34: The Small Lean-to
The first week at the small flat place behind the long low ridge was a week of small ordinary work.
Heizi laid, on the morning of the second day, a small new daily shape. He laid it without speaking it as a plan. He simply did the small first work of the morning — drew water from the small spring at the back of the rock face, banked the embers from the night's banked fire, set a small portion of the millet to soak in cold water for the noon — and Wang Er and Tie-zhu, watching, fell into the small rhythms of it. By the third day, the shape had become a thing the three of them shared without naming it.
The shape was simple. They woke before the second cock. Heizi drew water, laid the small banked fire back into its low live coal under fresh kindling, and set the morning's portion. Wang Er gathered, from the brush at the eastern lip, the day's wood — at the slow even pace he had been gathering at the three streams' hollow, with the small attentive set of a smith's son. Tie-zhu did the small work of mending — small holes in the brothers' coats, small fraying ends of the bandage at his foot, the small ongoing repair of small things. They ate at the noon. They worked through the afternoon. They camped down at dusk. They watched in turns through the night.
By the fourth day, Heizi understood — without having articulated it — that they were going to need a roof.
The small flat place would, he knew, see rain. The upper hills' second moon of summer was hot and dry; but by the third moon, the storms came; and by the fourth moon — early autumn — the storms came in, often, in the late afternoon and stayed through the night. They had, at the bear-back, slept under brush and pine; they had, in the seven weeks before that, slept under brush and pine; they had not, since the cold-spring camp's small dry place under the overhang, slept under any shelter that would hold against more than a small drizzle. Tie-zhu's foot, in repeated wet, would not improve. Heizi himself had, in the past two nights, woken with the small chill of dew through his coat.
They needed a roof.
He told them, on the morning of the fourth day, at the small fire.
"Brothers."
"Yes."
"We will be at this place perhaps two months. The third moon brings rain. The lame brother's foot will not heal in repeated wet. We need a small shelter."
Wang Er nodded.
"How."
"A small lean-to. Three walls and a roof. The roof should overhang at the front. The walls should face north and east — those are the wind quarters in this country, by what I have seen of the small wind these four days. The opening should face south; the small spring at the back of the rock face is in our southwest, and we will be close to it. The walls — split wood and bark, at the smith's son's pace. The roof — pine bark, layered like a peasant's roof in our village, with the small overlap to keep the rain off the seam. There is a small leaning oak at the eastern edge of this flat — yes, I have looked at it — that will serve as the eastern post. The other three posts — we will cut from the brush at the lower edge. The lame brother's joints — the lame brother knows joints. The small careful joining of the corner where the eastern wall meets the eastern post — the lame brother will lay it; the smith's son and I will do the splitting and the carrying."
Wang Er thought.
"The lame brother."
"Yes."
"You — yes, lame brother, I am speaking to you — this is your work. You have been the household's apprentice of joints for ten years. We would be — without you — making a hut that would fall in the first storm. Tell us what you need."
Tie-zhu, by the fire, did not, at first, answer.
He had, in the past four weeks, become quieter than he had been at the village. The lame boy had not, at the burying of Ah Si, said a hundred words; he had not, in the long walk through the upper hills, asked for any small kindness; he had carried his foot in the new salve and the new sandals at the slow pace of a young man whose body had agreed with him on the small price of a year. Heizi had — without meaning to — begun, in the past two weeks, to look past him. The lame boy had become, in the small running register, a steady quiet at the back of the line.
The lame boy looked at Heizi now.
He had — by the small change in the small still face — heard the small instruction in Heizi's voice. *This is your work.* He had heard it in the way a young apprentice hears the master saying *now you do this part of the joinery; I will only watch.*
He sat for a moment.
He said, slowly: "Big brother. I will need a small workbench. There is a flat slab of grey stone at the western edge of this flat — yes, I saw it yesterday — that will serve. I will need the small whittling knife, sharpened today. I will need the smith's son's hammer for the larger fitting. I will need — I will need a small piece of cord, perhaps two arms' lengths, for measuring; the hempen cord I used for the snare on the first morning at the cold spring will serve. I will need the brothers' patience. I am not fast. The fitting will take, perhaps — perhaps three days. The walls — perhaps another two. The roof — one. Six days altogether, big brother."
Heizi nodded.
"Six days, lame brother."
"Yes."
"Tell us, each morning, what you need from us that day."
"Yes, big brother."
The lame boy stood up. He took the small whittling knife from the small straw loop at his belt. He went to the western edge of the flat. He laid out, on the flat slab of grey stone, the small hempen cord — measured at one arm's length and one arm's length plus a hand's width, in the small even way of the carpenter's measurement his uncle had taught him — and a small flat scrap of pine bark for sketching, and a single sharpened twig for a marker.
He sat down, cross-legged.
He thought.
Heizi watched him for a long beat. He did not, in the watching, interrupt. Tie-zhu's face had — by the small specific change Heizi noted — taken on an expression Heizi had not seen on him in three months; the lame boy was, for the first time since the road, doing the work he had been raised to. The face was the face of a young apprentice at his bench, with a problem in front of him that was, by the small honest measure of his hands, solvable.
Heizi let him work.
He went, with Wang Er, to the lower edge of the flat to cut the posts.
The lower edge had a stand of young pine — three years' growth, perhaps; the small straight saplings that would, in twenty years, be the country's older pine. They cut three posts. Heizi held; Wang Er, with the small heavier knife from his bundle, took the cuts with the small even strokes a smith's son brought to any cutting. The posts came clean. They carried them, one at a time — Heizi at one end, Wang Er at the other — back to the small flat place. They laid them along the western side of the slab where Tie-zhu was working.
Tie-zhu, at his sketch, looked up. He took in the posts. He nodded.
"All right. They are good. The first post — the eastern post by the leaning oak — that one is set already. The other three — the southwestern, the northeastern, the northern — we will set tomorrow."
He went back to his sketch.
Heizi and Wang Er, in the late afternoon, gathered the next day's pine bark. They worked the lower edge of the flat slowly. They laid the gathered bark in a small pile beside the slab. By dusk, the pile was the size of three hempen sacks.
They ate.
They watched in turns.
The next morning, Tie-zhu stood at the eastern leaning oak with his small piece of cord measured around the trunk, and called Wang Er to dig the small post-holes for the three new posts. The smith's son dug, with the small bigger knife and a flat stone, three small holes — one at each of the corners Tie-zhu had marked with small pebbles on the earth. The holes were perhaps two hand's depths each. The lame boy, when each hole was ready, came over, looked into it, and — with the small whittling knife — cut a small specific shape on the lower end of the post that would go into it. The shapes were not the same; each post's lower end was cut to the small specific angle of the small piece of ground at its corner; the lame boy was — Heizi understood, watching — *fitting* each post to the country, not standing them all uniformly at right angles to the ground.
It was, in its small specific way, the carpentry of a man who had decided that the small flat place was the small flat place it was, and not a perfect flat, and that the lean-to should be the lean-to of this small flat place and not of any other.
Heizi filed it.
The fitting of the four posts took two days.
The four walls — the eastern, against the leaning oak, with the small split-wood panels lashed with hempen cord; the northern, of split-wood and bark, double-layered against the wind; the western, of split-wood, single-layered; the small low front wall of the southern side, only knee-high, with the wide open above it for the lean-to's south face — took two more.
The roof took the sixth day.
By dusk of the sixth day, the lean-to stood at the small flat place, in the lee of the long low ridge, beside the small spring at the back of the rock face, with the leaning oak as its eastern post and the small low pine of the lower edge as its other three. The roof was layered pine bark in three overlapping rows. The walls were split-wood and bark, lashed with the small twists of hempen cord they had carefully made from the larger length Wei Da-niang had given Heizi at the door. The opening was the south face. The small fire ring sat just outside, at the small flat in front of the opening, where the smoke would be drawn out into the south wind and not into the inside of the lean-to.
Heizi, at the dusk, stood at the small flat in front of the opening and looked.
He had not, in his life, helped to build a thing.
He had carried water for old Old Cui's son's roof-mending in the village's tenth-summer. He had held the rope on Old Lu the carpenter's apprentice work at the threshing floor in his fourteenth winter. He had not, before this small flat place behind a long low ridge in the upper hills, stood in front of a roof that he had himself helped to make.
He had — in helping — done none of the careful joinery; that had been the lame boy's. He had — in helping — done none of the heavy splitting; that had been the smith's son's. He had — in helping — only carried the posts and the bark and the small stones; he had only held the lashing while Tie-zhu tightened it; he had only fetched water, and food, and small additional pieces of cord when the cord ran short.
The lean-to, in the small dusk, was the work of the lame boy and the smith's son.
Heizi understood, looking at it, that this was — perhaps — the first piece of country he had ever stood in front of which had been made by hands he loved.
He filed it.
He bowed, very slightly, in the lame boy's direction. He bowed in the smith's son's direction.
"Brothers."
They came over.
"It is a good lean-to."
Wang Er nodded.
Tie-zhu, in the small unhurried way of a young apprentice at his finished piece, walked once around the lean-to with his hand on the wall — touching, every two paces, the small joint or the small lashing or the small fitting that had been his work — and he came back to the front, and stood with the brothers, and looked.
"Big brother."
"Yes."
"It will hold the second-moon storms."
"It will hold."
"It will hold the third-moon."
"Yes."
"It will hold the fourth-moon, with a small recheck at the eastern lashing, which may slack with the wet."
"Yes."
"It will not — by my reckoning — hold a winter snow. The roof is light. The bark will hold for a year, perhaps two; it will not hold three. The first heavy snow of any winter will, by the second night, push the central span. We will need a thicker roof for the winter, big brother. We will think about that in the third moon."
Heizi nodded.
He noted, in his small running register, the sentence: *We will think about that in the third moon.*
The lame boy was, by the small even speaking voice he had been speaking in for the past six days, planning ahead. The lame boy was now, in some small way Heizi had not yet seen on the road, *of the camp*. The lame boy was, in his head, going to be at the small flat place into the third moon and thinking about a thicker roof.
Heizi let him be.
That night they ate, in the lean-to, the small portion of the millet and a small piece of the dried hare and a small handful of the wild garlic. They sat in a small circle around the cooking fire — outside the lean-to, in the small flat in front of the opening, with the smoke rising slowly into the south. The night was warm. The third quarter moon was up. The wind was steady from the south.
They ate slowly.
Wang Er, at the third hour of the watch, said in the small low voice he had been using since the funeral: *brothers. We have a roof.*
"We have a roof," Heizi said.
"It is the first one we have made."
"It is."
"It is — it is good."
The smith's son did not, in the small low voice, say more. The smith's son had not been a man for long sentences in any week of his life. He had said *we have a roof; it is good.* The saying was the saying.
Tie-zhu nodded.
Heizi, at the small fire, looked at the two of them.
He thought, without meaning to, of his foster father's house — of the small thatched roof Old Zhang had himself laid in his thirty-first year, before Heizi was born, with the small even hands of a young farmer setting up a household; of the small kang Heizi had slept on every night of his life until the bean fields' ridge two months ago. He thought of the small back room with the hempen curtain. He thought of the small kitchen brazier. He thought of the small chipped lid on the salt jar that had faced *out* in the morning of the second day, because his sister was no longer at the bench to face it away.
He thought of the absence of all of it.
He thought: *the absence is real. The absence is not something I can mend. But there is — there is a small new place. The new place is a roof of pine bark on four posts in a small flat behind a long low ridge in the upper hills of Henan. The new place is not — it is not the village. But it is, by the work of the small honest hands of two brothers, a place that did not exist a week ago, that exists tonight. The country has room for new places. That is — that is something.*
He filed it.
He took the first watch.
The lean-to, in the small thin moon, threw a small low shadow on the flat behind it. The fire ring, in front, held a small banked coal. The brothers, inside, slept the small even sleep of two young men who had finished a piece of work.
Heizi sat at his watch.
He listened.
The shape of the silence at this small flat place was, by now, a shape he knew. He had heard it for a week. The owls of the upper hills. The wind in the brush. The small spring at the back of the rock face running its small steady night-running. The country was not — at this small flat place — a country of human attention. The country was the country of a small flat place behind a long low ridge with a small spring and a small lean-to that had not existed a week ago.
He filed it.
In the small inner register, beside the small thin column of smoke at the bear-back two days back, he set: *the small flat place. Lean-to. Spring. South wind. The brothers.*
He sat his watch.
The night went on.
He did not, on this night, dream.
He woke Wang Er at the second hour of the rat. He passed the watch.
He went into the lean-to. He lay down on the dry pine needles he had, with Wang Er, gathered yesterday afternoon to make a small mat. The lean-to's interior smelled of pine and of bark and of the small new clean wood of the freshly cut posts.
It smelled, in some small specific way, of a house.
He slept.