BART SHOWED UP, LOOKING chastened. Du Pré drove him home from the airstrip in Cooper, and Bart stared out the window. Once, Du Pré looked over, to see him wiping his eyes.
Du Pré was a good friend; he kept his mouth shut and waited.
“She didn’t tell me to go,” he said. “I suddenly realized I was acting like Gianni. So I told her about that. She just smiled at me and said she was a simple girl, really. So I took back most of the stuff. Said I’d go home for a while and think, I hadn’t had a lot of practice in being human.”
Du Pré laughed. After a while, Bart did, too.
“She has a week of vacation the second week of October and she’s going to come out here. At least I can send a plane for her.”
“Yeah,” said Du Pré. “Anytime you can avoid the Denver airport is better than a time you can’t.”
“I love her.”
This was not news to Du Pré. Under the embarrassment, Bart was very happy. He would go on being very happy till Madelaine lit into him ever so sweetly. But Madelaine was very smart about people. She’d fry Bart good but not burn him.
He is trying very hard, Du Pré thought. I am proud of my friend here.
Bart was building a modest log home with the help of Booger Tom and such ranch hands as were between tasks. The ranch had been running as a tax write-off for years; there were more hands than the place needed, but Bart refused to fire or lay anyone off. He had said time would shrink the crew.
But if a cowboy broke down within a hundred miles, they knew they could come here and work up a stake to go on.
Bart was well thought of among the cowboys.
“I will be glad when I can get that trailer out of here,” said Bart.
Most of the logs were stacked for the house’s sides. Then the rafters and rooftree had to be set and the place sealed off before the winter. Bart’s big dragline had been pressed into service to lift the logs, the bucket replaced with a ball, hook, and choker chain.
Booger Tom was sitting on the log pile, whittling and spitting tobacco. The old goat was out of another time, still wore the checked pants and custom high-topped boots and gigantic pure silk scarf—so dirty, it was hard to discern the pattern in it, true, but pure silk nonetheless.
“Shit,” said Bart, “I thought it’d all be done by now.”
“We wuz all too ignorant,” said Booger Tom. “We need a leader.”
Bart grinned and so did Booger Tom.
“The hands is all off working,” said Booger Tom, “but I expect a couple could come help tomorrow.”
“She is lookin’ good,” said Du Pré. He suddenly thought of the money of Bart’s he had. He fumbled for his wallet.
“Bart,” he said, “that lawyer, Foote there, he give me all this cash—I don’t know what for.”
Bart looked at the thick green wad.
“Oh, that,” he said finally, as though it took him a few moments to think up what it was.
“Yeah, this,” said Du Pré. He got annoyed when Bart did this, and then annoyed with himself for getting petty with Bart when the big man was just generously trying to help.
“I need some help here,” Bart said, groping. “You know I got to get this closed off before winter. So say thirty dollars an hour?”
Du Pré started to say that was more than double the going price for a tradesman around here, but he caught himself and nodded.
“I will go get my tools,” said Du Pré. “Or are you tired, maybe want to start in the morning?”
“Might snow tonight,” said Bart, looking at a pure blue sky.
Du Pré nodded and drove home. He dug out his belt and hammers and some huge chisels Catfoot had made out of old lumber-mill band-saw blades—called slicks—and his big chain saw, a line level, and some big pencils.
Bart probably had three of everything they needed, anyway.
They worked till very late, setting logs. Tomorrow they could put the last course up and peg it in, then begin to set the end rafters and the rooftree. ,
“You know, Bart,” said Du Pré, “with that big-ass dragline we could just build it down here and lift the whole thing up.”
Booger Tom snorted. He’d never seen it done that way, so it ought not to. Booger Tom knew what he knew, and what he didn’t know, he’d rather not, like most old cowboys.
“Thanks,” said Bart. “That’s the way to do it. Of course. We’d better measure the damn thing ten times before we start, though. If we lift it up there and it don’t fit…think of the shame.”
Du Pré was whipped when he got home.
This middle age, he thought. Catfoot never let it get to him. If I had to be a voyageur, I’d die. Paddle all the time, then carry everything on the portages, running from the snows, or running from the spring melt.
Life, she was very hard then.
Madelaine called. It was Friday night and she wanted to dance a little to the jukebox at the Toussaint bar.
Du Pré said sure. He felt like falling into bed.
He awoke next morning with a small hangover, a warm place in the bed where Madelaine had just been. He could hear her feeding her brood. They got up early even on a Saturday.
Bart would be working, for sure.
Du Pré pulled on his clothes and boots.
“You going to work for that Bart,” said Madelaine, not turning from what she was making on the stove, “so I come out maybe lunchtime and I give him a good bite on the ass, yes?”
Du Pré grunted noncommittally. Best not get in the way of fate, especially Bart’s.
He ate some bacon and eggs, filled a big jug with water, and went off. He sat in the car, letting the engine warm up, rolled a cigarette, and smoked. There was thick frost on the glass. The heater was good. When he finished the cigarette, he switched on the wipers, and the frost slid off. He got out and scraped the back window.
He drove out to Bart’s, parked and fished his toolset out of the big locking gang box.
Bart had rolled the last course of logs around and formed a rectangle with them. Then he and Du Pré took measurements several times and called them down to Booger Tom. Sides and then diagonals to make sure the thing was square.
They pinned the logs together with big steel bolts and lengths of pipe. After the thing was set, they would heat the green-ash pegs and drive them on in; the dried ash would take on water and swell and hold tight.
Madelaine showed up a little after lunch with a hot pan of rich lamb stew, a big jug of iced tea, and two loaves of the wonderful bread she made every Saturday morning. Good butter from the neighbor’s cows.
“Mmmm,” said Bart, savoring a mouthful of the stew. “How many bushels of garlic does this have in it?”
“Just a half,” said Madelaine. “You work my man too hard.”
“Huh?” said Bart.
“Yah,” said Madelaine. “You leave him in D.C. He has no money, has to walk the whole way back to the hotel.”
“Oh, god,” said Bart. “Just shoot me.”
“Eat more stew,” said Madelaine, “and shut up.”
On the way home, Du Pré saw old Benetsee walking down the road toward Toussaint. He stopped and the old man got in, and Du Pré handed over his tobacco pouch and papers to him.
He dropped Benetsee at the bar. Benetsee leaned back in the window and Du Pré just held up his hand and fished twenty dollars out of his jeans and gave it to him.
He will be asleep in Madelaine’s garden shed in the morning, Du Pré thought.
I will check the cot and blankets and pillow.