7:40 in the Morning<\/p>\n
The first truss went up at 7:40 in the morning.<\/p>\n
I know the time because I looked at my watch. I wanted to remember it. Eleven men on ropes and pike poles, and Pete Hanson standing in the middle of the barnyard with his arm up like a conductor, calling out, \u201cEasy. Easy. Now walk her up.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the truss rose. Slow. A big triangle of yellow pine against the gray sky, swinging a little, then settling into place on the top plates with a soft thump you could feel in your feet.<\/p>\n
Somebody whistled. Somebody else whooped. Then the whole barnyard was clapping, seventy people in work boots and seed caps, clapping for a piece of wood.<\/p>\n
I stood in the wet grass with a roaster of scrambled eggs.<\/p>\n
Eighteen-quart Nesco roaster, plugged into an orange extension cord that ran all the way back to the machine shed. Four dozen eggs, a pound of shredded cheddar, a little milk. Another roaster beside it full of sausage. Two coffee urns on a sheet of plywood laid across sawhorses.<\/p>\n
I was supposed to be serving. I couldn\u2019t move. I just stood there with a serving spoon in my hand and watched that truss settle.<\/p>\n
Our barn had been flat for eleven weeks.<\/p>\n
My name is Lorrie Bauer. I\u2019m forty-six years old. I\u2019ve been married to Dwayne Bauer for twenty-two of those years, and I\u2019ve lived on this farm outside Cedar Bluff, Nebraska, for every one of them.<\/p>\n
I came here from Omaha. A town girl, my father-in-law called me, the first time Dwayne brought me home. I didn\u2019t know a heifer from a steer. I didn\u2019t know you don\u2019t wear white shoes to a hog sale. I learned.<\/p>\n
I learned most things on this place. I learned them in that barn.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019m getting ahead of myself.<\/p>\n
To tell you why seventy people showed up on a Saturday in July to put a roof back over our heads, I have to tell you about the Thursday it got taken off.<\/p>\n
And I have to tell you about Vernon.<\/p>\n
Chapter Two: The Thursday<\/p>\n
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Meet Chada, The Bear Who Survived War In Ukraine
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\nThe twister came on a Thursday in April. The eighteenth. A little after five in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
We\u2019d been watching the sky since lunch. It had that color it gets in spring. Green underneath, like a bruise. The air was warm and heavy and smelled like rain and wet dirt. The radio had been saying \u201cconditions favorable\u201d since noon.<\/p>\n
Dwayne was out in the barn with the calves. We\u2019d had fourteen that spring. Angus crosses, most of them less than three weeks old. He was bedding them down with fresh straw, because the weather was turning.<\/p>\n
I was in the kitchen. I had a meatloaf in the oven.<\/p>\n
The siren in Cedar Bluff went off at 5:06. You can hear it from our place on a still day, four miles away, faint and wavering.<\/p>\n
I went to the back door. I looked west.<\/p>\n
It was coming across the Ostrander quarter. A gray rope hanging down out of the clouds, swinging back and forth like a snake trying to make up its mind. It was maybe two miles off. Then it wasn\u2019t. Then it was a mile and a half and getting wider, and the sound was coming with it.<\/p>\n
People say it sounds like a train. That\u2019s not right. It sounds like everything at once. Like the whole sky is tearing.<\/p>\n
\u201cDwayne!\u201d I screamed. \u201cDwayne!\u201d<\/p>\n
He came out of the barn at a dead run. Caleb was right behind him. Our son was ten that spring, and he went everywhere his dad did. I didn\u2019t even know he was out there.<\/p>\n
We made it to the basement. Down the outside steps, through the old cellar door, into the corner under the stairs where we keep the lantern and the jugs of water and the weather radio. Dwayne pulled Caleb and me down and put his body over both of us.<\/p>\n
Then the house shook.<\/p>\n
It shook like a dog shaking water off. The windows upstairs blew in. I heard glass. I heard something huge hit the side of the house and keep going. My ears popped so hard I thought my head would split.<\/p>\n
And then it was gone.<\/p>\n
The whole thing took maybe forty seconds.<\/p>\n
When we came up, the house was standing.<\/p>\n
Most of the windows were gone. The porch roof was in the front yard. A tree limb the size of a car was lying across the hood of my Buick. Shingles everywhere, like somebody dumped a box of playing cards over the farm.<\/p>\n
But the house was standing.<\/p>\n
Then Dwayne turned around. And he made a sound I\u2019ll never forget.<\/p>\n
The barn was gone.<\/p>\n
Not damaged. Not leaning. Gone. Folded down like a hand closing. The whole big red gambrel roof had come down on top of itself, and the walls had gone out sideways under it, and now it was just a pile. A heap of red tin and broken beams and hay and mud, taller than me.<\/p>\n
The haymow. The calf pens. The workbench. Dwayne\u2019s grandfather\u2019s tools on the pegboard. The 1952 Farmall Super C that Dwayne was restoring in the corner, three winters\u2019 worth of work.<\/p>\n
All of it under the roof in the mud.<\/p>\n
And the calves.<\/p>\n
Dwayne ran to the pile. He started pulling at the tin with his bare hands. It was jagged. It cut his palms open. He didn\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cDwayne!\u201d I grabbed his arm. \u201cDwayne, stop. You can\u2019t. It\u2019s not safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re in there, Lorrie. They\u2019re in there.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pulled loose and went back at it. I stood there holding Caleb\u2019s hand. Caleb was crying. I don\u2019t think I was. I don\u2019t think I could.<\/p>\n
The neighbors came within twenty minutes. That\u2019s how it is out here.<\/p>\n
Marv Ochs, from a mile east, in his old Chevy. The Hanson boys with a skid loader. Ruthie and Gary Stahl with a chainsaw and a first aid kit. They cleared the tree off the road. They wrapped Dwayne\u2019s hands. And they started taking that barn apart, one sheet of tin at a time, until it got too dark to see.<\/p>\n
They got eleven of the calves out. Alive.<\/p>\n
Three didn\u2019t make it.<\/p>\n
Dwayne carried each of those three out himself and laid them in the bed of the pickup. Then he sat down on the tailgate in the dark, with his bandaged hands in his lap, and put his head down, and didn\u2019t move for a long time.<\/p>\n
Chapter Three: The Name on the Policy<\/p>\n
You need to understand how things are set up on this place. It matters for everything else.<\/p>\n
The farm is in Vernon\u2019s name. Most of it.<\/p>\n
Vernon Bauer is Dwayne\u2019s father. He\u2019s seventy-four. He was born on this land, in the front bedroom of the house his grandfather built in 1912, the house Dwayne and I live in now. When Vernon married Dwayne\u2019s mother, June, they built a newer house a half mile up the road, on the home quarter. Ranch style, brick. That\u2019s where Vernon lives now, alone, since June died three summers ago.<\/p>\n
When Dwayne and I got married, Vernon said we could have the old house and farm the ground. All of it. Four hundred and eighty acres of corn and beans, plus the cow-calf operation.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t give it to us. He rented it to us. Cash rent, at a family rate. We pay him every March and every November. We put up our own machinery, our own seed, our own fertilizer, our own labor. We fixed the house. We fixed the fences. We fixed everything that broke for twenty-two years.<\/p>\n
But the land is Vernon\u2019s. The house is Vernon\u2019s. The barn was Vernon\u2019s.<\/p>\n
And the insurance was in his name too.<\/p>\n
It was a farm policy through the Farm Bureau. One policy, covering everything. The house, the barn, the machine shed, the grain bins. Vernon was the named insured. Always had been. He\u2019d bought it in 1971 and never changed it.<\/p>\n
We paid our share of that premium every year. Dwayne wrote Vernon a check for it every January. Twenty-one hundred and forty dollars last year, for the buildings on our end of the place. I have every canceled check in a shoebox in the closet. I keep good records. I always have.<\/p>\n
But the policy didn\u2019t say Dwayne. It didn\u2019t say Lorrie. It said Vernon H. Bauer.<\/p>\n
The adjuster came out the following Tuesday. A young man from Lincoln named Brett, in a polo shirt and khakis, with an iPad and a laser measuring tape. He walked around the pile of our barn for two hours, taking pictures.<\/p>\n
\u201cTotal loss,\u201d he said. \u201cObviously.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow much?\u201d Dwayne asked.<\/p>\n
Brett tapped his iPad. \u201cThe policy has replacement cost coverage on the outbuildings. Sixty by eighty, gambrel roof, wood frame, haymow. Plus contents.\u201d He looked up. \u201cYour dad\u2019s going to be getting a check for about eighty-six thousand, I\u2019d estimate. Maybe a little more after we figure the contents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dwayne let out a breath I think he\u2019d been holding for five days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019ll about do it,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019ll about put her back.\u201d<\/p>\n
The check came three weeks later. On a Friday. Eighty-six thousand, four hundred dollars.<\/p>\n
It was made out to Vernon.<\/p>\n
Of course it was. His name was on the policy.<\/p>\n
He drove down to our place that afternoon in his white Ford F-250 and parked by the pile of red tin where the barn used to be. He got out and stood there with the envelope in his hand.<\/p>\n
Dwayne came out of the machine shed. He was wiping his hands on a rag. He\u2019d been working on the planter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat the check?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the check,\u201d Vernon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood, Dad.\u201d Dwayne smiled. The first real smile I\u2019d seen on him since the twister. \u201cThat\u2019ll about do the barn. I called Pete Hanson already. He says if we get the lumber ordered by June, he can\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, now,\u201d Vernon said.<\/p>\n
He said it slow. The way he says things when he\u2019s about to say no but wants you to think he\u2019s still deciding.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, now,\u201d he said again. \u201cThe policy\u2019s got my name on it, son.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dwayne stopped.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it does.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the money\u2019s mine,\u201d Vernon said. He folded the envelope and put it in the chest pocket of his chore coat. He buttoned the pocket. \u201cLegally. My name. My premiums. My barn.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDad, we paid half those premiums. For twenty years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou paid me rent,\u201d Vernon said. \u201cWhat I did with it was my business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he got back in his white Ford and drove home.<\/p>\n
Chapter Four: The Slab<\/p>\n
Three weeks later, a cement truck went past our place.<\/p>\n
I was out hanging laundry. It was the middle of May, warm and windy, the kind of day you can dry a whole load of sheets in an hour. I heard the truck coming down the gravel from the east. A big red and white Ready Mix truck from Cedar Bluff, with the drum turning.<\/p>\n
I watched it go by. I thought maybe somebody up the road was pouring a sidewalk.<\/p>\n
It turned in at Vernon\u2019s home place, a half mile north.<\/p>\n
I stood there with a clothespin in my mouth and a wet pillowcase in my hand.<\/p>\n
Then another cement truck went by. And another. Four of them, that morning.<\/p>\n
By noon, I could see it from our back porch, if I stood on the top step. A long flat gray rectangle behind Vernon\u2019s brick house. Where his garden used to be. Where June grew tomatoes for forty years.<\/p>\n
A slab. Forty by sixty.<\/p>\n
The steel came the week after. A flatbed semi from a building company in Grand Island. I watched them unload it with a crane. Red steel beams and white sheets of metal siding and big rolls of insulation.<\/p>\n
By the first week of June, it was standing. A brand-new pole shop, forty by sixty, with a fourteen-foot overhead door and a walk-in door and windows down both sides. Red trim. White siding. A cupola on top with a weathervane shaped like a tractor.<\/p>\n
Dwayne\u2019s cousin Rick told us the rest. Rick works at the co-op and hears everything.<\/p>\n
Concrete floor with in-floor heat. Two hundred amp electric service. A bathroom with a shower. A wood stove. A woodworking bench and a welder and a brand-new lift for working on trucks.<\/p>\n
\u201cMust have cost him eighty, ninety thousand,\u201d Rick said. \u201cEasy.\u201d<\/p>\n
He built himself a new shop.<\/p>\n
With the money that was meant to put our barn back up.<\/p>\n
That night, I lay in bed next to Dwayne in the dark. The bedroom window was still covered in plywood from the twister, because we hadn\u2019t been able to afford all the glass yet. It was so dark I couldn\u2019t see my hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cDwayne,\u201d I said. \u201cYou have to talk to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cDwayne. That was our barn. That was our money too. We paid those premiums. I have the checks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen go talk to him. Or call a lawyer. Or something.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was quiet so long I thought he\u2019d fallen asleep.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s my dad,\u201d he said, in the dark.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know he is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to court against my own dad over a barn, Lorrie.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t argue. I wanted to. I lay there with my fists clenched under the sheet and my heart pounding.<\/p>\n
But I knew he was right about one thing. The money was legally Vernon\u2019s. His name. His land. His premiums, on paper.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d even called a lawyer, the week before. Without telling Dwayne. A woman named Carol Ritter in Columbus who does farm law. I sat in my car in the co-op parking lot and told her everything.<\/p>\n
She was kind about it. But she didn\u2019t sugarcoat it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he\u2019s the named insured and the owner of the building, the proceeds are his,\u201d she said. \u201cYour rent agreement doesn\u2019t give you a claim to them unless it says so in writing. Does it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no written agreement,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s family. It\u2019s a handshake.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was quiet for a second.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I\u2019m sorry, Mrs. Bauer,\u201d she said. \u201cNo lawyer\u2019s pulling that money out of a poured slab. And even if there was a way,\u201d she paused, \u201cyou\u2019d be suing your husband\u2019s father. On a family farm. I\u2019ve seen what that does. You can\u2019t sue your father and still have a father.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Five: Hollow<\/p>\n
So I stood in our empty barnyard and felt hollowed out.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the only word I have for it. Like somebody had reached in and scooped out everything inside me and left the shell standing.<\/p>\n
Every morning I\u2019d go out to do chores and there\u2019d be nothing there. Just a big square of bare dirt where the barn used to be, and the concrete footings sticking up out of it, and a pile of salvaged lumber we\u2019d stacked by the machine shed.<\/p>\n
The calves were living in a temporary shelter Dwayne threw together out of cattle panels and a tarp. It flapped all night in the wind. You could hear it from the house.<\/p>\n
We\u2019d lost more than a building.<\/p>\n
The haymow had three hundred bales of last year\u2019s alfalfa in it when it went down. All of it soaked and ruined. We had to buy hay to get the cows through to pasture. Two hundred and ten dollars a ton, from a man in Kearney.<\/p>\n
Dwayne\u2019s grandfather\u2019s tools. A whole pegboard of them, some of them from the 1920s. We dug out maybe half. The rest were bent or broken or gone.<\/p>\n
The Farmall Super C. Three winters of Dwayne\u2019s evenings. Crushed under a beam.<\/p>\n
And three calves.<\/p>\n
We figured it up one night at the kitchen table. What it would cost to rebuild ourselves, without the insurance.<\/p>\n
Pete Hanson came over and helped us. Pete\u2019s a carpenter in Cedar Bluff, about sixty, who\u2019s built half the barns and pole sheds in this county. He sat at our table with a yellow legal pad and a calculator.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you hire it all out,\u201d he said, \u201cyou\u2019re looking at a hundred and ten, a hundred and twenty. Easy. Labor\u2019s half of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have that,\u201d Dwayne said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know you don\u2019t.\u201d Pete tapped the pad. \u201cBut if you just bought the materials? Lumber, trusses, steel roof, siding, hardware? And did the work yourselves?\u201d He wrote some numbers. \u201cForty-one thousand. Give or take.\u201d<\/p>\n
Forty-one thousand dollars.<\/p>\n
We didn\u2019t have that either. But we could borrow it. I went to Farm Credit in Columbus the next week and sat across from a loan officer named Dennis with thick glasses and a pocket protector. I brought my shoebox of records. Twenty-two years of them.<\/p>\n
Dennis looked through it all for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou keep very good books, Mrs. Bauer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a bookkeeper,\u201d I said. \u201cIn Omaha. Before I married a farmer.\u201d<\/p>\n
He approved a forty-one-thousand-dollar operating loan, secured against our cattle and our machinery. Seven-point-two percent. Ten years.<\/p>\n
Seven-point-two percent on money we shouldn\u2019t have had to borrow.<\/p>\n
But even with the materials, we couldn\u2019t do the labor. Not the two of us. A sixty-by-eighty barn with a gambrel roof takes a crew. Pete said it would take Dwayne alone two summers, working every evening and weekend. And that was if he didn\u2019t fall off the roof and break his neck.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll figure it out,\u201d Dwayne said.<\/p>\n
But I could see in his face he didn\u2019t think we would.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s one more thing I should tell you about those weeks.<\/p>\n
In the pile of salvaged lumber by the machine shed, there was one beam I wouldn\u2019t let Dwayne cut up or burn. An old oak post. Eight by eight, hand-hewn, with adze marks still on it. Twelve feet long.<\/p>\n
It was one of the original posts from the 1912 barn. Dwayne\u2019s great-grandfather cut it out of a tree on the creek bottom and squared it with an axe. When they re-roofed the barn in the fifties, they\u2019d kept the old posts.<\/p>\n
It came out of that pile almost perfect. Not even cracked.<\/p>\n
And about four feet up from the bottom, carved into the wood with a pocketknife, there were initials.<\/p>\n
V.H.B. 1959.<\/p>\n
Vernon Henry Bauer. Nine years old.<\/p>\n
Dwayne found it while we were digging. He stopped and ran his thumb over the letters.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad carved that,\u201d he said. \u201cHe told me about it once. He got whipped for it. Grandpa said a barn post wasn\u2019t a school desk.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at it for a long time.<\/p>\n
Then he went and got his cordless drill and a pry bar, and he carried that post out of the pile himself, and laid it on two sawhorses in the machine shed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat one goes back in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Chapter Six: The Feed Aisle<\/p>\n
In the second week of June, I went to the co-op in Cedar Bluff for mineral.<\/p>\n
Fifty-pound bags. The cows go through it fast in summer. I had my cart in the feed aisle at the back of the store and I was trying to lift a bag off the bottom shelf, and it was heavier than I remembered, and I was in a bad mood about everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere,\u201d somebody said behind me. \u201cLet me get that before you throw your back out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Old Marv Ochs.<\/p>\n
Marv is eighty-two. He\u2019s farmed the quarter east of us since 1965. He\u2019s six foot four and built like a corn crib, even now, with hands like shovels and a voice like a cement mixer. He was one of the first ones at our place the day of the twister. He was the one who wrapped Dwayne\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n
He picked up that fifty-pound bag of mineral like it was a loaf of bread and set it in my cart.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you, Marv.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow\u2019s Dwayne?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFine,\u201d I said. I always say fine.<\/p>\n
He looked at me for a long time with his faded blue eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen\u2019s Dwayne putting that barn back up?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t answer right away. I looked down at my cart.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know, Marv,\u201d I said finally. \u201cWe bought the materials. Pete figured them up. But it\u2019s just Dwayne and me. Pete says it\u2019ll take two summers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marv grunted. He leaned against the shelf of dog food.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo summers,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s a long time for calves to be under a tarp.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t ask about the insurance. He didn\u2019t ask about Vernon\u2019s new shop. He didn\u2019t have to. Everybody in Cedar Bluff knew. You can\u2019t pour a forty-by-sixty slab four miles from town without everybody knowing.<\/p>\n
But Marv didn\u2019t say a word about it. He just stood there by the dog food, scratching his chin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what. I got a free Saturday coming up and nothing to do but aggravate my wife. If Dwayne wants a hand, you tell him to call me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he winked and walked off toward the checkout with a bag of chicken scratch under his arm.<\/p>\n
I stood there in the feed aisle with my cart.<\/p>\n
And the whole thing turned over in my head. All at once. Like a coin flipping.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t fight Vernon. Dwayne wouldn\u2019t let me, and the law wouldn\u2019t let me, and I didn\u2019t have the heart for it anyway. I couldn\u2019t make him give back the money. I couldn\u2019t make him tear down his shop.<\/p>\n
But I had something Vernon didn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n
I had a road full of people who knew what a barn was.<\/p>\n
Chapter Seven: Seventy<\/p>\n
I started calling that night.<\/p>\n
I sat at the kitchen table after supper with the church directory and the 4-H phone list and a legal pad. Dwayne was out checking cows. Caleb was watching TV.<\/p>\n
I called Marv first. To tell him I\u2019d taken him up on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know yet. A Saturday. Soon as we get the trusses delivered.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be there,\u201d he said. \u201cWho else you got?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody yet. You\u2019re the first.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d Marv said. \u201cGet busy, girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I got busy.<\/p>\n
I called Pete Hanson next. I asked him if he\u2019d be willing to run a crew. I told him I could pay him something.<\/p>\n
\u201cLorrie,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve built barns in this county for thirty-eight years. You know how many old-style barn raisings I\u2019ve been to? Where the whole road comes out and puts it up in a day?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo,\u201d he said. \u201cOne in 1979 and one in 1986. And I was a kid at both of them.\u201d He paused. \u201cI\u2019ll run your crew. For free. And I\u2019ll bring my boys.\u201d<\/p>\n
I called the Hanson brothers, Pete\u2019s nephews, who farm south of us. I called Gary and Ruthie Stahl. I called the Lindqvists, the Ostranders, the Meyers, the Kaczmareks. I called the Lutheran pastor. I called the Catholic priest, because the Kaczmareks were Catholic and I figured he might want to know.<\/p>\n
I called the fire department, because three of them were farmers and they had a bucket truck. I called the shop teacher at the high school, who had a whole class of boys who needed a summer project. I called the 4-H leader.<\/p>\n
I never said one word against my father-in-law.<\/p>\n
I want that understood. I never said Vernon. I never said insurance. I never said shop.<\/p>\n
I just said we were putting the barn up ourselves. Old style. In a day. And we could use some hands.<\/p>\n
By the end of the first night, I had twenty-three names on my legal pad.<\/p>\n
Dwayne came in from checking cows around ten. He saw me at the table with the phone and the legal pad and the church directory.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho are you calling?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked over my shoulder at the list. His face changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cLorrie,\u201d he said slowly. \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re putting the barn up,\u201d I said. \u201cOn a Saturday. In July. Old style.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stared at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou didn\u2019t tell them about Dad,\u201d he said. \u201cDid you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot one word.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stood there for a long time. Then he pulled out a chair and sat down next to me. He picked up the church directory and opened it to the W\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou forgot the Weidners,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
By Thursday I had lost count past fifty.<\/p>\n
People called people. That\u2019s how it works out here. Gary Stahl called his brother-in-law in Fullerton. Ruthie called her quilting group. The shop teacher brought eleven boys. The Lutheran ladies said they\u2019d bring salads. The Catholic men\u2019s club said they\u2019d bring a pig.<\/p>\n
A man I\u2019d never even met called me on Wednesday night. He said he was from Belgrade, thirty miles away.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard about your barn,\u201d he said. \u201cMy granddad\u2019s barn went down in the \u201875 tornado and the whole county put it back up. I was six. I carried nails.\u201d He cleared his throat. \u201cI\u2019d like to come carry some more, if that\u2019s all right.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trusses came on a flatbed on the Tuesday before. Thirty of them. Big triangles of yellow pine, engineered in Grand Island, stacked like giant ribs on the grass by the old footings.<\/p>\n
The steel came on Wednesday. Red, to match the old barn. Dwayne wanted red.<\/p>\n
The lumber came on Thursday. Posts, girts, purlins, rafters. Pete stood in the barnyard with his clipboard and checked off every piece.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re ready,\u201d he said Thursday night. \u201cIf the weather holds, she goes up Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Eight: Friday<\/p>\n
So I baked all Friday.<\/p>\n
Eleven pans of bars. That\u2019s the number. I counted. Because you don\u2019t ask seventy people to lift your barn and feed them crackers.<\/p>\n
Scotcheroos. Lemon bars. Seven-layer bars. Special K bars. Monster cookie bars. Two pans of Rice Krispie treats for the kids. A pan of rhubarb dream bars from my mother-in-law June\u2019s recipe, which she taught me the first summer I was married, when I couldn\u2019t even make Jell-O.<\/p>\n
I started at five in the morning. I didn\u2019t stop until eleven at night. Every surface in my kitchen was covered with nine-by-thirteen pans. The counters. The table. The top of the deep freeze in the back porch.<\/p>\n
Ruthie Stahl came over at noon to help. Then Darlene Ostrander. Then Pete Hanson\u2019s wife, Joyce, with three dozen eggs and a crock pot of sloppy joe meat.<\/p>\n
We worked in my kitchen all afternoon with the windows open and the radio on. Nobody talked much about why we were doing it. Nobody had to.<\/p>\n
Around four o\u2019clock, Darlene was cutting lemon bars at the counter, and she said, without looking up, \u201cYou know Vernon\u2019s shop has in-floor heat?\u201d<\/p>\n
The kitchen went quiet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCost him eleven thousand just for the boiler. Rick told my husband.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t say anything. I kept stirring the Scotcheroo topping.<\/p>\n
Darlene looked at me. Then she nodded, once, and went back to cutting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d she said. \u201cOur barn\u2019s going to have something better.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d Ruthie asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cUs,\u201d Darlene said.<\/p>\n
That night I sat on the back porch steps with Dwayne. It was hot and still. The fireflies were coming up out of the grass in the pasture. Caleb was asleep upstairs.<\/p>\n
Across the barnyard, I could see the trusses in the moonlight. Stacked and waiting.<\/p>\n
\u201cLorrie,\u201d Dwayne said. \u201cWhat if nobody comes?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll come.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if it rains?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen they\u2019ll come Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was quiet for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if Dad hears about it?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I looked at him in the dark.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s already heard,\u201d I said. \u201cRick works at the co-op. Everybody in Cedar Bluff knows.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd nothing,\u201d I said. \u201cHe hasn\u2019t called. He hasn\u2019t come by.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dwayne looked north. Toward the half mile of dark fields between us and his father\u2019s house. Toward the new shop, which you could see from our porch at night, because Vernon had put a yard light on a pole beside it.<\/p>\n
The light was on. A little white star on the horizon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want this to be about him,\u201d Dwayne said quietly. \u201cI don\u2019t want it to be a fight. I just want a barn.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a fight,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s a barn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Nine: The Raising<\/p>\n
They started coming at 6:45 in the gray light.<\/p>\n
I was standing at the kitchen window with my first cup of coffee. It was barely light. Mist lying in the low spots in the pasture. A meadowlark singing on the fence post.<\/p>\n
Then I saw headlights. Down the gravel from the east. One truck.<\/p>\n
Then another one behind it. Then another.<\/p>\n
Then a line of them. All the way back to the corner. Pickups and SUVs and a church van and a flatbed with a skid loader on it and old Marv\u2019s Chevy. Headlights coming down the gravel road in the fog like a parade.<\/p>\n
I set my coffee down. My hands were shaking.<\/p>\n
By seven o\u2019clock, the barnyard was full.<\/p>\n
People everywhere. Men in work boots and seed caps and tool belts. Teenage boys from the shop class, yawning. Women in jeans carrying casserole dishes and lawn chairs. Kids running around the machine shed. Three dogs.<\/p>\n
Pete Hanson stood on the back of a flatbed trailer with a bullhorn.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll right, people,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to raise a barn today. Old style. I want the young bucks on ropes. I want anybody with experience on the frame. I want the ladies to keep us fed and keep us from falling off. And nobody, I mean nobody, goes up on a truss without a harness. Understood?\u201d<\/p>\n
Seventy people said \u201cYes, sir,\u201d all at once.<\/p>\n
The posts went in first.<\/p>\n
Twenty-eight of them, set in the old concrete footings, bolted down with steel brackets. Pete had a crew of six men walking them up one at a time with ropes and braces.<\/p>\n
The last post was the old oak one. Dwayne\u2019s great-grandfather\u2019s post, with the adze marks and the carving.<\/p>\n
Dwayne carried it himself. Him and Marv and two of the Hanson boys. They set it at the northeast corner, by the big door. Where it had stood for a hundred and twelve years.<\/p>\n
Dwayne put his hand on it for a second. Then he stepped back.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll right,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s build a barn.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first truss went up at 7:40.<\/p>\n
I told you about that already. I told you how I stood in the wet grass with my roaster of eggs and couldn\u2019t move. How the whole barnyard clapped.<\/p>\n
Then the second one went up. Then the third. Pete calling out from the middle, \u201cWalk her up. Easy. Hold her there.\u201d The young guys on the ropes. The old guys on the ladders, nailing. The shop class boys handing up boards.<\/p>\n
By nine o\u2019clock, the whole frame stood against the sky.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve never seen anything like it if you\u2019ve never seen a barn raising. The bones of a building, standing up out of nothing. All the posts and the girts and the trusses, yellow wood against a blue sky, and people crawling all over it like ants on a sugar cube.<\/p>\n
And the sound. Hammers going everywhere, all at once, a hundred different rhythms. Saws whining. Somebody\u2019s radio playing country music. Pete\u2019s bullhorn. Kids shrieking.<\/p>\n
I ran food the whole morning. Eggs and sausage and coffee. Then bars. Then more coffee. Then lemonade, because the sun came out and it got hot.<\/p>\n
And my husband laughed up on that frame.<\/p>\n
I heard it from the food table. I looked up and he was straddling a truss, twenty feet up, in his harness, with a hammer in his hand. Marv was on the truss across from him. Marv had said something, I don\u2019t know what. And Dwayne threw his head back and laughed.<\/p>\n
A big, loud, honest laugh. I could hear it over all the hammers.<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t seen Dwayne laugh since April.<\/p>\n
I had to set down the coffee pot and turn around for a minute. Ruthie Stahl put her hand on my back and didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
The steel went on the roof by eleven. Red. Sheet after sheet, handed up and screwed down. You could see the color coming across the roof like a sunrise.<\/p>\n
Then, a little before noon, I heard the white Ford.<\/p>\n
Chapter Ten: Three Passes<\/p>\n
Vernon\u2019s truck. I know the sound of it.<\/p>\n
A 2016 F-250 with a diesel engine and a loose heat shield that rattles at low speeds. I\u2019d heard it come down our road a thousand times in twenty-two years.<\/p>\n
I was standing at the food table cutting more lemon bars. I looked up.<\/p>\n
The white Ford was coming from the north. From his place. Down the gravel at a walk. Maybe five miles an hour. The driver\u2019s window was down.<\/p>\n
He drove past our driveway. Slow. His head turned toward the barnyard. Looking.<\/p>\n
I saw what he saw.<\/p>\n
Seventy of his neighbors. Seventy people he\u2019d known his whole life. Marv Ochs, who he went to grade school with. Pete Hanson, who built his house. The Lutheran pastor. The Kaczmareks. The Stahls. Shop class boys whose grandfathers he\u2019d hauled cattle with.<\/p>\n
All of them raising a barn he had the money to raise.<\/p>\n
On a farm with his name on it.<\/p>\n
Nobody stopped working. Nobody waved. Nobody said anything.<\/p>\n
But everybody saw him. I watched it go across that barnyard like a wind across a wheat field. People\u2019s heads turning, just a little, and then turning back to their work.<\/p>\n
Up on the frame, Dwayne saw him.<\/p>\n
I watched my husband freeze, with his hammer raised. For one second. Then I watched him make himself bring it down. Bang. And again. Bang. He made himself keep working. He didn\u2019t look at the road again.<\/p>\n
The white Ford went on past. All the way to the corner.<\/p>\n
Then it turned around in the Ostranders\u2019 field approach and came back by. Slower this time. Maybe three miles an hour.<\/p>\n
Vernon was looking right at the frame. At the red roof going on. At the old oak post in the northeast corner.<\/p>\n
Then he went on past, back north, toward home.<\/p>\n
I let out a breath.<\/p>\n
I thought that was all we would get. Two slow passes. That was more than I\u2019d expected. Vernon Bauer is not a man who comes around.<\/p>\n
They broke for dinner at half past twelve.<\/p>\n
Out here, dinner is the noon meal. Supper is at night. That\u2019s something else I learned when I moved from Omaha.<\/p>\n
Pete blew a whistle. Everybody climbed down off the frame. They came across the barnyard sweating and sunburned and laughing, and the women had the tables all set up under the big cottonwood tree by the house. Sloppy joes and the Catholic men\u2019s pig. Potato salad and baked beans and three kinds of Jell-O. Eleven pans of bars.<\/p>\n
Seventy people sat down at plywood tables on sawhorses. Pastor Lindqvist said grace. Everybody started eating.<\/p>\n
And I heard the white Ford come down the road a third time.<\/p>\n
This time it didn\u2019t go past.<\/p>\n
It came down from the north at a walk, the way it had before. The heat shield rattling.<\/p>\n
And it came even with the driveway.<\/p>\n
And the brake lights came on.<\/p>\n
Seventy people stopped eating. Seventy forks in midair.<\/p>\n
The engine shut off. That big diesel. The silence after it was enormous.<\/p>\n
Vernon opened his door.<\/p>\n
He stood there in the open door with his hand on it. Seventy-four years old. In his Sunday-at-home clothes. Faded jeans and a plaid snap shirt and his good seed cap, the one from the elevator in Cedar Bluff that he only wears for town.<\/p>\n
He stood there for a long time. Looking at all of us under the cottonwood tree.<\/p>\n
Nobody said a word.<\/p>\n
Then he shut the truck door.<\/p>\n
And he walked up the drive.<\/p>\n
Past the cars and pickups parked along the fence. Past the cottonwood tree and the plywood tables and seventy of his neighbors with their forks in the air. Past Marv. Past Pete. Past me.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t look at any of us.<\/p>\n
He walked straight across the barnyard to the frame. To the northeast corner. To the old oak post with the adze marks.<\/p>\n
And he put his old hand flat on it.<\/p>\n
Chapter Eleven: V.H.B.<\/p>\n
He stood there with his hand on that post for a long time.<\/p>\n
His back was to us. I couldn\u2019t see his face. All I could see was his shoulders in his plaid shirt, and his big old hand, spread out flat against the oak, right about four feet up from the ground.<\/p>\n
Right where the carving was.<\/p>\n
Dwayne got up from the table. Slowly. He set down his sloppy joe.<\/p>\n
I watched him walk across the barnyard to his father. He walked like a man walking up to a horse he isn\u2019t sure about. Careful. Quiet.<\/p>\n
He stopped a few feet behind Vernon.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Vernon didn\u2019t turn around.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou saved it,\u201d Vernon said. His voice was rough. \u201cThe post. You saved it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt came out of the pile almost perfect,\u201d Dwayne said. \u201cNot even cracked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vernon moved his hand. His thumb found the carving. V.H.B. 1959. He traced the letters, one by one.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad whipped me for this,\u201d he said. \u201cWith his belt. In the haymow. Said a barn post wasn\u2019t a school desk.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know. You told me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was nine,\u201d Vernon said. \u201cI wanted something on this place to have my name on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was quiet for a long time.<\/p>\n
Then he turned around.<\/p>\n
His face was wet. I\u2019d never seen Vernon Bauer cry. Not at his own wife\u2019s funeral. Not when his dog got hit on the road. Not ever.<\/p>\n
He looked at his son. Then past his son. At the seventy people sitting under the cottonwood tree, holding their forks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI built a shop,\u201d he said. Loud enough for all of us to hear.<\/p>\n
Nobody said anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the insurance money,\u201d Vernon said. \u201cFor this barn. I built myself a shop. With in-floor heat. And a bathroom. And a lift.\u201d<\/p>\n
His voice cracked.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I sat in it this morning,\u201d he said. \u201cAll by myself. In my nice new shop. With the in-floor heat on. In July.\u201d He laughed, a terrible sound. \u201cAnd I could hear you all from up there. Hammers going. Half a mile away. I could hear you all the way up to my place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dwayne didn\u2019t say anything. He didn\u2019t move.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter June died,\u201d Vernon said, \u201cI didn\u2019t know what to do with myself. Fifty-one years I got up every morning and she was there. And then she wasn\u2019t. And you were running the place, son. You and Lorrie. You didn\u2019t need me for anything. I\u2019d drive down here and you\u2019d already fixed whatever I came to fix.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at the post again.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when that check came, I thought, I\u2019m going to have something that\u2019s mine. Something that\u2019s got my name on it. Someplace to go in the morning.\u201d He shook his head. \u201cI told myself it was my money. My name on the policy. I told myself it was fair.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDad\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t fair,\u201d Vernon said. \u201cYou paid half those premiums for twenty years. I knew it. I cashed every one of your checks.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked out at the crowd under the cottonwood tree.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeventy people,\u201d he said. \u201cSeventy people came for my boy\u2019s barn. In one week. I bet nobody even had to ask twice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nobody answered. Marv set his fork down on his paper plate.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody\u2019s ever going to come build anything for me,\u201d Vernon said quietly. \u201cNot like this. I know that. I earned that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked back at Dwayne.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry, son,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dwayne stood there for a long moment.<\/p>\n
Then he reached out and put his hand on the post too. Right next to his father\u2019s. Their hands flat on the oak, side by side. Same big knuckles. Same cracked skin. Same thumb, almost touching the carving.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a hammer in the machine shed,\u201d Dwayne said. \u201cIf you want to help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vernon looked at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re putting the siding on after dinner,\u201d Dwayne said. \u201cPete could use somebody who knows how to run a straight line.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vernon\u2019s chin was shaking. He nodded. He couldn\u2019t talk.<\/p>\n
Then Marv Ochs stood up from the table under the cottonwood tree. Six foot four, eighty-two years old, with sloppy joe on his chin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, come on, Vernon,\u201d Marv said. \u201cGet yourself a plate first. Lorrie made eleven pans of bars and we ain\u2019t even made a dent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Twelve: The Afternoon<\/p>\n
Vernon ate dinner under the cottonwood tree with seventy of his neighbors.<\/p>\n
Nobody said anything about the shop. Nobody said anything about the insurance. Pastor Lindqvist passed him the potato salad. Ruthie Stahl gave him the biggest piece of the Catholic men\u2019s pig. Somebody\u2019s grandson asked him if he really went to school with Marv, and if Marv was always that loud.<\/p>\n
\u201cLouder,\u201d Vernon said. \u201cHe got thrown out of the Christmas program in 1956 for singing \u2018Jingle Bells\u2019 in the middle of \u2018Silent Night.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The whole table roared.<\/p>\n
I brought him a plate of bars. One of each kind. He looked at the rhubarb dream bar for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s June\u2019s recipe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe taught it to me. The first summer.\u201d<\/p>\n
He picked it up. He took a bite. He chewed it slowly, with his eyes closed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou make it better than she did,\u201d he said. \u201cDon\u2019t tell anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked up at me. Really looked, for maybe the first time in twenty-two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI called you the town girl,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen Dwayne first brought you home.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not a town girl,\u201d he said. \u201cYou haven\u2019t been for a long time. You\u2019re the one who called everybody, aren\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n
He nodded slowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d never have thought of it,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d have just let it sit there. Two summers. Calves under a tarp.\u201d He set down the bar. \u201cJune would have thought of it. She\u2019d have done exactly what you did.\u201d<\/p>\n
He worked all afternoon.<\/p>\n
He worked harder than the shop class boys. He ran a chalk line down the side of the barn and showed them how to keep the siding straight. He climbed a ladder, at seventy-four, with Dwayne holding the bottom, and screwed down a sheet of red steel on the gable end. Pete Hanson made him wear a harness. Vernon grumbled about it the whole time.<\/p>\n
Around three o\u2019clock, I saw him and Dwayne standing together by the big door. Measuring something. Arguing about it. Dwayne laughing. Vernon shaking his head.<\/p>\n
The way they used to, before June died.<\/p>\n
By six o\u2019clock that evening, the barn was done.<\/p>\n
Not finished. There was still work to do inside. Calf pens and the haymow floor and the electric. But the shell was done. Posts and trusses and red steel roof and red steel siding and a big sliding door on the north end and the cupola on top.<\/p>\n
The cupola was Vernon\u2019s idea. Around four o\u2019clock, he got in his white Ford and drove up to his shop and came back with it in the bed of the truck. A wooden cupola, painted white, with a copper roof.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was going to put this on the shop,\u201d he said. \u201cNever got around to it. Seems like it belongs here more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pete\u2019s crew raised it up with ropes and bolted it on. When it was up, Vernon stood in the barnyard with his hands on his hips and looked at it for a long time.<\/p>\n
Then he went back to the old oak post in the northeast corner.<\/p>\n
He took out his pocketknife. An old Case knife with a yellow handle. He opened it.<\/p>\n
He looked at Dwayne. Dwayne looked back at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo ahead,\u201d Dwayne said.<\/p>\n
Vernon knelt down in the dirt. His knees cracked. Right under his own initials, below V.H.B. 1959, he carved something new.<\/p>\n
D.V.B.<\/p>\n
Then he handed the knife to Dwayne.<\/p>\n
Dwayne knelt down beside him. He carved under that.<\/p>\n
L.A.B.<\/p>\n
My initials. Lorrie Ann Bauer.<\/p>\n
Then Dwayne waved Caleb over. Our son, ten years old, sunburned, covered in sawdust. Dwayne held his hand on the knife while Caleb carved, carefully, one letter at a time.<\/p>\n
C.D.B. 2025.<\/p>\n
The neighbors left at dusk. One truck at a time, down the gravel road with their headlights on. Just like they\u2019d come.<\/p>\n
Every single person stopped and shook Dwayne\u2019s hand on the way out. Most of them shook Vernon\u2019s too.<\/p>\n
Marv was the last to leave. He came up to me at the food table, where I was scraping the last of the bars into a Tupperware.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood barn,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you, Marv. For everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked over at Vernon, standing by the barn with Dwayne, both of them looking up at the cupola.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never said one word against him,\u201d Marv said. \u201cAll week. On the phone. To anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI noticed that,\u201d Marv said. \u201cEverybody noticed that.\u201d He put his big hand on my shoulder. \u201cThat\u2019s why they came, Lorrie. Not because of what he did. Because of what you didn\u2019t say.\u201d<\/p>\n
In September, Vernon went to see Carol Ritter in Columbus. The farm lawyer. The same one who told me in May that no lawyer was pulling money out of a poured slab.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t tell us he was going. We found out when she called and asked us to come in.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d had her draw up a deed. The old home place. The house we\u2019d lived in for twenty-two years, the barn, the machine shed, the grain bins, and the hundred and sixty acres around them.<\/p>\n
To Dwayne and Lorrie Bauer. As joint tenants.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a gift,\u201d Carol told us across her desk. \u201cHe wants it done now, not when he dies. He\u2019ll file a gift tax return with the IRS, because it\u2019s over the annual exclusion. But it comes out of his lifetime exemption. There\u2019s no tax due.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dwayne stared at the deed. He couldn\u2019t speak.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something else,\u201d Carol said. She slid over another paper. \u201cHe had the Farm Bureau change the insurance. Your buildings are on a separate policy now. You\u2019re the named insureds.\u201d She looked at me over her glasses. \u201cBoth of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vernon was sitting in the waiting room when we came out. In his good seed cap. With his white Ford parked out front.<\/p>\n
Dwayne stopped in front of him. He didn\u2019t say anything. He just held up the deed.<\/p>\n
\u201cShould\u2019ve done it twenty years ago,\u201d Vernon said. \u201cWhen you got married. I was afraid if I let go of it, I wouldn\u2019t have anything left.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDad\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve still got the home quarter. And my house.\u201d He almost smiled. \u201cAnd a real nice shop with in-floor heat. You ought to come up sometime. It\u2019s a good place to work on a tractor.\u201d<\/p>\n
That winter, Dwayne and Vernon rebuilt the Farmall Super C. The one that got crushed in the barn.<\/p>\n
They did it in Vernon\u2019s shop. Every night after supper. Dwayne drove up the road at six-thirty and came home at ten, smelling like grease and coffee. The in-floor heat was on. Vernon had a radio going and a pot of coffee on a hot plate and a stool by the workbench that he said was Caleb\u2019s, for whenever he wanted to come.<\/p>\n
Caleb went every Saturday.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s April again now. A year since the twister.<\/p>\n
The barn\u2019s done. All of it. Calf pens and haymow and electric. We had fourteen calves again this spring. All of them under a real roof, bedded down in fresh straw. Not a tarp in sight.<\/p>\n
The Farmall Super C sits in the corner where it used to sit. Restored. Red paint so fresh it shines. Vernon drove it down the road from his shop himself, at five miles an hour, with Caleb sitting on the fender.<\/p>\n
Last Thursday was the anniversary. The eighteenth.<\/p>\n
I went out to the barn at five o\u2019clock, about the time the siren went off a year ago. The sky was clear. Blue. No green underneath.<\/p>\n
The barn door was open. Inside, it smelled like hay and new wood and calves. Fourteen of them, lying in the straw, chewing.<\/p>\n
I went to the northeast corner. To the old oak post.<\/p>\n
I put my hand on it. Flat. The way Vernon did.<\/p>\n
Under my palm, I could feel the carvings. Five lines of them now. A great-grandfather\u2019s adze marks. A nine-year-old boy\u2019s initials from 1959. A son\u2019s. A wife\u2019s. A grandson\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Then I heard it.<\/p>\n
Coming down the gravel from the north. A loose heat shield, rattling at low speed.<\/p>\n
I went to the barn door. The white Ford was coming down the road at a walk. Window down.<\/p>\n
It came even with our driveway. And the brake lights came on. And it turned in.<\/p>\n
Vernon parked by the machine shed. He got out. He had a pan in his hands, covered in tinfoil.<\/p>\n
\u201cRhubarb\u2019s up,\u201d he said. \u201cThought I\u2019d try June\u2019s bars. They didn\u2019t come out right.\u201d He held out the pan. \u201cThought maybe you could tell me what I did wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
I took the pan. I lifted the foil. They were burned on one edge and soggy in the middle.<\/p>\n
\u201cToo much rhubarb,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd your oven runs hot.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded seriously, like I\u2019d told him the price of corn.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome on in,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ll show you.\u201d<\/p>\n
We walked up to the house together. Him and me. The town girl and the old man. Past the barn with its red roof and its white cupola and the big north door standing open to the April evening.<\/p>\n
At the back porch steps, he stopped. He turned around and looked at it.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood barn,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood barn,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He went up the steps ahead of me and held the door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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