Annabel - Kathleen Winter [38]
“But there’s a crack in the middle. It’ll fall down.”
“It won’t. The end pieces are going to anchor it. I have some cement and some rebar and some old bolts from Graham Montague’s wharf. What we need to do is each get a shovel and start digging foundations for the posts.”
“Dad, I don’t want to get a shovel. I have math homework.”
“What kind of math homework?”
“Measuring triangles. We have to find out the lengths of the missing pieces.”
“Perfect. Get your math homework out and we’ll incorporate it into our construction project.”
“Dad.”
“Come on, it’ll be fun.”
It was a Saturday and on Saturdays Jacinta made bread, so they were all in the kitchen most of the day. The radio was on. There was rain against the windows and some steam, and the family felt happy. By the time Jacinta had kneaded six loaves and set them to rise twice, the table was covered in drawings. Treadway was concentrating on the bridge as if it was his own, and Wayne liked making fair copies of the diagrams with a six-inch metal ruler and a carpenter’s pencil Treadway had sharpened with a razor. He liked the flat, chunky width of the pencil.
“Can I keep this pencil, Dad?”
“Yes, son, you can have it.”
In the morning Treadway took him to the creek to haul up the old logs and dig holes and build forms for the posts. He showed Wayne how to use a pickaxe and how to mix cement. Wayne liked the sound cement made when you had it wet, when you mixed it with the shovel: a sluicing, slicing sound that meant you were making something big. His father showed him how to mix stones into the cement, and how to place the rebar inside the forms. It took three weekends of this before they had four support posts ready.
“When is it going to be done, Dad? School is over. Me and Wally want to use the bridge and all we’ve got done is the posts.”
“You and Wally Michelin?”
“Yes. We really want to use the bridge.”
“I thought you were going to play on the bridge with some boys, Wayne. Brent Shiwack and some of the other lads.”
“No! I want to go on it with Wally.”
“I was thinking we should construct the bridge so you can remove a section if you don’t want the other team to be able to cross it. That is an old, old tactic used in wartime for millennia.”
“Dad. I want to be on the bridge with Wally Michelin. We’re not going to have wars. And all we’ve got done is the posts. It’s taking way too long.”
“Your posts are everything, Wayne. The foundations of anything are the thing itself. Now we’ve got them done, the rest is easy. We fit the boards, we clamp them, and we have it done. If there was a heavy load passing over we would jack the two sections apart and compress them. I mean a really heavy load, like a train.”
Treadway had always constructed things more solidly than necessary. His sled was heavier than the sled of any other trapper in the harbour, which made it harder to haul, but it would never come apart. Wayne could see that this bridge was like Treadway’s other projects. It was sturdy and built to last, like Treadway himself. The bridge was four feet wide and ten feet across, and Wayne had to admit he could do just about anything to that bridge and it would not collapse.
“But what am I going to do for sides?”
“You have to design them. Get your pencil out. You can put any kind of sides you want on that. Here, we’ll put three posts along each side and you can attach whatever you want to those posts. You can use wood or wire or rope or whatever you want.”
“I want it covered. I want it so me and Wally can see out but no one can see in. I’m going to ask Mom for some curtains.”
“Curtains?”
“Yeah, Mom has stuff she was going to give me.”
“Drapes?” Treadway asked Jacinta when Wayne had gone to bed. “China? A carpet?”
“It’s just old material I never got around to using.” The brocade had lain on a shelf since before Wayne’s birth. Its thread glowed on a matte background. “Wayne thought it looked royal and old-fashioned.”
“We never had anything like that in our forts. We used ours for storing things we didn’t want our mothers to see.”
“Would you