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whenever I came by to see the old man, and he wasn't there,
which,
of course, was most of the time, I'd slip out into the backyard, kick
up a few
stones and pitch them at the squares of glass, shattering the
individual panels
one at a time, until the wooden frames stood open and empty, and the
native
sword fern and bracken began to reclaim the littered ground around the
railroad
tie foundation. If the old man noticed, he never said a word to me.
    Sometime
back
in the late eighties, while the place was rented, a freak windstorm
tore a limb
from the huge oak at the north end of the yard and dropped it onto the
side of
the little building, crushing half the roof and demolishing the whole
south
wall. Since then, it had stood as a ruin, a skeletal and deformed
reminder of
the impermanence of even the most artful joinery.
    Despite
its
seemingly decrepit state, the remaining structure fought us every step
of the
way. After failing to push it over by hand, we attached ropes to the
upper
comers of the nearest remaining wall. George and Norman manned one
rope, Harold
and I the other. On the count of three we commenced our "dragging
stones
for the pharaoh" impression. All we lacked was a bald guy with a drum.
    When
I'd
planned the job, I figured it wouldn't take much to pull the rest of it
down.
In my mind's eye, I'd imagined the moment when it came clattering to
the ground
and figured our biggest problem would be keeping out of the way as it
fell. It
didn't work out that way.
    Instead
of
collapsing before the might of our combined muscle, the old frame
seemed to dig
in its heels, to grit its jagged glass teeth, as if somehow determined
to
resist us for all it was worth. It came down incrementally, inch by
stubborn
inch, groaning and popping as each handmade joint fought for its
integrity,
never giving in to gravity, forcing us to pull it all the way .to the
ground
and then to jump up and down on it as it lay there. I think my mother
would
have liked that.
    I
issued each
of the fellas a pair of leather work gloves and a hammer. It took an
hour to
break the sash into pieces and feed it to the fire and another hour of
raking
through the debris to fill the wheelbarrow nearly to the top with
shards of
broken glass and yellowed window putty.
    By
three-thirty, all that remained was the raised bed on which the
greenhouse had
once stood, a twelve-by-twenty-foot altar edged by ancient railroad
ties. We
were leaning on our rakes and resting on our laurels when Harold
pointed to the
raised rectangle which had once been the floor of the greenhouse. "How
come nothin' grows in there, Leo? You'd think with all the years it
would have
growed over like the rest of this shit here."
    "
'Cause
it's not dirt," I said. "It's cedar sawdust. They wanted to put in a
concrete floor, but my mother insisted they fill it up with cedar
sawdust. She
-said it would be easier on the legs and back and keep the bugs away
besides."
    "I
remember," George said. "Ralphie got it for her from that old shake
mill down by where he worked on the docks. A whole dump-truck load. Got
it
free, too. Your old man said he'd be damned if he was gonna pay good
money for
sawdust. Said the next thing you knew, they'd be charging us for bark."
    Harold
nudged
me with the handle of his rake.
    "Wasn't
there some talk of schnapps?"
    "Rebecca's
bringing it" I checked my watch. Three-thirty. "She should be along
any minute now."
    I
thought I may
have detected rumblings of mutiny among the troops. I had a few more
things I
wanted to do, but they were right. It was time to quit. They'd put in a
better
day's work than I could have hoped for. A day of manual labor and a
couple of
six-packs each had made them dangerous to themselves and others. They'd
had
enough.
    Except
for Norman. "What are we
gonna burn next?" he wanted to know. I didn't like the way he was
looking
at the rest of us, so I decided to humor him. I pointed to the
foundation.
    "The
railroad ties," I said. "I've got a little earthmover