I was dreaming about something really good. I have no idea what it was because suddenly someone was shaking me and I lost all memory of whatever was so pleasant and warm and fuzzy.
“Let’s get cracking,” Briar said in a cheerful voice.
“Uggh,” I managed.
“Five minutes,” he said, “and then you’re coming, dressed or not, peed or not, you and I, out on the trail. Don’t worry. This time of day only the weasels will be out, so your modesty won’t be challenged if you don’t manage to get your shorts on in time. The shoes, though, those are important. Four minutes, now.”
You know what the worst thing is, the very worst thing, in the morning? Cheerfulness. It’s awful.
My problem was, I believed him. Even half awake, I believed him. I wanted to stay in bed. Four minutes sounded wonderful. But I hadn’t worn anything to sleep in after my shower and other bedtime rituals, and there was no question in my mind he’d grab me by the back of the neck and I’d quickly be out running, naked.
So I got up, stumbled into the bathroom, took a deep breath and waited for my wood to wilt, peed, and had just pulled on my new clothes when he was back in the room, ready to yank me out of bed if I wasn’t already up.
“Way to go, DUSTIN!” he cried. “Let’s do this!”
More cheer. Yuck.
We went out into the still morning air. It was cool and silent and just getting light. I looked at him, and he said, “First, we stretch. Just as I said yesterday, stretching always comes first before you use muscles that haven’t warmed up.”
He didn’t just start in, however. He showed me what to do. Leg muscles, back muscles, shoulder muscles, he showed me how to work them easily at first to loosen them, then a little more vigorously to get them ready without pulling or tweaking or hurting them. We did that for some time. While we were doing it, he told me that recently a theory had been advanced that it was better to jog slowly first, then stretch.
“I’m old-school,” he said; I was too busy grunting to answer. “I stretch first like I always have. I just do it easily at first.”
I didn’t have a watch, so I didn’t know how long we’d stretched but longer than I’d expected. Long enough that I was getting impatient to start jogging, and I hate jogging.
“Ready?” he finally asked.
“All set,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. Running, jogging—I hated it. I felt clumsy and slow and always got a pain in my side not long after starting.
“We’ll only go two miles today,” he said. “You have to get in shape, and punishing yourself is not the best way to do that. So we go slow at first and build on that.”
He set out. We ran down the driveway, got to the dirt road, and headed uphill. He was just jogging, not going fast at all. I ran next to him. Within a hundred yards, I was breathing hard, and my legs were feeling heavy. The hill wasn’t steep, but it was steadily uphill. Another hundred yards and I had to stop. Even the slow pace was too much.
I thought he’d go all drill sergeant on me, start hollering in my ear, berating my lack of manhood and every other unsatisfactory thing about me. Instead, he kept jogging in place and said, “This is good. I wasn’t sure you’d get this far. Uphill is hard, but we have two choices, up or down, and I thought you’d rather run downhill going back rather than up. Just breathe deeply till you’re ready.” He wasn’t even breathing hard. But more importantly, he wasn’t criticizing or yelling or making fun of me, either.
It only took a minute or two, and then I started feeling silly, so I nodded and we took off again, going just a little slower this time.
I ran out of air again soon but kept going. It seemed shameful to stop and rest every few feet.
Eventually, he stopped again, and this time he really stopped. No jogging in place. “This is about a mile,” he said. “We’ll turn around here. Going back, you want to run faster. Don’t. Going downhill uses different muscles, and if you let yourself go, you’ll get moving really fast, and then when you try to slow down, those unfit muscles might not do what you tell them to. So, just stay with my pace, even though you’ll want to go faster.”
He was right, of course. Going downhill, not fighting gravity so much but letting it help me along, was easier at the outset, but then I found my leg muscles having to fight to hold my weight back, and they started complaining more than they had going uphill. I began to feel each jarring thud as my feet came down.
Briar, on the other hand, jogged easily downhill, showing no strain at all.
I didn’t have to stop going down like I had going up but felt I was working just as hard as then, just working differently. It was easier to breathe, at least.
I was shot when we got back to our driveway. It was uphill at first and then level the rest of the way. We continued at the same pace on the uphill part, and then he sped ahead for the last bit. When we were back in our yard, I succumbed to need and just sprawled out on the grass, breathing deeply and fast.
“You did really well for the first time out, Dustin. Really well. Look, why don’t you just rest or do whatever you want. I’m going to go back and run some more, see if I can find somewhere that isn’t all up or down. I might be a half hour, I’m not sure. When I come back, I’ll make breakfast. Okay?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice, and he smiled, turned, and was off at a much faster clip. How could such a big man look so graceful running?
I lay on my back on the grass. This, all this so far, hadn’t been nearly as bad as I’d thought it would be. I should have trusted Briar more. Why did I have the idea everything would be like a Marine boot camp? Maybe it was partly because he’d said I’d hate him. I might have if he’d behaved like a bully, but he hadn’t. No, hating him was one thing he was wrong about. About the only thing, I guessed.
» » »
While we were eating breakfast, two sounds happened almost simultaneously. I heard a sort of rumbling from somewhere deep inside the house, and then the noise of a large vehicle outside.
I looked up at Briar, and he said, “Ah. Right on time.”
“What?”
“Building supplies. Hard to fix this place up without some supplies.”
The rumbling continued. “What’s that other noise?”
He listened, then said, “I don’t know. Sounds like it’s coming from the basement.”
“There’s a basement?”
He laughed. “Yeah. I only looked down there to be sure it was dry. Let’s check.”
Maybe you have to be older before basements are no longer scary. I was 13, and, well, I let him go first. There was just a little light coming through the four dirty windows that lit the place. They were located just under the basement’s ceiling, about at the ground level outside or just below. The noise was coming from near the far wall from the stairs. As Briar walked toward the sound, me in his wake, I saw standing against the wall what appeared to be an old workbench, and on the bench, rattling away, was an ancient box fan.
“Aha!” said Briar. “The electricity’s back on.”
He switched the fan off and the rumbling ceased.
Outside, he spoke to the men in the truck, and they unloaded lumber, drywall, bags of stuff, paneling, all sorts of things. Briar had them place some cinder blocks they’d brought on the lawn, then laid the boards on those. “Got to keep them dry,” he told me. The bags were laid next to the porch on some plastic sheeting.
Besides the building materials, there was other stuff. Tools, hoses, a wheelbarrow, empty 55-gallon drums, just lots of stuff. Finally, when everything was off the truck, Briar signed some papers and the truck left.
“Okay, lots to do, lots to do. Let’s start with the shower so that’s ready when we need it.”
“How are you going to do that, tear the pipes out of the wall upstairs?”
“No, I thought I’d do it quick and dirty out here. Over by that big tree in the back of the house.”
I looked at him like he was crazy, but followed him out into the backyard. There were several trees there, but the one he headed for was a large spreading oak, the lowest branches starting about ten feet off the ground. If they’d been lower, it would have been a great tree to climb in. If I were the sort of kid who did things like climbing trees, that is. I wasn’t. I was the sort of kid who watched other, more athletic and adventurous kids doing that. On TV.
He stopped under the tree, looked up, and said, “Here’s perfect.
That was when I started to really learn how to do things. His plan was to build a platform eight feet above the lawn. On that platform he’d put two 55-gallon drums. The drums would be piped together so we’d have basically one 110-gallon tank feeding a shower head. He showed me how one drum could be fitted with a fill pipe which would feed from a hose he attached to it.
“How much does a gallon of water weigh?” he asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“About eight and a half pounds, a little less,” he answered for me. “So, if both drums are full, how much weight do we have to support?”
That I could do. I did it out loud. “One hundred gallons would be eight hundred and fifty pounds. Ten gallons would be eighty-five pounds. So, nine hundred and thirty-five pounds.”
“You forgot the weight of the drums,” he said.
“No, I didn’t. You said the water was a little less than eight and a half pounds per gallon, so I figured overestimating the weight of the water would more than allow for the weight of the drums.”
He laughed and then high fived me. “Smart ass! You’re good at math, aren’t you?”
“I have to be good at something. I’m good at most school subjects. It’s another reason I don’t have friends at school.”
“You’ll be going to a different school this year. This house is in a different school district. All new kids. And by the end of the summer, you won’t be the same kid you were anymore.”
That was something to think about as we worked.
He talked as we toiled. He said he wanted the shower to be over-engineered, and so was going to mount the platform on four ten-foot, 6”x6” posts. He showed them to me in the pile of lumber in the front yard.
“But they’ll be too tall,” I said.
“Two feet of each will be buried,” he said, “in concrete.”
It was a very busy day. I dug holes in the ground. He did too. I mixed concrete in the wheelbarrow. He did too, showing me how not to slosh it all over. He showed me how to stand the posts straight, using a long level. He showed me how to have the tops all exactly the right height for the platform to sit level on top. He said he wanted the top larger than needed for the drums, but wouldn't tell me why. I learned how to use an electric table saw and to cut large sheets of plywood, wearing goggles and earmuffs—always working safely. He was a stickler about that.
By lunch, I was exhausted. When we stopped for lunch, I think every muscle I was aware of and some I hadn’t been were sore. By the time lunch was over, they’d stiffened up and were even sorer.
Briar was compassionate, but there was more work that needed to be done. “You’re going to be sore, Dustin. That’s part of it. You’re going to see that once you’re working again, and loosened up, most of what you’re feeling will go away. Let’s get back to it.”
I learned how to use a hammer. He taught me by pounding some nails into a two-by-four, then telling me to finish pounding them down all the way. I bent every one of them. He showed me how again how to hold the hammer, how to hit the nails. I bent the next batch, too. And the next, and began to get really frustrated. I knew I couldn’t do this, and he was making me prove it! But he didn’t get frustrated with me at all. He just kept encouraging me and occasionally suggesting what I might try to do differently and telling me to slow down a little.
“Think about what you’re doing, Dustin. Use your head. Don’t let your frustration cause you to just attack the nails without figuring out why they aren’t behaving. Invest your brain in the problem too.”
Yeah, right! Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one getting frustrated. But, I realized I was doing just as he said: I was letting my anger get in the way of learning from what I was doing wrong. So, I started paying attention.
After that, on the fourth try, or maybe the fifth, I began to get a feel for it, started to understand what mistakes I was making and correcting them, and I started being able to hit those damn things straight. Soon I started to be able to hit them harder as well as straight, and pound them down with fewer and fewer blows.
Finally, I was able to pound every nail all the way down without bending any. Every one! While I felt like cheering, I didn’t have much time to celebrate. There was more to do, always more to do. By the end of the day, the quick-setting concrete was hard, the posts were firm in the ground with attached angled crossties holding them all together, the platform was attached to the top of the posts with screws and L-brackets, the drums were in place above, the pipes connecting them together were all fitted and tightened with rubber washers and silicon sealant so they wouldn’t leak, a new shower head was screwed onto the pipe coming down through the platform with a handle attached to a ball valve above, and a quarter-inch hole was drilled in the side of one of the drums about three inches from the top. I’d been shown how to drill the hole and had done it myself when I’d finally got the drill bit to stop sliding around on the metal by using a nail to punch a dent for the bit to begin turning in.
“What’s the hole for?” I asked.
“Can you figure it out?”
Well, maybe or maybe not, but I was too tired to think. I wasn’t in a thinking mood. I was tired and hot, sore and exhausted and didn’t want to think. I was feeling sulky and ill-used again.
“No.”
He smiled at me, then said, “Well, you’ll see.”
I was too tired to even get more provoked at that. I was so tired I didn’t think I’d even be able to eat dinner.
“You want to christen it?” Briar was standing with me, surveying what we’d done as the tanks above us were filling.
“Me?”
“Why not? We’re done for the day, and you’re both hot and a mess. You need a shower. Try it out.”
It was only then it hit me. “But, the water’s cold! And there’s no shower curtain. It’s right out here in the open!”
“So what? There’s no one around. Well, I’m here, but if you’re that prissy about nudity, I can promise not to look. Though you can’t begin to imagine how many naked men I’ve seen in locker rooms and swimming pools and even at public beaches in Europe. Anyway, maybe it’s time for you to lose some of that modesty and realize your body is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just a body. Everyone has one.”
I thought about that, then said. “Yeah, you’re right. And as hot as I am, the thought of the cold water isn’t all that bad. Last night’s shower was cold, too, and I survived that. So, if you’ll get us a couple of towels, we can both initiate it. I’m too tired to climb the stairs to get them myself.”
He laughed but went for the towels. He didn’t mind my asking him to do something. My father probably would have hit me. But he came back, and initiating that shower was exactly what we did. Seeing him naked and his seeing me just wasn’t that big a deal. It was interesting seeing him but that was all and the looking-at-him part was over quite soon. He hardly glanced at me.
He started the shower when the hose filling the tanks had been running awhile. The water was cold, but we quickly got used to it as it flooded over us. It felt great. He’d brought soap and shampoo with the towels, and what we did was wet ourselves thoroughly, then turn off the water and soap up, then rinse. I stayed under the water as long as I wanted, longer than he did. It felt great being naked out there, but I was really tired, and finally stopped and dried off.
He’d brought out clean clothes for me when he’d brought the towels. They were lying in the grass out in the sun and I slowly—I said I was tired, didn’t I?—made my way over to them and started dressing. I was about done when I heard something. Over near the shower, there was a small stream of water arcing out of the top of one of the drums and into the grass. The hole! Now I knew what it was for.
I turned off the refill hose and went in for dinner. After that, I said goodnight, and even though it was early, went to bed.
Lying there before sleep, I realized how much I’d done that day. I’d learned to jog, hammer and saw, use a screw driver, mix concrete, use a level, cut wood on an electric saw, carry lumber, carry sacks of concrete, and for every one of these things, Briar had been right there, doing it all, too, and showing me how, making sure I did it right—things like using my legs and having my back straight when lifting bags of concrete; making sure nothing was too heavy for me; thinking about what might go wrong when I was about to do something, and then helping me do it safely.
I think I’d learned more, done more, that day than ever before in a single day in my life. I’d learned how, but still wasn’t much good at all I’d learned. Briar told me he hadn’t expected me to be. He’d said I’d get better with the doing, and if the doing was done correctly, I’d get better pretty quickly. No one had ever taken the time to teach me like this. I still found it hard to believe. What we were doing was all about making the house more livable. There was a practical purpose in it all. But it was all about me, too. That was incredible.
Yeah, I was exhausted but there in bed, some of that feeling of accomplishment that I hadn’t had time to savor earlier—like I’d wanted to when I’d hammered my first nail straight into that two by four, when I’d wanted to feel proud but hadn’t had the time—washed over me. I went to sleep really quickly, and I’m sure there was a smile on my face.