Cabin_ Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine - Lou Ureneck [68]
On that first morning of work, I made a distressing discovery. It was going to be awfully difficult for me to put up the sheathing on my own. The four-foot-by-eight-foot sheets of plywood weighed around fifty pounds each, and they were ungainly to maneuver. Putting up a sheet required lifting it, getting it properly aligned right and left and up and down and then keeping it in place as I drove the nails. I used my knees, shoulders, head and back, in a variety of poses and contortions, to hold the pieces against the frame, but it was obvious that this was a job for a Hindu god with four arms—or more likely, here in Stoneham, two men. I went looking for a second man. I found him at the inn.
Billy Mann handled the inn’s maintenance. This included mowing grass, splitting firewood, unclogging sinks and toilets, rebuilding steps, refilling propane gas tanks, changing lightbulbs and hauling garbage to the dump—about anything that came up. He was fifty-four years old, big in the chest and shoulders, with white-yellow hair and glasses that enlarged his milky blue eyes. His face showed some roseola and a puffiness that suggested high blood pressure, and his hands were large and rough. His usual outfit was jeans, a heavy flannel shirt and camo baseball-type cap. He had a laugh the timbre of which would change slightly to underscore the basic sense of whatever it was he had just expressed—worry, displeasure, optimism, certainty. He might say, for example, “I got an awful pile of wood waiting for me to split out there.” His trailing laughter made it clear he was not eager to begin. Or he would say, “I might have to sneak away on Saturday for a little fishing,” and then light laughter indicated this was a reward he was looking forward to. I met him at the inn’s front counter, where I saw him each morning leaning on his elbow and collecting his jobs for the day. I asked him if he had any interest in working with me at the cabin, after work or on his days off.
“Yeah, I can help you,” he said. His laughter indicated a degree of ambivalence, which was understandable since I had not yet mentioned money.
I soon learned that Billy knew how to work. At the cabin, I explained what needed to be done, and he immediately began carrying sheets of plywood to the cabin frame—by himself. I insisted that we do it together, and soon we were putting up the sheathing in rapid order. One of us would hold the sheet and the other would nail it. I noticed that he often became winded and occasionally pulled an inhaler from his pocket. “It’s the asthma,” he said. He worked thirty hours a week at the inn (at thirteen dollars an hour), so he had some weekdays open to help me, and sometimes he came after work too.
Billy had been born in Lewiston, Maine, an old mill town. His parents had moved to the tiny village of North Fryeburg when he was six months old. He grew up in North Fryeburg with four brothers and three sisters, and he had lived there ever since. It was about ten miles from the cabin. There was one brief foray to nearby Bridgton when he was eighteen and newly married. The marriage lasted one year and produced a son, Bill, who lived in New Hampshire. When the marriage ended, Billy moved back to North Fryeburg. He had grown up fishing and hunting, and on a Saturday in the late spring he could be found somewhere in the hill country, maybe up near Evans