Chapter 19
"Three feet down," Abner had told me. "Three feet plus four inches for a gravel base, or the post is just decorative."
The post hole digger bit sharply into the dirt. I lifted the handles apart, pulled out a plug of soil, and dropped it on the growing pile beside the hole.
"Quarter turn left," Abner said from the shade of the cedar. He sat on an upturned five-gallon bucket with a thermos of iced tea wedged between his knees. "You're drifting off plumb."
I adjusted and drove the digger down again. Sweat ran into my eyes. The sun had turned the drive into a griddle and I could feel the heat radiating up through my boots. We'd been at it since nine and the morning coolness had burned off two hours ago.
The supply run to Forks had been the day before. Abner had sat at my kitchen table and written the list in his cramped, precise handwriting on the back of an envelope.
Two lengths of Schedule 40 galvanized steel pole with welded eyelets, eight feet long. Four bags of quick-set concrete. One bag of drainage gravel. Heavy-gauge transport chain, three-eighths inch minimum. Two padlocks.
"Two?" I'd asked.
"A standard combination lock for your daily use. And a Knox padlock."
"A Knox? For residential? Didn't know you had to use those out here in the backwoods."
A Knox padlock was a special lock that fire departments and EMS carry a universal master key for. I was familiar with them from industrial and construction sites, but rural and residential regulations were outside my expertise.
"Rural gated properties are required by code to have a Knox padlock on the access chain," Abner confirmed. "Without one, the county can fine you. You can guess why I am familiar with this code."
"I have a pretty good idea."
I'd also picked up a metal No Trespassing sign to bolt to the chain at center height.
"I stuck with a simple No Trespassing sign," I said. "Have to steer clear of one of those cute ones or the threatening ones. They introduce questions of liability. Believe me, liability is something I know well from my insurance work."
Now I pulled another plug of dirt from the hole and checked the depth with my tape measure. Thirty-four inches. Close. I drove the digger down again, working until I hit forty inches.
"That'll do," Abner said.
I walked to the truck bed where the first pole lay alongside the concrete bags. I grabbed a bag of drainage gravel and dumped four inches in the hole to form a base and tamped it down.
I went back for the metal post. The steel was hot from the sun and I was grateful to be wearing gloves. I carried it to the hole, lowered it in, and held it upright while Abner walked over with his level.
He pressed the level against the pole on two faces. The bubble floated left.
"Nudge it toward the road. Little more. There. Ready for the pour."
He held the pole steady while I mixed the first bag of quick-set in a five-gallon bucket, adding water from the jug in careful increments.
I stirred it with a length of scrap wood until it was the consistency of wet oatmeal, then poured it around the base of the pole in a slow circle.
The concrete settled into the hole with a thick, satisfying sound.
I took the pole from Abner and he checked the level again.
The bubble stayed dead center on both faces.
I mixed the second bag and poured it in.
The concrete rose and overflowed the hole.
I used a trowel to mold the excess into a round crown at the base so rain and snowmelt would run away from the metal.
"One down," I said.
"The second hole will be worse. More rock on that side."
He was right. I had to use a digging bar to break through the compacted dirt and rocks. My hands were raw inside the work gloves. Sweat soaked through my shirt and turned the waistband of my jeans dark.
Abner watched from the shade. Occasionally he'd offer a correction. Mostly he let me work. The cough came and went, a dry bark that he suppressed behind his fist.
When the second hole measured forty inches, I set the gravel and the pole and mixed the concrete.
Same procedure. Level on two faces, pour, check, pour again, mold the crown.
The posts stood twenty feet apart, perfectly plumb, perfectly aligned, anchored in gray concrete that was already starting to firm in the heat.
Abner checked the distance between the posts one more time with the tape.
"Twenty feet between posts," he confirmed. "Not eighteen, not nineteen. The code says twenty and the code is what they'll measure when someone complains. And someone will complain."
"Time for a break," I sighed.
We sat in the shade of the big cedar at the edge of the drive. Abner on his bucket, me on the ground with my back against the trunk. The thermos passed between us. Claire's iced tea was cold and refreshing.
The heat pressed down through the canopy. Abner's breathing had a faint wheeze on the exhale, like air being pushed through a thick cloth. I kept my eyes on the posts.
"Liberty was quite excited the other night," Abner observed. "She talked about a film. East of Eden."
"She and Grace watched it in the trailer. I made popcorn."
"Liberty said the story was faithful to the novel. I hold the novel in the highest esteem. Steinbeck understood the weight of inheritance. The sins we carry that are not our own." He unscrewed the thermos cap and poured himself more tea. "You've read it?"
"I haven't."
Abner looked at me the way he might look at a man who'd just confessed to never chopping firewood.
"You should remedy that. The Port Chasten library has a copy. I've seen it on the shelf. Or you can borrow mine."
"I'll just buy the ebook and read it on my phone."
The wheeze paused. Abner fixed me with his blue eyes. The look contained something between pity and amused outrage.
"You would read Steinbeck on a telephone?"
"It's the same words, isn't it?" I grinned.
"Words, yes... But it is not the same." He set the thermos cap down on his knee.
"A book has weight. It has texture. You hold it and your hands know what they're holding.
You turn a page and your fingers remember where you've been and how far you have left to go.
The paper has a smell. Age and ink and the faint ghost of every hand that held it before yours.
A book becomes an object in your life. It sits on your table.
It rides in your coat pocket. It falls open to the page you love most because the binding remembers.
A digital file on an electronic device is none of those things. "
"It's more convenient."
"Convenience is the bait they use."
"Who is they?" I asked, enjoying Abner's insights into things.
"Those corporations who monitor every title you buy.
How fast you read. When you read. What pages you linger on.
What you highlight, what you search, the notes you type.
All of it harvested. All of it analyzed.
All of it fed into a moneymaking machine that knows your mind better than you do and sells that knowledge to the highest bidder.
" He said this without heat, like a man reading aloud from a ledger. "I find that objectionable."
"You make a persuasive case."
The corner of his mouth moved beneath his beard. Not quite a smile, but close. Abner shifted the pistol at his hip to a more comfortable position, a gesture he used whenever he was amused by our banter.
"When did you last read a paper book?" he asked.
I thought about it. The last physical book I could remember was a Tom Clancy paperback Sybil had bought at an airport. That was at least twelve years ago. Maybe longer.
"It's been a while," I said.
"Then it will be a joy for you to rediscover. Like cold water after a long labor."
The coughing started before I could answer.
Not the dry bark from earlier, but that deeper and more worrying cough coming from a place lower in his chest. It bent him forward on the bucket, one hand braced on his knee, the other pressed flat against his sternum.
His shoulders shook. The sound was wet and ragged and it lasted a long time.
I sat still. Watched the posts. Waited.
When it subsided, Abner straightened slowly and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes were watery. He breathed in small, careful sips, as if testing what his lungs would accept.
"You know," I said after a while, "you're welcome to join me and Scout for movie nights. Grace comes over too. It's a good time. I always make a big bowl of buttered popcorn."
Abner shook his head slowly. "I am a man of the page, not the screen. And I would disturb your viewing with this cough."
"Nobody would mind the coughing."
He was quiet for a moment. The jay screamed again from deeper in the woods. A bead of condensation ran down the side of the thermos cup and fell into the dust.
"That is a comfort to hear," Abner said.
We went quiet. The silence between us was comfortable. The concrete around the posts was turning from dark gray to light as the water wicked out of it.
"The concrete will set fast in this heat," Abner said, standing. "Day after tomorrow, you can hang the chain. Let's set up those cameras."
We walked back to the truck. I dropped the tailgate and laid out the two cameras side by side.
The first was the expensive one with a cellular attachment.
A little antenna protruded from the top.
Motion-activated. Whenever something triggered the sensor, it would start recording and ping my phone with a photograph. Day or night.
"That's your alert system," Abner said. He tapped the antenna with one finger. "Someone enters your driveway at three in the morning, you know it before they reach the cabin."
The second camera was Abner's recommendation. Smaller, cheaper. A basic trail cam, battery-powered, night vision, no antenna. It stored video on an SD card.