He kept his head down.
“Come on, kid,” I said. “You only got up to go. Let me show you how to punch.”
Without looking up he took the gloves.
CHAPTER 18
We were digging the last hole for the foundation tubes. It was hot, the going was slow through rocks and the usual root web. I was working with a mattock and Paul had a shovel. We also had use for an ax, a crowbar, and a long-handled branch cutter, which we used on some of the roots.
Paul was dressed like I was: jeans and work boots. Mine were bigger. The sweat shone on his thin body as he dug at the dirt I loosened.
“What are these holes for again?” he said.
“See the big round cardboard tubes over there? We put them in these holes and get them level and fill them with reinforced concrete. Then we put a sill on them and the cabin rests on them. It’s easier than digging a cellar hole, though a cellar’s better.”
“Why?” He dug the shovel blade into the dirt and picked it up. He was holding the shovel too far up the handle and the dirt flipped as he pried it up and most of it fell back in the hole.
“Cellar gives you place for a furnace, makes the floors warmer, gives you storage. This way the house sits above ground. Colder in the winter. But a lot less trouble.”
Paul shifted his grip a little on the shovel and took another stab at the dirt. He got most of it this time. “Don’t they have machines to do this?”
“Yes.” I swung the mattock again. It bit into the soil pleasingly. We were getting down a layer, where the roots and rocks weren’t a problem. “But there’s no satisfaction in it. Get a gasoline post-hole digger and rattle away at this like a guy making radiators. Gas fumes, noise. No sense that you’re doing it.”
“I should think it would be easier.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. I swung the mattock again, the wide blade buried in the earth to the haft. I levered it forward and the earth spilled loose. Paul shoveled it out. He still held the shovel too high on the handle and he still moved too tentatively. But he cleared the hole.
“We’ll use some power tools later on. Circular saws, that sort of stuff. But I wanted to start with our backs.”
Paul looked at me as if I were strange and made a silent gesture with his mouth.
“It’s not crazy,” I said. “We’re not doing this just to get it done.”
He shrugged, leaning on the shovel.
“We do it to get the pleasure of making something. Otherwise we could hire someone. That would be the easiest way of all.”
“But this is cheaper,” Paul said.
“Yeah, we save money. But that’s just a point that keeps it from being a hobby, like making ships in a bottle. Only when love and need are one, you know?”
“What’s that mean?” he said.
“It’s a poem, I’ll let you read it after supper.”
We finished the last hole and set the last tube into it. We drove reinforcing rods into the ground in each tube and then backfilled the holes around the tubes. I went around with a mason’s level and got each tube upright and Paul then shoveled the earth in around it while I kept adjusting it to level. It took us the rest of the afternoon. When the last one was leveled and packed I said, “Okay, time to quit”
It was still warm and the sun was still well up in the western sky when I get a beer from the refrigerator and a Coke for Paul.
“Can I have a beer?” he said.
“Sure.” I put the Coke back and got a beer.
We sat in the camp chairs with the sweat drying on our backs in the warm breeze. When the sun went down it would get cold, but now it was still the yellow-green spring of the almost deserted forest, and no human sounds but the ones we made.
“In the summer,” I said, “it’s much noisier. The other cabins open up and there’s always people sounds.”
“You like it up here?”
“Not really,” I said. “Not for long. I like cities. I like to look at people and buildings.”
“Aren’t trees and stuff prettier?”
“I don’t know. I like artifacts, things people make. I like architecture. When I go to Chicago I like to look at the buildings. It’s like a history of American architecture.”
Paul shrugged.
“You ever seen the Chrysler Building in New York?” I said. “Or the Woolworth Building downtown?”
“I never been to New York.”
“Well, we’ll go sometime,” I said.
One squirrel chased another up one side of a tree and down the other and across a patch of open ground and
