First full day on the roof without the list

The first sheet came up the ladder at ten to seven, and Marcus Hale took it by the top edge and walked it up the roof the way he had been doing since he was twenty-one.

It was a two-car garage with a bonus room over it, for a family on Alder Court who wanted somewhere for their teenager to be loud. The rafters had gone up the week before. Today was sheathing: sheets off the stack in the driveway, up the ladder, onto the roof, seams staggered, nailed off six on the edges and twelve in the field, row after row until the bones of the roof disappeared under a skin you could walk on.

Gus cut and handed up. Owen, twenty-two and in his first year on the crew, carried sheets from the stack to the ladder and talked the entire time about a truck he couldn't afford. Marcus was on the roof, tied off at the ridge, with a nail gun, a tape, and the whole day in front of him.

He didn't think about the list once. That came later, at the fourth red light.

The list

The list had never been written down. It didn't need to be. For years, every workday had ended the same way: Marcus climbed into the truck, pulled the door shut, and started taking inventory.

Left knee, the one that clicked on ladder rungs. Lower back, from bending over layout. Right heel, which would be the first thing he felt tomorrow when his feet hit the floor. The shoulder, on nailing days. There were six traffic lights between most of his jobs and his driveway, and he used every one of them. Each red light, he checked one thing and ranked it, and by the time he turned onto his street he knew what kind of night it was going to be. Whether he'd ice something. Whether he'd get up the fourteen stairs to say goodnight without Kara hearing it from the kitchen.

After a while she had a question for it. He would come in the back door and she would say, "What's the count," and he'd say "three," which meant a decent day, or "five," which meant don't ask him to carry anything.

Two Tuesdays before

March had been good. Better than he let himself say out loud, in case saying it counted as a jinx.

Then, two Tuesdays before the garage, it rained sideways all day while they set a beam on a porch job across town. Everything was wet, the beam was heavy and the footing was worse, and he spent the afternoon kneeling in a puddle he'd stopped noticing. The list ran to six before the second light. He sat in the driveway with the engine off for ten minutes, wipers stopped halfway across the glass, and let himself believe March had been a fluke.

He took the index card out of his wallet. The first numbers from the doctor were on the front. The newer ones were on the back. He looked at it the way you put a level on a wall you're already sure is plumb, because sure and plumb aren't the same thing. Then he went inside, said "six," and after dinner did his step-downs off the bottom stair anyway, in a bad mood, with Josie supervising from the third step.

On Thursday he told Lena, the physical therapist he'd spent six months complaining about. She asked what the rest of the week had been like, apart from Tuesday. He thought about it. Mostly fine, he said. She wrote that down, right next to the six.

Lunch on the tailgate

By lunch the garage roof was half covered. They ate on the tailgate, Gus with his sunflower seeds, Owen with two gas-station hot dogs and the truck he couldn't afford open on his phone. Marcus climbed down for lunch and back up after, and the only thing he noticed about the ladder was that somebody had left a tape measure on the third rung.

The afternoon was the part that used to cost him. Kneeling on the sheathing to nail off the lower courses, up and down, up and down, the slope leaning everything toward his knees. Around two Owen came up to help, put a boot on a skim of sawdust, and slid. Marcus caught his harness strap without thinking and set him back on the toe board, and they both laughed a little too loud.

By four the last sheet was on at the ridge. There was rain in the forecast overnight, so they rolled out underlayment and tacked it down, and Marcus came off the roof at a quarter to six with a sunburn on the back of his neck, sawdust in his collar, and forearms that felt like he had done a day's work, because he had.

Gus was coiling the air hose at the bottom and watched him come down. Marcus came down facing the ladder at a normal speed, without the pause on every rung that let the knee catch up. Gus cracked a seed and didn't say anything, which from Gus was practically a speech.

Six lights

The first light was green. At the second, he was wondering whether the lumber yard would have the hangers they needed by Monday. At the third, a song he didn't like came on the radio, and he let it play.

At the fourth light, by the car wash, he realized he hadn't started.

So he tried. Left knee: he checked it the way you pat your pocket for your keys. It was there. It was a knee. Lower back: tired, the ordinary tired of a man who had knelt on a roof all day, the kind a shower takes care of. Heel: nothing to report. Shoulder: sore from the nail gun, honestly sore, the kind that had never once made the list.

It wasn't that nothing hurt. His neck was burned and his hands were beat up, and he'd be stiff tomorrow like anybody would. It was that none of it was following him home.

He sat through the green until the car behind him tapped its horn.

The count

Kara was at the sink when he came in the back door, rinsing a pot with the radio on low.

"What's the count," she said, without turning around.

Marcus stood on the mat in his socks with his boots in one hand and opened his mouth, and couldn't come up with a number.

"I forgot to do it," he said.

She turned off the water. She looked at him for a second, at the sunburn and the sawdust, and whatever she had been about to say, she decided to keep.

She tossed him the dish towel.