Cabin_ Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine - Lou Ureneck [65]
“Put a rope on your waist,” I told him.
“Nah. I’m alright, Uncle Louie.”
“No, Kevin. I’m demanding it.” I threw him the rope.
I followed his path on the deck below, reasoning I could break his fall with my body if he came down.
With the rafters back up, Paul insisted that we clean up the job site and cover the deck with a tarp to protect it against the weather. Before we left, we put extra bracing on the rafters, front and back, and we replaced the beam that had blown out. It was a good day’s work. We celebrated at Melby’s with dinner.
Despite my urgency to get the big timbered rafters in place so the roof could go up as quickly as possible, Paul said no. We needed to sheathe the exterior walls first. The sheathing would stiffen the walls, he said. Even more important, to put the roof on first, ahead of sheathing the exterior walls, would be to turn the cabin into a giant umbrella that would catch the wind and lift the frame off the foundation. “I’ve seen it happen,” Paul said. I pictured the cabin rising over the trees on the wind like a dirigible and then crashing down when the wind stopped. No argument from me—we were building a cabin, not a kite. We would apply the wall sheathing first. In the meantime, I would keep the deck covered with a tarp and do my best to keep water off the subfloor, which was already beginning to show some swelling from moisture around the nail heads.
We used the next few weeks to frame the ell and cut and assemble its rafters—yet more work ahead of the roof. I tried to reach Kevin one Saturday, but Paul told me he had gotten into a scrape overnight and had ended up in the emergency room, where a doctor put twenty stitches in his head. So it was Paul and I, and then Paul and I and Andrew, who were home on leave for a week. I was thrilled with the progress we were making now. The spring that was emerging filled me with enthusiasm for the work and the hillside. All would be well—even if we were racing the season and the thaw.
I chose a Friday in April to spend my first night in the cabin. There was still no roof cover, and the walls remained unsheathed. In other words, it was a frame, open to the weather. I drove up from Boston, arrived an hour before dark and spread my sleeping bag on the deck. I heard a commotion of splashing on the pond below. It sounded like slap, splash—slap, splash—slap, splash! I had to have a look. I walked down the path to the pond and saw one Canada goose madly chasing another. Neither was fully lifting from the water—they were sort of running and flapping over the surface, one clearly in pursuit, the other making his retreat. The splashes looked like machine-gun fire hitting the water. I was witnessing two males in combat over an unseen female. In the mating season, a female goose selects the male based on his ability to protect her, and what was probably occurring in front of me was a powerful male demonstrating his prowess to a keenly observing female. Once geese are paired, the mating is an elaborate ballet. It begins with the male and female facing each other, undulating their long necks and making soft goose sounds, which is like dry wood being rubbed against slate. It is a sound that seems to contain both effort and pleasure. When the moment comes for the act of mating, they go off by themselves, at night and on the water, in a kind of private tryst. The male and female extend their necks horizontally to the water, dipping their beaks. The female spreads her wings over the surface of the water and slightly submerges. Upon completion of copulation, the female bathes herself with the male watching, and then the male bathes himself as she observes. The watery ruckus unfolding in front of me was a prelude to the courtship and promised that I would have fluffy goslings in the pond in another month.
I still had time before dark, and it was too early to crawl into the sleeping bag,