Kate had had the well redug and a septic tank put in. The foundation was in over them by that evening. They let the cement cure overnight. Tents sprung up like mushrooms all the way back to the road, and some slept in their trucks, but they all stayed.
“It’s a Lindel Cedar home, Kate,” Dinah told her the next morning. She was still nervous, still unsure. “It’s got two bedrooms and two bathrooms, one full, one three-quarter.”
“Bathrooms?” Kate said.
“And it’s got a loft, just like your old cabin,” Dinah said. “Well, okay, maybe not just like it, but it’s a loft. There’s a covered porch in back that we’re going to extend all the way around to a deck in front.”
“A deck?” Kate said.
“It’s twenty-five by forty-one, only sixteen feet longer than your cabin, which makes it thirteen hundred seventy-one square feet total,” Dinah said. “Four hundred forty-five up and nine hundred twenty-six down.” She saw Kate’s expression and added hurriedly, “I know it’s big, especially compared to the cabin, but you need the extra room now that you’ve got Johnny living with you. You’ll get used to it, I know you will, and pretty soon you won’t even notice-”
“Dinah.”
“Yes, Kate.” With a valiant effort Dinah stilled the trembling in her knees.
“Thank you.” Kate kissed her on both cheeks and hugged her. “Thank you very much.”
“Oh.” Dinah blushed. “Ah. Okay. Good. You’re happy.”
“Tell me how I’m paying for this and I’ll be even happier.”
“Oh.” Dinah’s eyes slid to one side. “Well, you’d have to talk to Billy Mike about that.”
Billy Mike said, “Well, you’d have to talk to Auntie Vi about that.”
Auntie Vi said, “Well, you’d have to talk to Pete Heiman about that.”
“Pete Heiman isn’t here,” Kate said, and then realized the implication. “Wait. Wait just a damn minute here. You mean to tell me you’re putting my new house up with federal money) For crissake, Auntie! What if they find out?”
Auntie Vi gave her niece a pitying look. “Katya, for such a bright girl you are not very smart.”
The frame was up by noon, the trusses, with the help of the cherry picker, four hours later. All they would let Kate do was bring people drinks, so she did. “Thanks, Kate,” Bill Bingley said, laying down a screw gun and flat-footing the Coke she handed him. He wiped his mouth and grinned at her. “Thirsty work, this.”
His wife Cindy was working next to him, and smiled her thanks.
Mac Devlin, now at the controls of the cherry picker, paused in the act of raising a load of shingles to the roof to take a drink. “Fine day,” he said, red face shining with sweat. He might even have smiled.
Auntie Joy scurried by with a nail gun and plucked up two cans of Diet Sprite on the run, tossing one to George Perry, who paused in the countersinking of Sheetrock screws for a cold drink. “God, how I hate Sheetrock dust,” he said cheerfully, and went back to work. Dan O’Brian and Millicent Nebeker McClanahan were stapling electrical cable to the studs right in front of him, and right behind him-“Anne!” Kate said. “Anne Flanagan! What are you doing here?”
“Cutting holes for the outlets,” the minister said, laughing. “Did you think I would miss out on this?”
Bernie and Enid Koslowski were mudding and taping one wall, working together smoothly, like a team who had done this before. On the opposite wall two older women were doing the same thing, one climbing a ladder to work on the open area above the living room, the other holding the ladder. Kate took a second look, unable to believe her first. “Cindy? Olga?”
Olga Shapsnikoff and Cindy Sovalik paid her no attention. “Old woman, you are not using enough mud on that seam,” Olga said.
From the top of the ladder Cindy Sovalik said, “Old woman, how can I put enough mud on the seam when this ladder shakes like there is an earthquake underfoot?”
Old Sam Dementieff was on the roof, skipping nimbly from rafter to rafter, accompanied by the rat-a-tat of a staple gun. Kate handed up a can of pop. “I can’t believe this,” she told him. “I just-I can’t-” Speech failed her.
He grinned down at her, sweat dripping from his nose. “Believe it,” he said.
And if Kate had been worried as to how to fill up all this achingly empty new space, her fears would have been allayed by the appearance of two beds and a couch big enough to fill up the living room all by itself and a dining table with four chairs handcarved from some kind of pine. There were pillows and sets of sheets to fit both beds, with blankets to spare, and kitchen utensils, and Costco packs of Ivory soap and toilet paper and paper towels. Keith and Oscar brought her a flat full of herb starters. “It’s not for the house exactly,” Oscar said, a little shy.
“They’re exactly right,” Kate told him.
“Here,” Old Sam growled, shoving a book at her, and damning the duo with a suspicious glare. “Get your library kick-started.”
Kate had to blink several times before she could focus on the page she opened at random. “‘There’s the picture-and it isn’t exaggerated,” “ she read.
We find them everywhere. Slowly, but surely, our male citizenry is becoming emasculated to the point of utter helplessness. Sliding along, content in their weakness, glorying in their inability to do things. Proud of the fact that they’ve never been taught to use their hands-and blind also, to the fact that they know mighty little about using their heads.
A laugh was surprised out of her, and she looked at the cover. “Modern Gunsmithing” she said. It had been published in 1933. She looked up at Old Sam, whose name was written on the flyleaf in round, careful boyish letters. “Thank you, Uncle.”
He nodded, satisfied, and stumped off.
But it was the gift from the four aunties that rendered Kate speechless. It was a handmade quilt embroidered and appliqued with Alaskan wildflowers, so colorfully and painstakingly made that they were even more glorious than the real thing. It was a solid piece of work, thick and soft and heavy.
“You have a son now,” Auntie Balasha said.
“So you get a quilt,” Auntie Joy said.
“You sleep warm under it,” Auntie Edna said.
“You watch that boy,” Auntie Vi said, “he get too skinny, you send him to me, I fatten him up.”
The expression on Kate’s face must have been enough, because they, too, stumped away with satisfied expressions.
Dinah said softly, “Everyone I talked to wanted to help, Kate. The people who couldn’t make it to the house-raising contributed materials or phone minutes or ran around for me in Anchorage or sent gifts. This wasn’t just the Park, this was pretty damn near the whole state. Brandan says hi, by the way. So does Andy Pence.” She smiled a little. “Bobby may never speak to me again, however. He’s so pissed he missed this.”
“He’s okay?”
Dinah nodded. “He’s okay. He’s staying for the funeral at Jeffrey’s request, but he’ll be back on Sunday.”
Kate smiled at her. “Is he glad he went?”
“Yeah. It was tough, he said, but his father was glad to see him, and his mother was glad because his father was glad.” She grinned. “He showed them a picture of me and Dinah, and Jeffrey was afraid it was going to push the dad into the great beyond then and there.”
Kate laughed. “Bring him out right away so I can show him the new house.”
Dinah’s eyes glinted. “Well, maybe not right away.”
By midnight it was done, right down to the plumbing and the wiring. Kate wandered around the inside, half dazed. The heavy wooden door fit solidly into its frame, weather-stripped within an inch of its life and snug behind a glass storm door. There were wall plates over the light switches and the electrical outlets. There were toilets in the bathrooms. There was a refrigerator and a stove in the kitchen, both propane-powered. A brand new woodstove big enough to heat the whole house stood in one corner of the living room, with pipe ascending to the ceiling and emerging outside in a capped chimney.