William Rosewood's Arc

Chapter 8 of 20

Two walls stood closed, but they held nothing over them. William walked the inside of the house at first light. The stone rose to his shoulder on two sides. Above was open sky. He could not span a roof across that gap, and without a roof the walls sheltered no one. Snow would fall straight in on his wife and children. He needed timber long enough to reach wall to wall, and he had none. Cecily came out with the pail. She saw him staring up at nothing. "You need beams," she said. She did not ask. "Long ones," William said. "Straight. I have no coin for cut lumber." Eddie stood in the doorway. He had heard. "The old oak," he said. He pointed past the sty to the great tree, its gnarled trunk split into wide branches. "The low limbs run straight for eight feet. Longer than the walls." William looked at the oak. He had left it standing for shade all these years. He had never thought of it as timber. Eddie was right. The lower branches ran thick and true. They took the axes out. William swung at the first low limb. The wood was hard and old. His arms ached before the cut ran halfway. Tommy hauled the fallen wood aside as each branch dropped. Eddie sighted down every limb before they cut it, the way he sighted a stone. "That one's straight," he said. "This one bends. Leave it." By midday four beams lay stripped of their side branches. William dragged the first to the walls. He set one end on the west stone and the other on the east. It reached. It held its own weight and did not sag. He set the next beside it, then the next, spacing them the width of his forearm. The beams crossed the whole gap. Bare wood over bare stone. It was not a roof yet, but it was the frame of one. William pushed down hard on the center beam. It flexed and sprang back. It would carry thatch. It would carry snow. He stepped back and looked at the frame against the sky. For a moment his hands hung empty at his sides and he did not know what to do with them. Tommy walked the rows of beams, counting under his breath. He stopped. "Four beams," he said. "The gaps between are wide. Thatch alone will sag through. You need lath across them first." He named it plainly and said no more. William looked at the spacing. Tommy was right. The heavy beams held, but the open spans between would swallow any covering laid straight across. He had the frame. He did not have the thin wood to close the gaps between. He looked at the woodshed by the house, its side stacked full of split firewood. None of it was long. None of it was thin and straight. The beams were up. The roof was still open sky.