He built the ramp in a weekend

The ramp the housing program put on my place in 2012 was garbage, and I say that as a man who works for the housing program.

My door sits thirty-four inches off the ground. Trailer on blocks, you know how they sit. The rule anybody uses is a foot of run for every inch of rise, so thirty-four inches wants thirty-four feet of ramp, plus a landing at the top big enough to turn around on while you're fighting the lock. What they gave me was eighteen feet straight off the door and no landing. The top was the worst of it, no run left by then. In February I'd get two thirds of the way up and start losing ground, and there's nothing stupider than a grown man rolling backward down his own house. Nine years of that. You get strong.

Last February a weatherization grant came through the office and the contractor they sent out was a guy named Wade, out of Rapid. Fifty-one, divorced. White Ram with a toolbox across the bed and a dent in the passenger door he'll explain to you if you give him half a chance. He got out, looked at my ramp about four seconds, and said, who did this to you.

I said the same people who sign my paycheck.

He did it Saturday and Sunday. Thirty-six feet with a switchback and a platform in the middle. Two-by-six pressure treated, which was eleven dollars and change a board in February, against a line item in our program that still says six. He drove back to the Menards in Rapid on a Saturday night and ate the difference himself, and I know he ate it because I do intake and I've got the file right here.

He put the joists sixteen on center when twenty-four passes. I asked him why. He said because you're going to be out on it in the ice.

Then he started coming back. February twenty-second. The handrail wasn't tight on the low end. It was tight.

March seventh. Flashing where the ramp meets the skirting so water couldn't get under the trailer. That one's real. Took him twenty minutes and he stayed four hours.

March thirtieth. He'd left a circular saw. Came for the saw.

April twelfth. He left a different saw. Sit with that a second. A man who does this for a living. Leaving saws.

April twenty-sixth. No reason offered. Brought a box of fruit snacks for my nephews like that's a reason.

May tenth. Said he was passing through. Rapid to here is ninety miles and the road ends at my mother's driveway. Nobody passes through.

Eleven of them. Eleven trips for a ramp that took two days, and I've got every one in my phone, because I'm the kind of man who writes things down. Number eleven was the Saturday before last, a soft spot on the platform. I went out there with him and we both stood around looking at it. Well. He stood. I pushed on it with my hand and it felt like wood to me.

Number seven was the twenty-fourth of May, and my nephews were at their mom's in Manderson that weekend. He stayed the night. In the morning he fixed the hinge on my cabinet door without being asked and then stood in my kitchen drinking coffee out of a jelly jar, because I don't own enough cups.

He's got a daughter in Sturgis, twenty-three, works at a Common Cents. The divorce was 2019. He says it was mutual. He's told me that more than once. He tells me all of this from under the trailer with his shoulders in the dirt while I hold the light for him.

My mother's kitchen window looks at my driveway. That's the view. There's the driveway and then there's 18. She's seventy-one and she sits there.

She told me the white truck was there early. Then she asked if he'd eaten, because anybody in that yard is somebody she's feeding, and I said he ate before he came out, and she let it go.

She's in that window most of the day.

Trey's fifteen and Petey's twelve, my sister Renae's boys, and they're at my place four nights out of seven because I've got the good internet and I don't say anything when they go through a whole box of something. Wade showed Trey how to drive a screw without stripping it. Trey stands different now, weight on one leg, looking at a thing a second longer before he puts his hands on it.

Petey asked me in June if Wade was my friend. I said yeah. He said okay and asked what was for dinner. Twelve-year-olds ask the question and then they're done with it.

Tuesdays there's a meeting in a church basement in town, seven o'clock, the same nine people and coffee that's been on the burner since five. Six of the nine I'm related to some way. Five years for me in August. They gave me a chip and somebody clapped and that was the event.

Last Tuesday there's a guy three chairs over I've never seen. Fifties, Carhartt with the sleeves pushed up. He shares, says his first name, then says his last name, which nobody does, and it's Wade's last name. It's not a common one out here. I did the arithmetic sitting right there in my chair and then I didn't hear one more word for forty minutes. Man could have read me the phone book.

After, I'm getting my jacket and he comes over and shakes my hand and says, you're the ramp.

I said that's me.

He said Wade talks about that ramp like he put up the Eiffel Tower. Then he said good to meet you and went and helped stack the chairs.

It's the only meeting inside forty miles. The next one's Martin, and Martin's on Thursday, and Thursday I've got the boys.

I've been fine. Went to work Wednesday and did fourteen intakes. Told a woman in Wanblee her application is still sitting at the state, which is a sentence I say thirty times a week.

Wade texted Thursday about the saw. The second one, still in its case by my door where he set it down in April. He said he'd grab it next time he's out this way.

The boys were over last night. Trey did his homework at my table with the TV going and Petey got into the hamburger I had out for Thursday. Now I've got to go to Batesland or figure out something else.