“They didn’t leave me much to go back to,” I said.
Hank set the toolbox down. “That was some Christmas present,” he said.
“I reckon they wanted to give, in the spirit of the holiday,” I said.
“I have come to help you,” Hank said.
“You have?” I said, not sure I heard him right. “I am obliged,” I said. The stiffness in my throat kept me from saying more.
“When I was your age I had big plans,” Hank said. “I wish somebody had encouraged me.”
I told him Moody said the Willard brothers broke up my foundation.
“I heard that,” Hank said. “And I heard about Moody shooting one of them.”
“It was an accident,” I said.
Hank said he had had his own troubles with the Willard brothers, back when he was courting Mrs. Richards.
Hank had built so many houses and barns, he knowed just what to do. “The most important thing is to get your foundation right,” he said. He looked at the ruins of the west wall where the door of the church was to be.
“It may be just as well they knocked that down,” he said. “The footing needs to be poured again.”
I didn’t argue with him, though that was my first impulse. I was embarrassed for him to see the mistakes I’d made. I got a mattock and he took a shovel, and we broke away the ruined work and dug the trench deeper. Hank was so strong he worked like a machine. We redug the ditch in no time, it seemed. I told him I couldn’t believe he was helping me.
“I wouldn’t mind giving Preacher Liner a surprise,” Hank said.
Hank took his hammer and some nails from his toolbox and repaired the mortar box better. He hammered slow, but the wood fell into place for him. It was a pleasure to watch how sure he was with a hammer and saw. He used the tools so they seemed a part of his hands.
“I’m not much used to laying rock,” Hank said. But he seemed to know just exactly what to do next, better than I did. He seemed to understand my idea for the plan of the church already.
“Have you got a blueprint?” Hank said as he laid his level on top of the new west wall.
I admitted I had only a rough drawing and showed him the sketch I carried in my pocket. It was creased and smudged. I told him I would make a better drawing that night.
As Hank worked he made building appear to be the most natural thing. He didn’t waste a single move. Every time he reached or turned he got something done.
“You hadn’t ought to have give up preaching,” Hank said as we laid the next level of rock on the foundation that afternoon.
“I just made a fool of myself,” I said.
“Everybody makes a fool of theirself at first,” Hank said. He marked off the space for the door on the left side. With his help I had almost brought the wall back to where it was before Christmas Eve. Us two working together got four times as much done as me working alone.
“Not such a fool as I was,” I said.
“I made a worser fool of myself at your age,” Hank said. Hank said that when him and Mrs. Richards first got married and moved down to Gap Creek, there come a flood at Christmastime. The flood was so bad they had to escape from the house in the middle of the night. In the dark, in the rushing water, he had let go of Julie’s hand and found the way to the barn by hisself. He was ashamed of hisself.
It was hard to believe Hank was talking to me that way. “What did you do?” I said.
“I acted crazy and cowardly,” Hank said.
Hank said that just about the only way we learn anything is from our mistakes. “Everybody makes their own mistakes,” he said.
“I’ve made aplenty,” I said.
“I ain’t seen nothing you’ve done yet that says you can’t be a preacher,” Hank said.
“It was prideful of me to want to preach,” I said.
“I felt the call when I was young,” Hank said. “But nobody encouraged me.”
IT’S HARD TO describe how much easier the work was with Hank helping. He understood what was to be done next and how it was to be done. I had been fumbling around and piddling around on my own. Working with him, I felt more powerful, and the rocks and boards was more firm and ready to be joined. By the end of the week we had rebuilt the foundation to where it was before, except now it was in plumb. There wasn’t nothing sigodlin about the corners and walls. I was tired out and a little dazed by what all Hank done and said. After he come to the mountaintop the mess sorted itself out and the rocks got gathered back in place. Right after the worst will come the best. I had heard that said. But I kept worrying about Moody. I couldn’t feel easy for thinking about Moody.
“I am humbly grateful to you,” I said to Hank at quitting time.
“Next you are going to have to get some lumber,” Hank said.
“I want a rock church,” I said, “like the cathedrals and churches in the Old World.”
“You can have rock on the outside,” Hank said. “But you need a frame on the inside. You want walls and ceiling to keep it warm in winter. You want paint on the walls so the church will look bright and clean.”
I seen he was right. I hadn’t thought clear enough about what the inside would look like. I had thought mostly of how the church would look from the outside.
Hank took a piece of paper bag that had held nails and he got a pencil from his bib pocket and started figuring. “Thirty feet by twenty feet by twelve feet high,” he said. “How steep do you want the roof?”
“Steep as a town church,” I said.
He wrote down numbers and then more numbers. “You will need double sheathing,” he said. “I’d say you will need at least five thousand board feet, not counting studs and sills and joists.”
“And a steeple,” I said.
“How high a steeple?” Hank said.
“Over the treetops where everybody in the valley can see it,” I said.
“You’ll have to have seven thousand board feet,” Hank said.
“That’s a lot of trees,” I said.
“I’ll help you cut them,” Hank said.
When I walked back down the mountain to the river road, I stopped at the mailbox. It was already getting dark, and I knowed Mama would want the newspaper and a magazine if any had come. She was so worried about Moody she needed something to take her mind off our troubles. But there was just a bill for taxes in the box, besides the newspaper. And an envelope with no stamp on it. My name was wrote in pencil on the envelope. It was such neat lettering I was sure it was done by Moody. You would not have thought he would write such a fine hand, but he could, when he put his mind to it.
In the dim light I could just barely see, but I opened the letter and found it was scribbled in the same tiny hand in pencil.
Dear Muir,
You old rascal. I take pensil in hand to say don’t come looking for me again. For you probably couldn’t find me, and if you did you’d probably lead the law strate to me. For I know they must be watching the house from time to time.
I’m writing this with a pensil stole from a schoolhouse, on a tablet bought at a store, you don’t need to know where. I’m warning you not to try looking for me again. Killing Zack Willard was an accident, but he got what he deserved.
Now I know your plan to build a church is foolish, but no foolisher than most things people does.
I guess the Willards thought you was helping me bootleg, like you done that one time, was why they broke up your foundation. It was to scare me so they could sell all the liquor in the valley. Me and Wheeler and Drayton was cutting into their business too much.
Muir, I get mad easy, because you are such a damned mama’s boy and do everything right. I was always blamed for trouble, I still am blamed. You thought I broke up your damned church. You kicked me when I was drunk and asleep. You always thought I was a dog, you and Mama together.
If you want to build a church, build a damn church. It can’t hurt nothing and might even help old backsliders like me. You want to be a preacher you go ahead and be
a goddamned preacher. Just because you stumbled and flustered that first time, and people laughed when I farted, don’t mean you can’t preach.
Hell, I heard you practicing out in the woods when I was laying drunk in the thicket and you was trying out what you wanted to say. And you sounded good as a real preacher man to me.
Not that I ever cottoned to preachers. But you was calling out the words good as any caller at a square dance. I heard you.
Till I get out of this you can have the Model T. All it needs is some new spark plugs and the points filed. And a new inner tube. You fix it up and use it to go to services when you are a famous preacher.
And don’t you all worry about me. I’m going to lay low for a few weeks and watch out for myself.
Your ragged assed brother, Moody.
I folded the letter and put it in my pocket, then hurried down to the house to show it to Mama.
IN THE DAYS after Moody sent the letter, Hank helped me saw down twenty big oaks on the pasture hill. He taught me things about felling trees I’d never heard of before. He showed me how to guess the number of feet in a tree still on the stump.
Hank told me that you measure the thickness of an oak six feet off the ground, and measure the height up to the first limbs. Then you multiply half the thickness by itself, and by three, and by the feet to the fork or first big limbs, and you get roughly the planking inside the log.
Not only did Hank show me how to figure the lumber in a tree, he showed me what trees to cut for different parts of the building. Some of it I’d heard before, and some I hadn’t.
“We’ll cut hemlocks for the sills,” he said. “One of them hemlocks by the spring should be enough.” He said termites won’t touch hemlock, and moisture don’t hurt it much either.
I told him I wanted the church to be made of oak, like the big oak beams I’d read about in Durham Cathedral, where you could see the axe marks made nine hundred years ago.
Hank said oak would work for the sheathing, but he’d recommend pine for the frame and studs because a nail can be drove through a one-inch oak board, but not through two or three inches of oak.
As we worked I tried to think what I would have done without Hank’s advice and help. I would have just fumbled on. He moved so slow it surprised me how quick his work mounted up. Sometimes I found myself standing there watching him work. He showed me that all things, especially hard things, had to be done one little step at a time. There was no need to hurry.
We worked so steady we got the timber cut in a week. In another week it was all sawed up, and Mama paid to have the lumber trucked to the foot of the mountain. We hauled it to the top in the wagon. The stacks of lumber gleamed in the clearing beside the rock piles.
Hank showed me how to nail together two-by-tens to make the sills of the church. The floor would be about three feet off the ground, and the sills set on the rock foundation. We made joists out of two-by-eights to hold up the floor, and Hank took some one-by-fours and sawed them into lengths to nail between the beams for struts and braces. He used his level and try square at every step to make sure everything was plumb and foursquare. “A building has to be perfect at the foundation, or it will never be right later,” he said again.
He showed me how to use a plumb bob.
Soon as the beams was in place it was time to lay the subfloor. “Always nail subfloor planks at a forty-five-degree angle to the walls,” Hank said.
“Why is that?” I said.
“Makes the floor twice as strong,” Hank said. “The subfloor acts like bracing for the bottom of the house.”
He showed me how to saw planks at an angle using his try square. The subfloor took shape like the deck of a ship on the mountaintop. Like an altar.
Middle of the afternoon Mrs. Richards and Annie come up to the top of the mountain carrying a coffeepot and two mugs and some biscuits with molasses on them. “Thought you could stand some coffee,” Mrs. Richards said. She poured me a cup and Annie handed it to me. My hand was sore from holding the saw so long. Annie’s hair sparkled bright as the lumber in the winter sun.
I took a sip of the coffee and felt it running through my belly and out my arms like little lights to my fingertips. The boards and sawdust, the cement and rocks, got sharper and brighter.
“Who ever thought there’d be a church on this mountain?” Mrs. Richards said.
“There ain’t one yet,” I said.
“A mountaintop feels closer to heaven,” Mrs. Richards said.
“This will be a good place to watch the sunset,” Annie said. I had not tried to go with her in a long time. I reckon I’d been too busy to think about courting.
ALL MY LIFE I had heard carpenters talk about the “idea” of building, how some men naturally had an “idea” for building, and others didn’t. But I’d never seen an example before I worked with Hank.
I showed Hank my new drawing for the church and he studied the page careful. And after that it was like he had memorized it. It was like he could already see the church in his head as clear as I could. He could see what would go where before I did.
After we got the subfloor down we started nailing the studs in place every eighteen inches around the sides. The upright two-by-fours made the cage of the frame, so it begun to look like a building there in the woods. The fresh lumber was white as cream.
“Can I make a suggestion?” Hank said. It was a windy day in February and his face was flushed. “Do you really want windows two feet off the floor?” he said.
“To let in the breeze during a long summer service,” I said.
“That won’t be a problem up here where there is always a breeze,” Hank said.
“Windows have got to be low enough so younguns can raise them,” I said.
“High windows will let light slant down on the pews and on the floor,” Hank said. “They’ll give a more sacred look to the church. People can look up and see the light streaming in.”
Anger shot up in me like somebody had touched a trigger. It was my church, and I had already planned it in a hundred ways before Hank ever struck a hammer blow to it.
“Build it any way you want,” I said and put down my hammer. I tried to think of something else to say and couldn’t. In a mad stupor I walked to the edge of the floor and jumped to the ground. I kept walking till I got to the laurel bushes on the north side. When I stopped in the thicket I was already ashamed of myself. I stood in the winter leaves, breathing short with rage and embarrassment.
What a fool you are, I said to myself. I seen what had made me maddest about Hank’s suggestion was that he was right. His idea of the church was clearer than mine. Higher windows would make a more sacred effect. Lower windows would distract the congregation while they listened to a sermon. And there was no reason little younguns would need to raise or lower the windows. Might be better if they couldn’t.
I hated to go back and face Hank. I would rather be whipped with a leather strap than face somebody that had made me mad. I had showed my ass, as Moody would have said.
I turned and started back into the clearing, pushing limbs out of my way. Hank was still nailing down studs, toenailing them in. His hammer rung in the clearing like hard fast barks. He didn’t stop nailing when I climbed back up on the subfloor.
“I hadn’t ought to get mad,” I said. “You was right about the windows.”
“Always had a quick temper myself,” Hank said.
“I hadn’t even thought about the windows,” I said.
“Short temper’s a sign of a clear conscience,” Hank said. “But it never does much good.” He looked up and grinned. “I hit a foreman upside of the head one time and got myself fired.”
I picked up my hammer and held the next two-by-four for Hank to nail. My face was hot in the wind.
LATER SOMEBODY SPOKE from the edge of the clearing. It was Preacher Liner, and he looked out of breath from walking up the mountain.
“I heard you was helping Muir,” the preacher said to Hank. “I wanted to see i
t with my own eyes.”
“Building is slow this time of year,” Hank said. “I had a little time on my hands.”
The preacher come closer to where we was working and stood with his hands on his hips. Hank showed him where we was going to put the doorway and steeple, right near where he was standing.
“The deacons didn’t authorize no new church,” Preacher Liner said.
Hank worked calm and steady. He told the preacher he thought building a new church was a good idea, and that he just wanted to help me out a little. The preacher said the only idea that counted was the one the congregation voted on. “That’s Baptist discipline,” Preacher Liner said.
Hank was calm as a bank teller. He started nailing again, and his hammer blows was like drumbeats. He told the preacher he didn’t want to argue with nobody, and that he just wanted to build a church on the mountaintop that people could use.
“Them that break the laws of the church can be rebuked,” Preacher Liner said, raising his voice a little. He hadn’t even noticed me.
Hank told the preacher everybody serves the Lord in their own way. He didn’t look at the preacher, but his face had got redder in the wind.
“That is not the spirit of fellowship,” Preacher Liner said. “If everybody went his own way there wouldn’t be no church. I won’t see my church divided.”
“A man has to follow his conscience,” Hank said, “and do what he thinks is right.”
“That’s not Baptist discipline,” Preacher Liner said. “A deacon must be an example to the community. A deacon is a pillar of the church.”
Hank kept nailing without looking at the preacher. There was sweat on his forehead.
“I’d hate for you both to lose your letters in the church,” Preacher Liner said. “Muir is just a boy, but you are old enough to be accountable.”
Hank spun around so fast his carpenter’s apron slapped against his hip. The calm was gone from his face, and his eyes was narrow as buttonholes as he faced the preacher. The preacher was heavier than Hank. “I would hate for you to fall off this mountain,” Hank spit out.
“It’s a sin to threaten a preacher,” Preacher Liner said.
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