Original fiction · Chapter 2 of 2
The Last Porch Rail
Sam said Dad had called Mom because the only copy of the cabin plans he could find was missing the page with the roof pitch. Mom had sent a picture of the page. Two weeks later, she drove down with the original drawings in the trunk.
“They worked on the cabin together?”
“For a few weekends,” he said. “Mostly they argued about the stairs.”
I asked if there had been some plan for them to get back together. Sam said he'd asked the same question. Dad had answered that he'd been wanting to build the cabin since before Sam could walk. Mom had said she was tired of being blamed for a staircase that didn't exist.
We drove down to the river the next morning. The gate swung inward easily, and the cabin was twenty yards beyond it. Dad had used the green paint he kept buying to touch up our old front door. Inside, there was room for a table and two chairs. Through the west window I could see a spot where the river turned and the current went smooth for a few feet.
Mom had left a message when I called her the night before. She said the cabin was on land Dad had leased from a friend, and the friend had agreed to let us finish it. Then she said she had the missing porch timber in her garage. She could bring it if we wanted.
I told her to come.
She parked beside us just after noon. She had sawdust on her coat from loading the timber and a paper bag of sandwiches on the front seat. I hadn't eaten lunch with her since the summer before Dad died. I took the bag and let her carry the timber because she clearly wanted to.
The hole for the last rail post was wider than the post. Sam offered to go buy a bigger piece. Mom went back to her car and returned with a thin wedge of cedar. She handed it to me.
“Your dad cut that. He said you always hit things harder than he did.”
I put the wedge in and tapped it twice. The post held.
That evening the estate sale people asked me for one last inventory update. I told them I'd collected the toolbox. Then I turned my phone off and went back outside. Sam was showing Mom which window had the better view of the river. She stood there long enough that he stopped explaining and looked too.
