A Place in Time by Wendell Berry Read Free Book Online Page A

collection of splices andpatches. It was tiered off with old fence rails and locust poles, all nailed and wired up every which way. All of us who ever worked in it fell out of it at least once. And there was a big old cedar tree grown up on the downhill side with its limbs bushed out until they touched the wall. The tree had no business there, but way before Grover some tenant had let it get started, and every one since had left it, maybe as a comment on the barn that said more or less “To hell with it!”
    Well, after Grover had been there must have been four or five years, the rust began showing through the blue paint to where it was visible even to Miss Charlotte. And faithful to tradition, she wanted it painted again with blue paint.
    She put the proposition to Grover, but Grover couldn’t do it. He couldn’t work high off the ground. It made the world whirl. It made him so dizzy and sick he couldn’t hardly hold his dinner he was so scared he would fall. This was either true or it wasn’t, but it saved Grover a good deal of trouble along with maybe his neck.
    So Miss Charlotte authorized Grover to see who would take the job, and Grover put the proposition to my brother, Jarrat, who took him up. Out of generosity he took him up on my behalf as well as his own.
    â€œHang on!” I said. “I don’t want to paint that damned roof. I can’t spare the time. And high places make me sick like they do Grover.”
    Jarrat, a man of few words, said, “You could use the money.”
    Matter of fact, I could. But like Jarrat I also could have done without it, and unlike Jarrat would have been glad to. But I was in and I knew it.
    Jarrat had traded with Grover for two dollars a day and our dinner, dinner to be furnished by Beulah Gibbs, which was the best part of the deal, for Beulah was a fine cook, paint and brushes and so on to be furnished by Miss Charlotte.
    So as soon as we got our crops laid by we gathered up ladders and ropes and everything we thought we’d need, and we got started. We had a long job of it. That roof must have been half an acre, give or take a tenth or two, and in them days nobody had thought of spraying paint or rolling it on. We rubbed it on with brushes, making sure to cover the nailheads and the rust, doing a thorough good job.
    We did the uphill side first because that was the bigger side. But also we wanted to get ourselves well used to the job before we got to work onthe downhill side which was all of it steep and almighty high at the eave. To tell the truth, I didn’t have Grover’s problem with heights, but I knew that if you fell from so high onto that old ledgy hillside you wouldn’t get up again maybe until resurrection morning.
    Finally we did conquer the uphill side. We passed our ropes over the comb of the roof then and tied our ladders on the downhill side. And we were keeping our feet always on the ladder rungs. We weren’t taking any chances. We started each one on a side and worked toward the middle. After it seemed like forty days and forty nights we were working pretty close together, which back then wasn’t always the ideal arrangement for Jarrat and me.
    We came back onto the roof one day after dinner and went at it again. We were meaning to get the job over with that day if it took us till dark. I don’t know why it is, but even when you’re getting paid by the day, you want to get done. You’re eager to get done, just as you’d be if you were working for yourself at no wage. And it did seem like we’d been there nearly forever when there were better things to do. Looked back at, it was beginning to seem like a waste.
    And my Lord it was hot! You couldn’t touch that roof bare-handed, and you could barely see for the sweat. It was pure punishment. By the middle of the afternoon I began to feel unhappy with Jarrat for including me in the deal. I began to put on a little speed, laying that paint