William Rosewood's Arc

Chapter 17 of 20

The wind came hard three nights after William built the cover. He woke to the sound of it clawing at the shed. He lay by the hearth and listened. The pine-bough roof was his last defense. He had stripped the tree bare to build it. If it failed, no dry fuel remained, and the fire would die. He rose in the dark and pulled on his boots. Outside, snow blew sideways. The bough cover held, but one corner had lifted. The wind worked under it, peeling boughs loose one by one. William grabbed the corner and pressed it down. The moment he let go, the wind tore it up again. He needed weight on it, or the whole roof would strip away by morning. Eddie came out first, then Tommy. Neither waited to be called. Eddie squinted against the snow. "The wind's getting under it." "I can't hold it and weight it both," William said. Tommy looked at the shed, then at the split rounds stacked by the wall. "Lay the rounds on top. Like you did on the well." William saw it at once. The rounds were heavy. Laid across the boughs, they would pin the cover flat and the wind could not lift it. But climbing the shed frame in this wind was no work for a grown man's weight. "I'll go up," Eddie said. He was already reaching for the frame. William caught his arm. For a breath he held it. Then he let go. "Slow. Test each foot." Eddie climbed. William passed the split rounds up one at a time. Tommy fed them to William from the stack, working without a word, his grey eyes fixed on his brother above. Eddie laid each round along the ridge of the cover, spacing them the way a man spaces stones. The wind screamed but the boughs stopped lifting. Round by round, the roof went still. When the last round was set, Eddie came down. His hands were raw and red. William looked at the cover. It sat flat and heavy now, pinned against the wind, and the snow slid off it clean. "It'll hold," William said. He almost said more. He looked at Eddie's raw hands and the steady work Tommy had done below. "You both did well." The words came out plain. It was more than he usually gave. Inside, the fire still burned. William fed it from the dry inner rows. The wood caught clean. The room stayed warm. The cover would not fail now. The wood beneath it was drying, and the family had fuel enough to reach the thaw. But William pulled a round from the pile and turned it in his hands. He had used the split rounds to weight the roof. Those same rounds were his cut firewood, already burned down thin. He had saved the cover by spending the last of his ready fuel. Come the coldest week, he would be splitting green wood again, and green wood did not burn.