On Sunday afternoon, I went to find Andy in the barn. He’s not supposed to work on Sunday. We’d made an agreement that we would take at least one day of the week for family, but since I hadn’t even come close to sticking to that promise, I couldn’t really give him a hard time about it. I could hear the chain saw going as I crossed the courtyard. There are two doors to the barn. The double doors at the far end, which Andy uses to drive in his mini excavator and dump truck to get them out of the weather, and a small side door that Andy put in a couple of years ago. I went to the side door and pushed it open. Andy was hard at work, cutting a log down into firewood. He was wearing ear protectors, and his back was to me. I decided to wait, rather than tap him on the shoulder while he was operating the saw. I sat on a stool, breathed in the smell of sawdust, which I love, and waited.
Five years ago I applied for a barn-preservation grant from the State of Vermont. The frame of the building is red oak, and that’s always been pretty solid, but the roof and sidings and floor were all in bad shape. Andy used the grant money to replace the roof and the sidings and to put down a brick floor. I love the barn. I love that it’s open right up to the rafters and I love the way the light comes in through the small windows. I love the smells of machine oil and cut timber, and the way everything in it is so neatly lined up and organized, from the bags of fertilizer and peat moss to the pallets with landscaping stone and the stack of railroad ties in the corner.
Eventually, Andy turned off the saw. He pushed back his ear protectors and started stacking the wood.
“You need some help with that?” I asked. I’d startled him, and he jumped a little. “Nina still hasn’t called me back,” I said. I had my phone in my hand. I looked down at the screen, as if it might show something new. “I called her twice this morning. Both times it went through to voice mail. I sent her a text and nada.”
Andy returned his ear protectors and the chain saw to his tool bench. He checked his watch, took off his work gloves, and leaned against the wall opposite me…
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