It was the following morning, a Saturday, when Jo decided to pay her parents a visit and get things rolling. Dalton had one last thought on the matter.
‘Your dad is gonna have to cut back on the drinking,’ he said. ‘Especially with a kid around.’
Jo agreed. ‘Will you help Sander build the house?’
‘Yeah. More of a cabin they’ve got planned, really. I’ll throw out a few ideas to make it comfortable for three.’
‘Good. It has to come along pretty quick, though.’
‘We’re starting this afternoon, honey. Don’t worry about it.’
Jo didn’t. What she worried about was how she would tell her mother that all the old furniture she loved would have to go. Jo didn’t want her place turned into a granny house.
She kissed Dalton, grabbed her purse, and said, ‘Yall have fun. I might be gone a while.’
The price of lumber seemed to skyrocket, thought Sander, when you had no expectation of making back the money you dropped on it. The truck shook as McCoy’s forklifts loaded the flatbed. He looked over at Allie and she was grinning. He returned her smile, attempting to conceal thoughts about his savings account balance. It was enough to build what Allie had envisioned, and then some. Yet, Sander knew his dad was right. The place simply wouldn’t be big enough. Even after Sander had reminded Allie to raise the ceilings to twelve feet, double the size of the doors, and include at least one shower and toilet he could actually use, the house was too small by half. This load of materials would only get them started.
‘What’s on your mind, babe?’ she asked.
Why hide it, he thought. They would dig the foundation and she would notice right away it was much bigger than the measurements on the drawing.
‘Frank offered to help out with the cost,’ he told her. ‘They’ll have some extra when they sell their place. It bothers me to take it, but I reckon we’ll have to.’
‘We’ll pay it back,’ she said, and patted his thigh.
How?, he thought, but kept that bit to himself.
It was nice to see Dalton on the tractor again. Sander was done uprooting the few trees too close to the homesite and watched his dad steer a wide arc around the disturbed earth in the center pasture. He treated the ground over his herd as hallowed. As he neared, the wind shifted and flattened Dalton’s shirt against his thin frame. Sander turned away and began filling stump holes with the shovel.
They had the earth leveled and all the corners staked out well before dark. Dalton told his son to take the tractor back and bring up the trailer of materials.
‘That’s alright, dad. This is enough for today. You can ride back. I feel like walking.’
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather put a concrete slab under this thing? It’s gonna sound like thunder when you walk across the floor.’
‘I’ll reinforce the beams,’ said Sander. He knew well the price of concrete. ‘The sound doesn’t bother me.’
‘I wasn’t talking about it bothering you,’ Dalton said, then started the tractor and headed home.
It took them a while to get rolling Sunday morning, what with discussion still underway regarding Dalton’s opinions on the design, specifically the elements thereof that he believed his son would live to regret. Allie was supposed to be out here with snacks and supervision. Sander wondered where she was. If and when she arrived, his dad would shut up about her plans.
Once they began, construction moved along at a steady, albeit average, pace. Sander had picked up a lot of pointers from watching Javier and Miguel, and he remembered all his costly mistakes when he had tried to help them. Dalton worked hard but Sander took it upon himself to double his effort. He would tell his dad how he wanted something done – these joists spanning those piers, with webbing staggered here, here, and here – then he would rush to grab the boards before Dalton could lift them himself.
‘Son,’ he said, ‘if you want to build the thing yourself, just tell me. I’ve got other things I can be doing.’
‘Sorry.’
Sander kept a close eye on him, and feigned fatigue once every couple of hours so they would have to take a break. Allie and Jo brought them lunch and they were impressed with the progress. Dalton wasn’t.
When the women left, he told Sander, ‘You can keep dragging ass if you want, but I intend to get the rafters up today.’
By dark, the skeleton of the house was done. Dalton didn’t seem much the worse for it, so Sander quit worrying. He was now looking forward to having the outside completed in a week. Accomplishment for its own sake, he guessed, because there wasn’t a list of things clamoring for their attention. They were slowly getting used to seeing two square miles of vacant land, but they had no idea yet how they would feed themselves off it.
Every time the subject came up, it was, ‘I reckon we’ll figure something out.’
‘Sure we will, don’t you think?’
‘We always do.’
‘Yeah.’
They switched roles, but the conversation didn’t change.
Day three started about the same. They joked with one another as they began work and things were chugging right along before the dew was dry. Dalton tossed sheets of plywood up to the roof as fast as Sander could nail them down. The early autumn sun crested the treetops in short order and Sander noticed his dad was moving a little slower. He peered over the eave and saw Dalton was sweating from cap to boots, so he nailed the last bit of roof decking and climbed down for some water.
They sat together on the rough-framed floor of the house and didn’t say much. Dalton seemed enough like his old self the previous day that Sander had toyed with the idea of telling him about his grandchild. He lay in bed last night and imagined the scene several different ways. He didn’t talk to Allie about it. She was asleep, anyway.
Now, though, when he looked over at Dalton, it appeared his dad already had something on his mind, something that troubled him. It didn’t seem like the time for surprises.
Instead, he stood and told him, ‘Come on. We’re wasting daylight.’
Dalton didn’t get up. ‘I wish you would talk to your granddad.’
‘I know. I will. I’ll go tonight.’ He gave his father’s boot a little kick, ‘Let’s get the sheathing on.’
‘Nah. Go now.’
‘What?’
‘Go on over and talk to him now. He misses you and he hasn’t even heard the news.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yeah. Please. I’ll get started on the walls.’
When Dalton rose, he was done talking. He started toward the stack of sheathing, putting on his gloves. Sander could see the top of the tree on the hill from here. He knew, what with the inevitable questions and even his most cursory answers, he’d be an hour there and back, minimum. Shit. At least it would be over, he thought.
To his amusement, Sander found himself organizing a prepared speech with each step, pondering the order of things he would say to Will, and thereby came to understand why his dad did the same thing. This is what you do, he decided, when you would rather not say anything at all. Allie had nutshelled their preferred manner of dealing with difficult subjects. Silence.
He was a hundred yards past the truck when he heard falling lumber behind him. He couldn’t see much of the structure, so he trotted back to find out what his dad had dropped. When he saw Dalton on the ground, he sprinted.
‘Dad!’
The big man tried to push himself up, but his hands found no purchase. He had taken down a stud wall when he fell and now feebly struggled to get free of it. His arms buckled and his head dropped on the pine. Sander rolled him off the boards and onto his back.
‘Dad? Can you open your eyes?’
‘No, son. I can’t.’
‘You want some water or–’ Sander realized his father’s mouth didn’t move when he said that. His face was slack. Sander shook him anyway. ‘Dad?’
‘Take me to the hill,’ Sander heard him say, ‘and go get your mother.’
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br /> Sander promised himself he wouldn’t walk into the house crying, and he fought for that tiny grace, hoping he might have time to hug his mother and support her before he broke her heart. He would’ve made it, too, if he had gone straight in and not stopped at the barn to load a shovel in the truck.
Jo was stitching a hole in their duvet cover when it jarred her. She felt Dalton fall with such a crushing finality that she could no longer remember what she was doing. She sat on the sofa with needle and thread raised, focused on nothing in particular, until she heard the door open.
Sander walked around the corner, eyes pouring, and rather than supporting Jo, he crumpled to his knees and let his head fall in her lap.
‘Is your daddy gone?’
‘Yes,’ said Sander, his voice muffled in the quilted feathers.
‘Is he on the hill?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, get up,’ she said, coaxing his shoulders and smoothing his hair. ‘Come on now, get up. Let’s go.’
Sander thought he heard her breath hitch once on the drive out, but she turned toward the side window and when he saw her face again there was no sign of a tear. When they arrived, Jo walked beneath the tree and laid in the grass beside Dalton. She took off his cap and she kissed him. She talked to him, the same as she always did, and she didn’t seem to know, or care, whether they were alone. She told him he was so beautiful, and so strong, and he was her giant.
Sander took the shovel and started digging. He stopped after a while to wipe his nose, unsure if he should interrupt his mother to tell her what Dalton was saying. Jo sensed it.
‘Tell me what he said, Sander.’
‘He said,’ Sander began, trying hard to get it out, ‘“Jo, honey, I love you and I wish you could hear me.”’
‘I can,’ she whispered and kissed him again. ‘I’ll come up here and have my coffee with you every morning. Don’t ever stop talking to me, Dalton.’
Sander wanted to allow them privacy, so he put his back into the work and dug with fury. When he was chest deep beneath the turf, he pushed himself out. Jo squeezed Dalton’s hand and stood.
‘He said something right then, didn’t he?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. He said it’s not scary and he’s in good company.’
‘Something else. You started to grin.’
‘He said roll him in and cover him up.’
She looked at her husband and said, ‘That’s crass, honey.’ But she couldn’t deny a little smile. She told her son, ‘I’m not any help with this. I’ll see you back at the house.’ She started off across the field.
‘It’s a long walk, mamma.’
‘It’s a long cry, son.’
Sander eased his dad into the hole and filled it, still working on how to tell the man something important. He looked at his watch. Allie would be home soon. Frank and Doris and the Sandovals would come over tonight to funeralize. Jo would no doubt cook for all of them.
‘I hope I didn’t knock your house down,’ his dad said. ‘You should hire somebody to help you get it done.’
‘I’ll finish in plenty of time,’ Sander told him.
The Legend of Sander Grant Page 21
