by Roger Bruner
Charlie shook his head. “You tell it. You’re the boss.”
“The point—the bottom line, for those of you planning to be business majors—is we took a quick survey this morning. We confirmed the existence of thirty-eight villagers. Six are between the ages of five and ten. We didn’t see anyone younger than that. Twelve villagers are too old to do construction. Two others appear incapable of helping, even though their ages wouldn’t be prohibitive. We may be able to involve some of them in light tasks if we can find a way to explain our needs.”
In early May, I’d taken a couple of better-than-average photos of some baby robins in a nest in the pyracantha bush beside our front porch. Watching Mom Robin feed her little ones mesmerized me. The babies appeared to eat with gusto, and they didn’t seem to object to being dependent on their mother.
But suppose those babies had been adult birds that were unable to find food or feed themselves? How would they have felt about being dependent on stronger, healthier birds—if other birds were even willing to help care for them?
Was that how the more helpless villagers would feel about not being able to share in the rebuilding?
“In short,”—Charlie spoke without the microphone until Rob held it up in front of him—“eighteen villagers appear capable of helping. So, between you, them, and us, that makes, uh, 164 laborers.”
“One hundred sixty-five! Don’t forget the Holy Spirit!”
I wasn’t sure who’d said that, but she sounded amazingly like the ditsy venue girl. If so, she was a lot smarter than she’d let on.
Yesses and amens filled the air, and the villagers glanced at one another with concerned faces about why we’d suddenly begun applauding, whistling, and whooping at the volume of thunder. Maybe they didn’t use such forms of approval.
“You’re spot-on about that. The Holy Spirit is the Big Boss here.”
Rob took the microphone back.
“We count eighteen distinct family units in Santa María, but we see the remnants of many more houses than that. We assume the storm killed a number of villagers—perhaps even whole families.”
We got quiet fast. The time for humor had passed.
“We have thirteen days—”
“Really just twelve, because we leave for home early that last day,” Charlie clarified.
“Twelve days in which 164 people, almost entirely novices, will build eighteen brand-new residences with major and presumably miraculous assistance from the Holy Spirit.”
As the realities of our assignment finally struck home, leaving us speechless, I suspected that most of us were groaning inwardly. As apprehensive as I was, I tried replacing my silent curses with a prayer for strength, patience, and—above all else—the will to obey.
God wanted me here. I believed that more today than yesterday. And yet the task looked more impossible in the morning sunlight than it had in last night’s darkness.
“Of course, these houses won’t be big,” Rob said, “or fancy. The villagers didn’t live in mansions before, and they won’t now. The most important thing is getting everyone inside before the rains come. We’ll use the existing dirt foundations—they don’t have block foundations like ours—and place a simple one-room cottage on each one. Picture a fair-sized, single car garage if that tells you anything. Anyone who’s attended summer youth camp has probably slept in similar housing and hated it.”
I smiled. Other heads nodded.
Rob and Charlie went on to describe how plain these cottages would be. They would have closeable doors a generous Jewish competitor had contributed, but no windows; plywood floors, but no interior or exterior paint; and a few shingles to keep out the rain, but no insulation.
“Bringing electricity and plumbing to Santa María isn’t our job,” they reminded us. “The villagers will be thrilled with whatever we provide. From what little we can figure out, their former houses may not have been as nice as these new ones.”
Memories of the migrant camp ran through my head. These simple cottages would have seemed palatial there.
“You’ve heard the term ‘bare bones’? Well, that’s what we’re doing. If we have time for minor improvements, great. But we can’t overemphasize the importance of getting everyone inside again—”
“And keeping the outdoors outdoors,” a thoughtful male voice said from across the mess tent.
The team wasn’t shy about saying, “Hallelujah!” and “Praise the Lord!” Skepticism and uncertainty gave way to optimism and excitement. If experienced builders like Charlie and Rob—and especially God, the Builder of the Universe—believed we could do it, our only choice was … do it.
The project that had sounded humanly impossible minutes earlier seemed miraculously possible now. I thanked God for the millionth time since last night that I didn’t take the easy way out by going home.
When Rob and Charlie started talking again, I reached into my purse and dug around for the nail clippers. I always carried them for cutting loose threads. I was a fanatic about getting rid of those danglers, and I never took a chance by just pulling one out.
My favorite clothes might be little more than loose, dangling threads by the time I left Santa María, but that was okay. Santa María’s lack of a place to shop didn’t matter. I could do that at home.
Pleased and amazed that I wasn’t letting my vanity interfere, I attacked my fingernails with newfound motivation. Aleesha raised her eyebrows and smiled. She was probably the only person who noticed. That’s the way I wanted it. I wasn’t cutting my nails for show, but for doing my fair share of work.
chapter eighteen
We’re going to divide into teams, and each one will build a cottage from the ground up. Each team will have a captain, selected for his or her carpentry and woodworking experience or—in many cases—proven leadership skills. Rob and I will be floaters, keeping you team leaders on target and assuring ourselves that the captains have everyone else under control, too.”
“How many of you know what a plumb line is?” Charlie asked.
Almost every hand went up. I giggled at seeing the villagers raise their hands—just as if they’d understood the question, too.
“Good. Rob and I are going to be the plumb lines that keep the team captains straight. They’ll be plumb lines to keep everyone else straight. Rob and I will rely on the Holy Spirit to keep us straight.”
That made sense to me, and—from the smiles I saw—to everyone but the villagers.
Rob and Charlie would directly oversee anything requiring close precision—installing the doors, for example—and doublecheck every stage of our work before we did something so wrong it couldn’t be undone.
They promised not to micromanage, though. (I had to ask Aleesha what that meant.) Not as long as the team captains were honest enough to ask for help when they needed it.
“You’re not going to do a perfect job,” Rob said. “Don’t expect to. You’re unskilled workers God has called according to His purposes. You’re answerable to Him and Him alone, and He expects your best—no more, no less.”
“Building houses that will stand for years is more important than making them look good,” Charlie pointed out.
The two men would leave hand tools and leftover materials for the villagers to do additional building if they wanted, but they wished they could leave detailed, written instructions as well. The materials and way of building things were probably different than what the villagers were accustomed to.
Of course, at this stage of our relationship with the villagers, we didn’t know if they could read or write. And there was still that problem of the language barrier.
“After dividing into teams, we’ll clear away those remains we mentioned. Then we’ll start building the modules we’ll make the houses out of. We have one single cottage design, drawn in detail on the back of a paper napkin.”
Not everyone realized Rob was teasing. Although he was the senior builder, he didn’t seem quite as outgoing as Charlie or as inclined to joke around.
But he had his moments.
“I’m just teasing about the napkin, guys, but I’m dead serious about standardization. We need to cut each piece of wood precisely enough to fit any house equally well. That means taking time, being careful, and double-checking every step. If we start by constructing our building blocks, assembling the houses will be like spreading melted butter on hot bread.”
I hadn’t heard that expression in ages. How long ago did my grandma die? I was in elementary school.
“Guys and girls, you know how Rob is ….” Charlie said, barely able to fight back a laugh.
The team members who’d feared a disagreement between Rob and Charlie earlier were the first to laugh at them now. No one could resist joining them.
“In brief, you’ll build eighteen back walls, eighteen front walls, and thirty-six side walls. We cut some of the bigger pieces ahead of time, but you’ll still do an awful lot of measuring, sawing, sanding, and hammering the next few days. You—”
“You know Charlie,” Rob said. He wore a mischievous grin. “He means the skeletons of all those walls. We couldn’t lift them if we assembled them completely. Oh, and Charlie was going to let the villagers drown when it rains. He forgot about pre-building sections for eighteen roofs.”
“Okay, smarty-pants!” Charlie roared with laughter at his own oversights. “Let’s divide into teams now, and then we’ll decide who does what.”
Before he could proceed, a female voice spoke from somewhere to my left.
“So will this be like the ‘barn raisings’ you see in movies about rural people?”
“Very much so. Let’s divide up.”
I was always the last person chosen for a team in phys ed, and I’d experienced that kind of exclusion from kindergarten straight through high school. College was bound to be the same. I wasn’t any more an athlete than a home repairer.
I wondered if I’d finally overcome my youthful klutziness the way I outgrew a childhood allergy to chocolate. My inability to use my hands constructively without breaking something was one of my least admired childhood traits, and Mom and Dad forbade me to use a hammer or saw for any reason.
At the time, I couldn’t see why they made such a big deal about the huge holes in the wall of my room. After all, it was my room. Maybe I should have kept the holes small enough to put a 20 x 30–inch poster over—if not a framed 11 × 14 picture.
Permission to use a screwdriver was conditional on one or preferably both parents’ being present to supervise. My most skillful efforts to fix things around the house—I had the best of intentions then, just as I did now—had cost them a small fortune in real repairs.
As the team captains took turns selecting team members, they wouldn’t need to know about my ineptness to realize that Miss Priss was their least desirable choice. In school, a team could only use a specified number of kids. But here, everyone would be chosen, and last place would be the ultimate humiliation.
Jesus’ teaching about the first being last and the last first wasn’t as encouraging as it should have been.
And having to stand here—as short as I was, they’d overlook me if I sat down—while eighteen mostly male pairs of eyes assessed the availability of more than a hundred better choices made it tough to keep from swearing silently.
But I’d been good so far today and managed to convert this yet-unspoken curse into a “Blazes!” instead. My parents disapproved of saying darn, dang, or heck because they sounded too much like the “real thing,” but—under these circumstances—avoiding the real thing beat the, uh, eternal hot oven broiler out of worrying about my parents’ silly rules.
I’d be the last one chosen. I had no doubt of that. I was the smallest, and everyone but Aleesha would still be angry with me today. I wasn’t naive enough to believe that laughing with me earlier signified forgiveness or acceptance.
Not only would I be last, I’d end up with the biggest, burliest, most brutish boy as my team captain, and he’d pay me back for yesterday by sticking me with the dirtiest and most deplorable tasks.
Then the happiest of realities set in. Charlie told us to number off from one to eighteen.
The team captains wouldn’t do the choosing. In fact, they had to number off, too.
I ended up on team #8. My captain was an ugly guy named Frank. I could tell from the expression on the back of his head that he’d love assigning the most awful jobs to me. When he turned to face me, he looked angry—almost rabid—about being stuck with me. That’s when I recognized him as Mr. Take-No-Prisoners.
I wasn’t sure if Frank disliked me because he was unforgiving, because of my recently acquired “Miss Prep” reputation, or because he didn’t like people and it wasn’t me at all; but I was dying to hold my fingertips in his face and shout, “See, Frank? I’ve already cut off my fingernails so I can do my best. Have you filed down your fangs?”
But I was satisfied that God, Aleesha, and I were the only ones who knew about my nails. Both personal prayer and sacrificial nail clipping should be done in a closet.
I was okay about Frank, though. I could put up with anything now. God had calmed me down enough since last night to assure me I could meet today’s challenges gracefully.
We’d gotten up early enough and formed teams so quickly that Charlie and Rob started leading the teams to their building sites at 9:15. I couldn’t understand why boy genius Neil accompanied them as they went from villager to villager, but they managed to communicate sufficiently well to place the intended owner of a specific house on each team.
We posted the team numbers on homemade signs at the front left corner of each tiny lot. Since they were sequential, I thought of them as house numbers. The houses would be on both sides of Santa María’s single street—just as they’d originally been—with the so-called Passover Church and the mess tent dividing the residential area into two sections.
Thinking about the decreased number of cottages needed almost made me cry. How many people did that twister kill?
I’d never witnessed the aftermath of a natural disaster before, and dwelling on this one would nauseate me if I didn’t start thinking about something else.
Charlie and Rob came back around to give each team its assignment. Although they assigned most of the teams to the “glamour jobs”—measuring and cutting boards to the right length for the infrastructure—they asked the remaining five teams, including team #8, to clear off the foundations. Frank looked like they’d asked him to chew nails.
More accurately, he looked like he wanted to spit nails.
I was tempted to offer him a good swear word but decided against it. If he had a sense of humor, I hadn’t seen any sign of it yet. Maybe he belonged to one of those always-serious denominations that never dances, goes to movies, or smiles. I giggled to myself wondering how he would react to somebody speaking in tongues. Maybe I could get Aleesha to pretend to do that sometime.
Regardless of Frank’s dour attitude, I was elated. I was ready to be faithful and flexible and do whatever he asked me to do. Since I’d gotten pretty good at bulldozing my room at home whenever the floor got too buried in stuff to walk on, today’s assignment would be a badly clichéd piece of cake.
Clearing rubble would be much the same, I thought, except we wouldn’t have to watch out for valuables.
Before we could cart away the debris, we had to dismantle the smaller pieces of the three houses the twister hadn’t carried elsewhere. Some of them weren’t that small, and we would have to break them down more. We could probably do our part in a couple of hours.
Crowbars, axes, and sledgehammers, here I come. Mom and Dad, you can’t speak one word of protest. Destruction is the rule today, and I’m in hog heaven.
I looked closely at one of those sledgehammers. I was impressed. Although it was bigger than me, at least my figure was slightly more feminine than its handle.
Frank handed me a short ladder and told me to whack away at something that was about to fall anyhow. But before I could put my fear of
heights beneath me and start climbing, I heard loud voices.
“We have to take all three buses back,” someone said. Who …? Oh, maybe the lead driver, the one whose language was worse than mine had ever been.
Rob didn’t give an inch. “No one in this village owns a car, and there aren’t any telephones out here. We’re not going to be left without something to use in case of an emergency. We paid for these buses to remain here … we could make all three of you stay.”
I couldn’t see the lead driver, but I could picture his face glowing a fiery red. “You’re not keeping us here for two weeks in this godforsaken place.”
“You go. You take two buses and only two buses. You hear me?”
The driver let loose with a long string of expletives, and several minutes later I heard the sound of two bus doors hissing shut like a pair of angry turtles.
I waited for my heart rate to go down a bit and started up the ladder, crowbar in hand. But God must not have intended for me to get very far.
Or was the Devil interfering?
chapter nineteen
Although I still felt a little spacey when Rob guided me to the front row opposite the driver’s seat, I wasn’t nearly as dizzy as I’d been the previous night after hitting my head. At least I didn’t land on my noggin this time.
“Your arm is broken,” Rob said quietly. “It looks like a clean break, if years of parenting and grandparenting have taught me anything about fractures.”
The pain throbbed and radiated throughout my entire upper body far too much for my tastes. In a wilder-than-Wild West setting like Santa María, I wondered if anyone had a bullet I could bite.
I settled myself as comfortably in my seat as I could and pressed my head against the window. I thought about something Rob told me a few minutes earlier.
“I woke up during the night,” he said, “aware that you were out there without a sleeping bag. I got up and brought my spare blanket to the edge of the field, but I couldn’t spot you and couldn’t chance terrifying the other girls by tiptoeing around and shining a flashlight in their faces. Tiptoeing?” He laughed. “Trying to walk through the trash between the sleeping bags, I would probably have fallen on someone. What would my family and my church think if Charlie had to send me home early for such misbehavior?”