12. Measure Twice
Measure Twice
The rain held on past the storm, grey day after grey day. One of those mornings Kain finished his breakfast and stepped out onto the porch, where the water came down off the eaves and splattered into the mud below.
A wagon wheel squeaked on the road, and he looked up to see Jeremiah coming back from town off his early dairy run.
"Morning," Jeremiah called over the rain.
"Morning." Kain nodded. Jeremiah had a thick oilskin on and still looked drenched to the bone. "Almost time for planting yet?"
"Just about." Jeremiah laughed. "We'll get one more good freeze inside the week, I'd put coin on it. I feel it in my bones. You be patient, and it'll pay you back. I'll tell you when it's time."
Kain waved as the wagon rolled on down the road. He couldn't have planted in the rain that day in any case, but the itch to get something into the ground sat in him all the same.
The ground wouldn't be rushed, and he knew better than to try, so he turned toward the barn instead.
"Let's get this started."
Ghost looked up as Kain went through the house gathering tools. He pulled his cloak tight around him and struck out into the rain, which soaked the wool through before he reached the barn.
He stepped in under the roof, shook off what he could, and hung the cloak on its hook to dry, and Roan put his head over the stall door.
"Morning, Roan." Kain reached into his pocket for the apple wedges he had cut and fed them over one at a time, and the gelding took them off his palm and crunched them down. "There you go. No core for you."
He led Roan out, mucked the stall, forked in fresh bedding, fed him, and topped off his water. Roan showed no interest in going out into the wet, and Kain didn't press him.
He settled the gelding back in the stall, then looked up at the gaping hole in the loft floor above.
"Time to see what I can get done."
He climbed up into the loft, where the hole gaped open in the floorboards at his feet. Rain drummed steady on the roof overhead, and the grey storm-light through the boards gave him just enough to work by.
He swung open the big hay door at the far end, and what light the clouded sun could spare drifted in, and he set to work.
He had been at the loft floor a good while by now, laying down a board or two whenever the work let him. With the rain keeping him out of the field, he meant to make real headway today.
He took out his rule and started working out the length of the next board.
A real carpenter could have eyed the gap, cut clean, and laid the whole floor in an afternoon. Kain was no real carpenter, and he wanted it right, so he measured the gap twice and got the length down to the fraction of an inch before he ever touched the saw.
The whisper of the saw ran steady under the rain, and the board came off the length he wanted. He carried it over and set it into the gap, and it fit.
A simple thing, and he was glad he had taken the time over it.
"All right. Let's get it nailed down."
He took up the can of nails and the hammer and lined the board up square. Only once he was sure the nail would drive true did he swing.
The hammering filled the barn and rang down from the rafters into the stalls below. A little sawdust sifted down through the gap into Roan's stall, and the gelding glanced up and sneezed once and went back to his hay.
Within a few strokes Kain had the board fast.
He stepped back, then lay down flat and sighted along the boards to check the new one. It sat true, no angle to it, flush with the rest.
Only when he was certain of that did he let himself move on.
"Good." He brushed off his hands. "Next one."
The rain kept on through the day, and Kain cut the next board and laid it beside the first. Partway through, Ghost slipped in out of the wet and lay down in the empty stall beside Roan.
The gelding looked the wolf over and went back to his hay, and that was the whole of it.
The hammering and the sawing didn't trouble the wolf. Ghost had been settling into the noises of the place, a little more at ease with each one.
Kain looked the two of them over once and bent back to the work.
His mind didn't wander. The work wouldn't let it, not with the rhythm of the thing running steady under his hands, measure and measure, cut, hammer, measure, check.
He hit trouble only the once, with a board he set down toward midday. He nailed one end fast, and when he came to the other end it sat a touch high, riding up off the joist where it should have lain flat.
He pressed it down, and it wouldn't go.
"Now what." He lay down and sighted along the board, and it ran straight, no warp in it. He moved to the nailed end and looked again, hunting for a high spot or a board out of true.
He found nothing wrong at that end either, the board itself clean and straight.
"Something between the two ends, then." He went back to the high end. His first thought was the board running a hair long and butting the edge of the gap, but that wasn't it, and he reached down and ran his fingers along the joist he meant to nail it to.
Under the board, his fingers caught a wood chip no thicker than a few sheets of paper, propping that end up off the joist. He had no idea how it had come to be there, but there it was.
He worked it free and flicked it away, and when he lay back down the board had come to rest flat and flush.
"There we go."
He came up, took the hammer and nails, and had the board fast in a few strokes.
He worked on through the afternoon, board after board after board, until the light began to go and his stomach turned over loud enough to pull him up onto his feet.
He had closed well over half the gap that was left, and the new floor lay seamless against the old. He set down the hammer and the nail can.
With the loft floor coming back, he would have somewhere dry to keep hay, and that mattered more now that there was a horse to feed through the winter. Room for the tools as well, and for the winter feed when it came time to lay it in.
The barn was becoming a barn again. He rolled the ache out of his shoulders and made his way down the ladder and out into the yard.
Time to knock off, get some supper into him, and think on what came next.
He stepped out expecting the downpour and found the yard gone dry. He stopped and looked up.
The clouds were breaking apart, and the sun sat low and orange over the trees, throwing its last warm light across him and the wet ground. The whole place smelled of rain and turned earth.
The last light lay gold across the dooryard and the soaked fields beyond it. The barn behind him stood past half-done.
He hung the wet cloak by the door and went inside to his supper.