2018.06.08

It's Friday.

First he mixed clay and water to a beautiful thick mud, in the mustangs’ water bucket. He let Laura stir the mud while he laid a row of rocks around three sides of the space he had cleared by the house-wall. Then with a wooden paddle he spread the mud over the rocks. In the mud he laid another row of rocks, and plastered them over the top and down on the inside with more mud. He made a box on the ground; three sides of box were made of rocks and mud, and the other side was the long wall of the house. With rocks and mud and more rocks and more mud, he built the walls as high as Laura’s chin. Then on the walls, close against the house, he laid a log. He plastered the log all over with mud. After that, he built up rocks and mud on top of that log. He was making the chimney now, and he made it smaller and smaller. He had to go to the creek for more rocks. Laura and Mary could not go again, because Ma said the damp air might give them a fever. Mary sat beside Ma and sewed another block of her nine-patch quilt, but Laura mixed another bucketful of mud. Next day Pa built the chimney as high as the house-wall. Then he stood and looked at it. He ran his fingers through his hair. Ma told him that he looked like a wild man and he was standing his hair all on end. Pa answered that it stood on end anyway and when he had been courting her it never would lie down, no matter how much he had slicked it with bear grease. He threw himself down on the grass at her feet and said that he was plumb tuckered out, lifting rocks up there. Ma said that he had done well to build that chimney up so high all by himself. She ran her hand through his hair and stood it up more than ever. She asked him why he didn’t make it stick-and-daub the rest of the way. He admitted that it would be easier and he was blamed if he didn’t believe he would. He jumped up. Ma asked him to stay here in the shade and rest awhile. But he shook his head.