He looked at the structure when he came into the clearing and looked at it with the particular quality of professional attention that assessed without performing. And she gave him credit for that. Tommy was younger, not yet 20, with the loose-limmed ease of a person who had not yet learned that the body has limits. He looked at the south wall and went quiet in a way that she found more gratifying than any compliment he could have offered because it meant he was genuinely surprised. And genuine surprise was an honest response.
"This is straight," Tommy said finally, squinting along the wall. He was using his eye like a level, which told her he had some experience with construction, even if he was too young to be formal about it. How'd you keep it straight? Checked every course before I set the next one, she said. Most men don't bother with that, he said.
Most men pay for it later, she said. Jesse said nothing. He was already looking at the plate timber she had cut and waiting along the north wall, running his hand along the end grain, checking for twist. She watched him do it and recognized the gesture. Henry had done exactly the same thing with unfamiliar timber, the first move, the check for what the wood intended to do before you told it what you needed it to do.
We ready? Jesse said. We're ready, she said. What happened over the next 12 hours was the kind of work that Clara would think about later as the purest version of what labor between people who knew what they were doing could be. She directed, they executed.
When she showed them what she needed, there was no argument, no explanation of why she was wrong, no subtle repositioning of themselves as the authority in the space. Jesse asked two questions all day, both technical, both legitimate. Tommy asked more questions than the day strictly required. But the questions were real questions, the kind that came from genuine curiosity rather than from needing to demonstrate something. And she answered all of them straight.
The wall plates were the heaviest lift of the entire project. They had to go up level and locked simultaneously, and without a rigging system, she had been only partly confident she could construct alone. Having two experienced men to place them was the difference between the work being possible and the work being dangerous. She knew this. She acknowledged it to herself with the particular honesty of a woman who had been doing hard things long enough to know the difference between what required help and what merely felt uncomfortable.
By the time the plates were seated and pegged, and she had walked the full perimeter, checking each corner, the light was going orange over the western ridge. She stood at the northwest corner with her hand on the plate and looked down the line of the north wall and it was square. It was true. It was the straightest thing she had built, and it was the most structurally critical, and it held. She fed Jesse and Tommy that evening at the outdoor fire.
She had cooked what she had, which was beans again, and cornbread she had made in the cast iron that morning, and a pot of coffee that she had made strong, because strong coffee at the end of a long day was a kindness worth the cost of the grounds. Tommy talked more than the meal required, but it was good talk, the talk of a young man who was genuinely interested in things, and had not yet learned that this was unusual. Jesse ate with the focused appreciation of a man who had been working since dawn and knew the value of a meal without needing to say so. "The coffee is good," Jesse said when he was nearly done. She nodded.