Mel's Arc

Chapter 21 of 36

The morning after the dance, Mel walked into her barn and stopped. It smelled of cattle and wet straw. The floor was churned mud from the herd. She had promised the valley a wedding here in two weeks. Now she saw what the promise meant. There was no clean place for a single guest to stand. Ted came in behind her and looked at the same mess. "We move the cattle to my grazing land today," he said. "That's the easy part. The floor is the problem." Mel crouched and pressed her palm into the muck. Her hand sank to the wrist. "Nobody stands in this," she said. "Not in good clothes. Not for us." She wiped her hand on her jeans. "We drive the herd out. Then we dig it clean and lay a floor." They spent the morning pushing cattle down the lane to Ted's land. By noon the barn stood empty. Mel shoveled the soiled top layer into a barrow and hauled load after load out the door. Ted worked the far end. Sweat ran down her back. Her shoulders burned. By evening the mud was gone, down to packed dirt, but packed dirt was still not a floor. "We need planks," Mel said. "A lot of them. And no mill in the valley will sell to us." Ted leaned on his shovel. "The old rancher's place," he said. "He tore down a hay shed last fall. The boards are stacked and dry." Mel remembered the man's slow, hard clap at the dance, the first hands to back her. He had already lost his grazing lease helping her. She hated to ask for more. But she had no one else. They drove out at first light and found him mending fence. He straightened when he saw them, and his weathered face broke into a grin. "You come for lumber," he said, before Mel spoke a word. "I figured you would. A barn with no floor is a poor place to get married." He waved off her thanks. "Take the whole stack. I've got no shed left to put it in anyway." They hauled boards for two days. Ted cut them to length. Mel nailed them down, row after row, until the packed dirt disappeared under solid wood. On the third evening she set the last plank and stood. The floor stretched clean and level, wall to wall. She stamped her boot. It held firm and dry. Ted pulled her against his side. "Guests can stand here now," he said. "In their good clothes." Mel looked at the swept floor and the bare walls above it. Ten days left. The floor was done. But a bare board room was not a wedding. There were no benches to sit on, no tables, no food, nothing to mark the day as anything but an empty barn. She had solved the mud. Now she had to make the room look like a place worth marrying in.