the water
I found Kelvin on the roof of the yurt, a round, home-made structure in the woods behind the house.
“Hi,” I said, approaching.
He peered over the edge to look down at me. “Oh, hi.”
“Alexandra sent me here to help you get the shingles on the roof before it starts to rain.”
Straightening a little, he studied the sky in his slow way. The trees in the hills below were only just starting to change color, and far off in the distance, down beyond the forest, we could see the grey cloud waiting its turn to break up the blue above us. It smelled too like it would rain soon. “Oh. Ok. Come on up,” he said.
Kelvin and Lee had built the yurt together the previous month. Tall and octagonal, with weathered wood walls and a high ceiling, it was tucked away between the trees and almost ready to be inhabited by artists or wanderers. They had raided the junkyards on Martha’s Vineyard for the windows, so each face of the octagon had a different shaped glass cut into it and the sunlight warmed the single room from every direction.
I grabbed a hold of the ladder and climbed up to the roof. The roof was pitched and round, and Kelvin was overlapping thin shingles in circular rows around it. “I don’t really have a system,” he said to me while I watched. “I just listen to what the shingles tell me.” So we decided he would lay them down, and I would nail them in. And this worked well so that we were happy and quiet and busy for a half an hour before we spoke again. Every once in a while, he climbed back down the ladder to get more, and I looked up from our vantage point over to the little valley below. The air smelled like rain and leaves and autumn. I liked breaking up the stillness with the violence of hammer and nails.
“One day?” Kelvin said to me. “I want to find a place? hidden away in the woods. And build-- an invisible house.” I looked at him, and he was staring off into the forest. With his winter hat covering the lines in his forehead, and his habit of speaking his sentences as questions, it was hard to tell his real age. “I almost had one once? Before. I went into the woods? And every day I brought in something else that I found from the outside. I built a house there in the trees? It had windows that I made out of pieces of glass that I found in the trash. And it had little – little cubbies? Where I could put my things. I lived there for a whole year. And then one day, the man who owned the property where the woods was? He went for a walk and he found my house. And he told me that he would call the police if I didn’t leave. He never even knew I was there if he hadn’t found my house. I wasn’t bothering anyone.
But one day? One day I want to build a house that no one will be able to see. And then I can live there as long as I want.”
We worked fast, the two of us together. The patch of blue above us moved onward and we were enveloped in grey sky and green treetops. Afterwards, we went inside, and he made lunch in the quiet kitchen with the stereo playing Feist’s “The Water”. He made a plate for each of us and took two outside to give to the builders working on the barn. On my plate he put a generous piece of dark chocolate. I ate quietly in the stillness and thought my thoughts and then the clouds came and it started to rain.
“Hi,” I said, approaching.
He peered over the edge to look down at me. “Oh, hi.”
“Alexandra sent me here to help you get the shingles on the roof before it starts to rain.”
Straightening a little, he studied the sky in his slow way. The trees in the hills below were only just starting to change color, and far off in the distance, down beyond the forest, we could see the grey cloud waiting its turn to break up the blue above us. It smelled too like it would rain soon. “Oh. Ok. Come on up,” he said.
Kelvin and Lee had built the yurt together the previous month. Tall and octagonal, with weathered wood walls and a high ceiling, it was tucked away between the trees and almost ready to be inhabited by artists or wanderers. They had raided the junkyards on Martha’s Vineyard for the windows, so each face of the octagon had a different shaped glass cut into it and the sunlight warmed the single room from every direction.
I grabbed a hold of the ladder and climbed up to the roof. The roof was pitched and round, and Kelvin was overlapping thin shingles in circular rows around it. “I don’t really have a system,” he said to me while I watched. “I just listen to what the shingles tell me.” So we decided he would lay them down, and I would nail them in. And this worked well so that we were happy and quiet and busy for a half an hour before we spoke again. Every once in a while, he climbed back down the ladder to get more, and I looked up from our vantage point over to the little valley below. The air smelled like rain and leaves and autumn. I liked breaking up the stillness with the violence of hammer and nails.
“One day?” Kelvin said to me. “I want to find a place? hidden away in the woods. And build-- an invisible house.” I looked at him, and he was staring off into the forest. With his winter hat covering the lines in his forehead, and his habit of speaking his sentences as questions, it was hard to tell his real age. “I almost had one once? Before. I went into the woods? And every day I brought in something else that I found from the outside. I built a house there in the trees? It had windows that I made out of pieces of glass that I found in the trash. And it had little – little cubbies? Where I could put my things. I lived there for a whole year. And then one day, the man who owned the property where the woods was? He went for a walk and he found my house. And he told me that he would call the police if I didn’t leave. He never even knew I was there if he hadn’t found my house. I wasn’t bothering anyone.
But one day? One day I want to build a house that no one will be able to see. And then I can live there as long as I want.”
We worked fast, the two of us together. The patch of blue above us moved onward and we were enveloped in grey sky and green treetops. Afterwards, we went inside, and he made lunch in the quiet kitchen with the stereo playing Feist’s “The Water”. He made a plate for each of us and took two outside to give to the builders working on the barn. On my plate he put a generous piece of dark chocolate. I ate quietly in the stillness and thought my thoughts and then the clouds came and it started to rain.
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