the first-floor walls up and firm, Rae was ready to move on to the second floor. She had decided that, although her interior walls would carry a rough plaster finish, the ceilings should be wood. So she had ordered peeled cedar logs with one side milled flat, exposed beams that would support the upper floor.

  Each one weighed a ton, or so her middle-aged muscles informed her. She could pick up one end without much problem, but carrying a log’s full weight and lifting it over her head was more than she could manage.

  Which was where primitive technology—Rae’s favorite kind—came in. A block and tackle, rigged from the reinforced and braced header over the wide east window, would do most of the work for her. Once the beam was inside, she could use a manual lift, rented from the builder’s supply outlet and delivered by Ed the week before, to raise it onto the upper plates. Slow and careful work, but not a risk to skull or muscle, assuming she watched what she was doing.

  The first log was immense, awkward as hell, and frighteningly close to impossible to maneuver: raising it up, swinging it through the window hole, rolling and wrestling it onto the lift, and cranking it up to the upper level. The sun was low over the treetops and her muscles were trembling with stress and sweat-induced dehydration by the time the first log was in place. She slumped against the door frame and gazed up at the ropes and ladders and shims and one beautiful, honest, stripped cedar tree, lying perfect and clean against the indigo sky.

  Jesus, she thought in despair; this is going to take forever. And Petra would be here in four weeks, parents in tow.

  The sun rose Thursday at quarter after five; it found Rae already at work. Beam number two took less time than the first one had, and the third one was faster yet. The trick was to ignore the thuds, bashes, and scrapes of its passage and just get the damn thing up. Manhandling and mistreating wood was not a thing that came easy to Rae Newborn, but she was learning.

  She broke off for a late breakfast at eight-thirty, and spent the whole meal with her eyes on the project, calculating. Then she brushed off her hands and went back to the pulley rope. The fourth log was a breeze—a stiff breeze, but it went up so smoothly she couldn’t think what her problem had been. The fifth one found her so cocky that she took her eye away for a split second; the young tree slipped off its high perch and came within an inch of killing her.

  The immense boom of its fall reverberated, and faded, and she was miraculously still intact. Not even a concussion, which she richly deserved for her instant of inattention; nothing more serious than the scraped shoulder she’d got jumping out of the way. Then reaction set in, and she tottered shakily over to the framed doorway and collapsed onto the step, her head between her knees, breathing shallowly. When she raised her head again, she was looking down at a veritable armada of invaders.

  Rage, pure, strengthening rage brought her to her feet and filled her lungs to bellow, “This is private property, God damn it! Can’t you read the damn sign?”

  Occupants of two of the boats whirled to look up at the mad (certainly angry) woman of Folly, but the third and last boat, from which an anchor had just been dropped, shifted and a man came out into view, a big, smooth-shaven man in jeans and plaid shirt whom Rae had no trouble recognizing.

  Jerry Carmichael. What was the man up to now? And at his shoulder the equally familiar head of red hair: Nikki Walls, wearing shorts, work boots, and a long-sleeved T-shirt.

  Men, and women, too, were pouring off the boats, into dinghies, onto the dock. They looked like quitting time at a factory. They looked like the Amish community gathering to raise a barn in that Harrison Ford movie. They looked like …

  They looked like salvation.

  Rae scowled at them as they drifted up the beach, scowled at the tools and the work belts. She stayed where she was in her doorway until she was glaring down at seven grinning figures from her superior position on the upper step, staring into the eyes of three strangers, two known deputies (Bobby Gustafsen and the boy with the blushing cheeks), Nikki Walls, and Jerry Carmichael.

  “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded, sounding to her own ears like an elderly schoolmarm.

  Jerry answered her. “We had some free time. You have some work that needs doing. This is Kathryn, one of my deputies; Nikki’s cousin Bo; and Matty, an old friend. The rest you know.”

  Rae looked out over the eager faces of her new neighbors, her friends and community, and she could not bring herself to say the words, “No thank you, I have to do this myself.” She took a deep breath, stepped back, and, for that afternoon at any rate, the island community took control of Folly.

  It was disturbing, frightening almost, the speed with which a team of eight worked. The remaining logs were up in a
trice, without use of her slow equipment, hefted by large men and wrestled bare-handed into place. The tongue-and-groove cedar boards for the ceiling and the upper story’s floor—kiln-dried, these, and not a warp in sight—were laid tightly onto the flat upper sides of the logs and nailed invisibly into place. Working alongside them, Rae could spot no difference between her work and theirs, not a single crack or gap.

  Two ladders were fetched from the armada and siding was thrown up on the remaining first floor even as the second story was taking shape overhead. When the upper level had been framed, those walls, too, were sheathed—although Rae had to look away when the crew’s two acrobats reached the precipitous southeast corner. Her team of helpers put the window holes precisely where she wanted them, they laid neat headers along the tops, they let in diagonal 1×4 braces for additional stability, and not one of the nails from their temporary blocks punched carelessly through the cedar ceiling. They squared, plumbed, and leveled as they went, they set aside studs weakened by knots to use for jacks or cripples, they even turned the boards used for the headers to avoid cupping.

  In other words, they knew what they were doing.

  They were there for seven and a half hours, during which time Rae’s work was more that of consultant and overseer than laborer. Several times she put down her hammer to fetch cold drinks from the trio of well-iced coolers which they had also provided. She watched both as an onlooker and as a participant, saw the way the men on the team looked at Nikki, even her cousin, saw Nikki’s reciprocal awareness even of the married man Bobby Gustafsen, noticed the young ranger’s amusement over and acceptance of the men’s response. And Rae saw also Jerry’s amusement, avuncular and hearty to a degree that made her wonder if it wasn’t just a bit forced.

  Shortly after lunch, Rae happened to catch Nikki in the process of stripping off her long-sleeved shirt. Her hands waved over her head and her flaming hair emerged, jerking Rae vividly back to the dream she’d had of the dancing women in Folly bursting into flame. The men, too, had paused to await the appearance of Nikki’s tank top, and suddenly Rae knew, with a vision so clear and precise that it could have been the catalogue photograph, what her next wood sculpture would depict: Nikki as wood nymph, emerging from the trunk of a tree, a gnarled, heavy-rooted, sea-worn trunk that would give way to clean red cedar, the sprite’s arms stretched upward as if she were plunging into the air.

  Rae blinked. If she ever did another sculpture. She picked up a 2×4, and the moment passed.

  The afternoon drew to a close; one by one the hammers fell silent and the crew gathered down in Rae’s campsite. Sweaty and tired and beers now in hand, they perched on the cedar trunk and the stump rounds to look up with the craftsman’s quiet pride at what they had done.

  Anchored by the two stone towers, the house stood, strong and complete even without a roof. Folly it might be, but the structure belonged in that place, facing its cove and the strait beyond, rooted in stone and grown in wood, the vision of a man, the determination of a woman, and the skill of a community gone into raising it again.

  Rae had tears standing in her eyes as she thanked each of them, tears (as they thought) of joy and pleasure, but not (as she herself knew) untainted by a faint sour trace of failure.

  “Jerry,” she said, “could you stay for a minute? I need to talk to you.”

  She saw Bobby Gustafsen elbow the younger deputy, who predictably enough blushed, but she ignored the exchange. Ignored, too, the glances they gave Nikki as she gathered her tools and one of the coolers and got into cousin Bo’s boat, her back resolutely turned to shore. When the sounds of the engines had died off, Rae dug two beers out of the melted ice in her own cooler and handed one to Jerry. They strolled out the promontory and settled down on a pair of sun-warmed rocks. Jerry faced the house; Rae sat looking out over the open strait.

  “Was this your idea, or Nikki’s?” she asked him after a while.

  He did not answer immediately, and Rae knew that it was not his memory he was searching, but his understanding of the implications of her asking.

  “It was Nikki’s,” he said. “She came to me with the suggestion, I agreed, we each rounded up a couple of others. You’re angry.”

  “Not angry. Overwhelmed, yes. And confused, I guess, and a little bit resentful. Just a little bit. None of which sit well with grateful and overjoyed, which I am as well.”

  He said nothing, merely waited for her to go on.

  “I think what it boils down to is, I’m not simply building a house here. I came to Folly as a kind of last stand, and building this house, with my own hands, is like building myself. If I don’t do it myself, it isn’t real. I don’t want you to think I’m pissed off at how today went—hell, you guys saved me weeks of work—but just the way it came. Nikki’s a little … too helpful.”

  Carmichael listened carefully to her explanation, frowning as he rolled the bottle back and forth between the palms of his large hands. The sleeves of his work shirt were turned up on his forearms, and he smelled like a long day of hard work. When he was sure she had finished, he gave her his side.

  “I’d probably feel the same way, if I were in your shoes. Sort of like when a parent comes along and finishes up a kid’s project for him, trying to be helpful. It’s because it was Nikki, and because she is pushy, that I got involved. She just doesn’t know when to stop—if it’d been up to her, you’d have your shingles, windows, and a front door up by now.

  “I thought about discouraging her, or at least asking your permission. I mean, not everybody likes surprises. But in the end, I went along with her, and I’ll tell you why.

  “You see, here on the islands, we tend to divide into ‘us’ and ‘them’— you’re either a full-time resident who was born here, or you’re a newcomer. Obviously you’re an outsider, but because it’s Folly we’re talking about, the situation’s a little different. With you it could go either way, because although you are clearly a stranger, at the same time you’re a part of the islands in a way someone who just bought a piece of land to build a two-million-dollar summer house on could never be. And the people who live here would be happy to have you stay a hermit, happy if you never set foot off Folly, if they could still feel like you’re one of them. Us. That’s what today was about: saying, ‘You are one of us, so we’ll lend a hand with Folly.’”

  “Or, on the other hand: ‘You’re one of us, because we lent you a hand with Folly.’”

  “That too. Sometimes a family has to go that extra step, to remind one of its members that she belongs.”

  Rae tipped her head back to watch the sky, rose shading to indigo.

  “Okay,” she told him. “Just so it’s only the once.”

  “Just the once,” he promised. “If you want some help with raising the roof, you’ll have to ask. And, provide dinner for the whole crew.”

  Rae cast a last glance at the sunset and stood up. “Dinner for one I could manage. If you don’t have to rush back to the world.”

  “They know where to reach me,” he replied. “Thanks, I’ll take you up on the offer.”

  Forty

  Rae’s Journal

  June 3

  What is faithfulness?

  I was never unfaithful to Alan. In nine years of marriage, I was never tempted beyond thought—and although a certain President admitted to having committed adultery in his mind, if we held everyone to those standards, the entire nation would end up behind bars for imagined crimes from embezzlement to mass murder.

  It was a great shock when it dawned on me a short time ago that there was no longer any barrier between me and another man. I am not a married woman anymore, even though I still wear the wedding band that Alan placed on my finger ten years ago. I am perfectly free to look with speculation at a mans broad shoulders, or to kiss his mouth if I want to, or even to go to bed with him if I choose. Hell, I don’t even have to worry about pregnancy now.

  That was a revelation. A troubling one; scary, even.

  I am feeling
the same sense of adulterous betrayal to poor Folly, that I have been unfaithful to the house that Desmond set before me, letting others intrude on the solidarity of our relationship, his and mine. I made vows to this house, to have and to hold, from this time forward, till death us do part. Instead, I have allowed strangers to lay their hands on it, to shape it and somehow claim it for their own.

  (God, I must be drunk. I’m certainly raving.)

  My neighbors have intruded, yes; on the other hand, a house is married to its community, not just to its owner. And if the owner is her house, I suppose I could say that I have just consummated my relation-ship with my new neighbors.

  Oh, God. I am raving. This is all quite insane and I am more than a little drunk. I think I must feel guilty that I’ve saved myself so much work. Where’s my hair shirt?

  Forty-one

  Interested in food or not, even at the best of times Rae was no gourmet chef, and her current cuisine, coming as it did out of crates, tended toward the dried, the canned, and the instant. Still, there was plenty of it, and Jerry was too polite (and too hungry) to complain.

  After they had scraped the pot and their plates, she asked him to carry the two chairs down to the beach. She followed with the dusty wine bottle she had found in the cave, a corkscrew, and her two elegant glasses.

  The moon was hugely lopsided over the still waters of the cove, four days past full but still throwing distinct shadows on the beach. Rae sat with the butt of the bottle trapped between her boots and went cautiously to work with the corkscrew, going more by feel than by sight. The cork gave way slowly, crumbling slightly but emerging more or less intact. Rae undid the cork from the screw and held it under her nose, then dropped it in her shirt pocket and reached for a glass. Proper manners suggested she should offer the first glass to her guest, but she didn’t want to be held responsible for poisoning the sheriff of San Juan County.