Rise: How a House Built a Family(50)

“Sit down, Roman,” Hope said. “You can come see the house after we do one more wall, okay? Sit for just a little longer.”

He sat with his fingers laced on his knees, watching like he might shout out a few pointers concerning our technique.

The next wall went up quickly but came with its own unique challenges. It didn’t have insulation under it or the threaded ties to hold it to the slab. To keep it from shifting around, we had to bring out the big guns—and real bullets. A nail had to be driven through the bottom plate—the bottom horizontal board that vertical wall boards are nailed to—and into the concrete. This terrifying job was all mine. The nail gun hooked to the compressor wasn’t powerful enough. I would have to drive the nails in with a device that looked a lot like a telescope but actually fired .22 blanks, blasting the nail through both wood and concrete.

I crouched at the far end of the wall, dropping the shell twice before fitting it into the middle of the tool. The three-inch masonry nail went into the business end of the power hammer. This was the closest I had come to crying since we started. I lifted the tool upright and took a breath so deep that my right ear popped. “Earplugs. I forgot.” The delay made me so happy that I tried in vain to think up a reason for another one.

The kids watched with sympathetic grimaces. They could see that I was scared but weren’t about to take my place. I lifted the gun, carefully choosing the right spot to rest the nail end, and tried the same trick I had relied on throughout this enormous, impossible project: imagining the worst possible outcome and reminding myself that we could get through it. What was the worst-case scenario? Oh, Jesus. I didn’t even want to think about it. I lifted the hammer and after a practice aim realized I was just as terrified of smashing my hand with the hammer as I was of the crazy tool malfunctioning.

“Pretend it’s Thor’s hammer. Forget about the gun thing.” Drew’s voice was muted through the earplugs, but it still made me smile.

I lifted the hammer and brought it down hard. The .22 shell fired, and I swore I could feel the air around me expand and contract with the blast. The echo sounded for miles. Sulfur and burnt-paper scent drifted up. The tool wobbled in my grip and I let it go, more interested now in the results than in the weapon. I’d driven the nail clean in, crushing the little orange plastic cap around the nail head. The kids’ eyes were wide, fingers still up by their ears, when I turned around and grinned.

“Nailed it!” I said, feeling damn proud of myself. But when I pulled the earplugs out, I could hear Roman whimpering. I hugged him and admired his latest frog-in-a-pail, Bufford. “Hope is going to play with you for a few minutes while we get this wall finished. Then we’ll take a break, okay?”

“And a fire?” he asked.

“Maybe a fire. It’s warm today though. We might not need one.”

“I need one.”

“Gather some wood and gum balls then. We’ll have a fire.”

He wove his way around and over walls to the low end of the slab in the garage and headed for the closest sweetgum tree to gather gum balls. Hope joined him, and I put three more nails in the wall with the nail shooter, shouting “Ears!” before each hit. The power behind the echoing blast made me feel strong and capable. Caroline would find excuses to use a tool like this. She would build things just for the joy of hammering them into concrete with a bullet. I had the urge to shout and roar a marine hoo-rah.

We had a late lunch, and then framed walls until more than half of the downstairs was complete. The structure gained stability once we had enough walls to brace and cross-brace each one into one or more of the others. It resembled a spiderweb in ways it probably shouldn’t have, but at least it felt safe. Better overbraced than underbraced, I always say.

It was dark when we started packing up tools. Roman was worn-out. He and I had played for a while in the afternoon and let the older kids lay out a wall and raise it on their own. I couldn’t stop smiling while I watched them push our kitchen up into a three-dimensional space. Their faces were almost unrecognizable. They were not the same kids who had slept with me on bedroom floors with a dresser in front of the door. These kids were self-assured. They were capable of anything. These kids were brave. Invincible.

Roman and I carried snacks, muddy clothes, and the cooler to the trunk. I thought the kids would get the hint that it was time to wrap it up, but they looked determined to see the entire first floor framed, even if it meant working by moonlight. “Get the tools locked up,” I said. “We’ll come back in the morning.”

They let out a united groan, and I could hear their minds whirling for excuses. “We should spend the night out here. Camp out on the slab,” Drew said.

That was exactly the right comment to swing Hope over to my side. “Mommy’s right. Roman looks exhausted.” She pulled the plug on the compressor and flipped the air-release valve.

Jada and Drew sighed wistfully but wound up cords and hoses without complaint. I took two steps toward them, and my vision faded around the edges. A lake of coffee couldn’t compete against the effects of the sleep deprivation I’d been facing for weeks. Add some dehydration and inadequate calorie intake and it was no wonder I was at the edge of collapse.

Roman climbed into his car seat willingly, a sure sign of exhaustion. “It was a best day,” he said. “A best froggy day. A twenty-eighty-five-three-hundred-froggies day.”