Page 92 of Christmas with Three Firemen

I’ll take that trade every year for the rest of my life.

Chapter twenty-nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Wes

The framing goes up faster with six extra hands on it, and I’ve got mine on a stud by seven in the morning, level, pressed against new wood, the satisfaction of watching a wall that didn’t exist yesterday go up.

The contractors run the crew in shifts around their own schedule, the parts requiring licenses and inspections handled by their guys, the rest handed to whoever’s off duty and willing. I’m always willing.

There’s a kind of quiet in physical work that I’ve never found anywhere else, not in meditation, not in sleep, just the specific silence that comes from a task with a clear beginning and a clear end and hands that know exactly what to do without needing instructions from the part of my brain that doesn’t shut off.

Callum’s on drywall with two of the contractor’s guys. Danny’s running wire with a headlamp and language I’m fairly sure isn’t in any electrical code.

I’m framing, because I like framing, the geometry of it, load calculated and distributed the way it’s supposed to be, nothing hidden, nothing left to guess at.

By midmorning the neighborhood starts showing up.

Not asked. Nobody put out a call for volunteers, as far as I know.

They just arrive, one at a time and then in clusters, carrying tools, folding chairs, and coolers of food, the same families who slept on cots in this bay during the blizzard, the same people from the toy drive, the same faces from the fundraiser.

Mr. Reyes shows up with a level and a nail gun and says nothing about where he learned to use either; he just gets to work on the far wall like he’s been doing this his whole life.

Noelle picks up a hammer around noon, and nobody hands it to her. She just claims it off the supply table like she’s decided this is happening, and ends up on the section of framing next to mine, working a stud into place with more determination than technique.

“You’re holding it too high,” I tell her.

“I’m holding it exactly where the internet said to hold it.”

“The internet’s wrong.”

She adjusts her grip lower on the handle, tries again, and the nail goes in clean on the second swing. She looks almost personally offended by how easy the fix was.

“Nobody told me twenty-one years of paperwork and seven years of arson investigation would leave me this bad at basic construction,” she says.

“You’re not bad. You were holding it wrong.”

“That’s the same thing, Wes.”

“It’s not.” I set the next stud in place, hold it steady.

She positions the nail where I indicate. I don’t say anything else. She doesn’t either.

We work through the next six studs like that, mostly silent, the occasional correction, the occasional dry comment from her that I let sit without responding to because responding isn’t always the point.

It’s the kind of quiet I’ve had with her before. On the roof that first cold night, when she talked about Christmas and let the rest of it sit. In the archive room, with the photograph between us and nothing worth saying about it. In the equipment room, after. The specific silence that isn’t empty, that’s actually doing something even though nothing’s being said.

Around one, on a break, I pull the letters out of my jacket pocket.

I’ve had them on me since December first, same as every year. My grandmother’s handwriting, three cards deep, the ink gone brown with age, one from when I was nine, one from the year I shipped out, one from the last Christmas before she passed.

I don’t usually take them out where anyone can see. I showed Noelle a photo of one once, on the roof, back before any of this, and didn’t explain it, and she didn’t ask.

I take one out now and read it while I eat.

She notices.

“Your grandmother,” she says.