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and his contracting
wasn’t steady, and paid poor when it came; they sure didn’t know
many people; and smart? They did their best with what they had —
but folks in town said Ernie and Janie were a good match for each
other, and they didn’t say so in a kindly way either.
    Yet from the time he moved up to Fenlan, Mr. Swayze took them
on. He bought the land back on Little Bear Lake in the 1980s some
time, and after asking around hired Ernie to come lay foundations.
Land was no good, and Ernie told him so — more than half of it was
swamp, and most of the rest was bare, knobbly rock. Mr. Swayze said
he knew that now, but he bought it because he liked the feel of it and
hadn’t been thinking practical. Was there nothing that Ernie could
do? “Not for cheap,” said Ernie.
    “Then let’s not do it cheap,” said Mr. Swayze. “Tell me what it’ll
take.”
    It took a lot, but Ernie’d done pretty good for him by the time it
was done. Found him a level spot on high ground to build his house,
then brought in some fill and a digger and made a road across the
firmer parts of swamp so Mr. Swayze could get in and out. Sunk
a well through the rock, deep — so Mr. Swayze wouldn’t have to be
drinking swamp water — and strung a power line in so he wouldn’t
have to be using candles and oil lamps to see at night.
    Janie’d spent more than a few workdays out at the site — in those
days, she was as good a worker as any man and came twice as cheap,
or so said Ernie. That was when they’d got to know Mr. Swayze and
learned about what he did to make ends meet. And that was when he
started inviting them for dinner — first at the farmhouse Mr. Sloan
rented him about five miles up the concession road, then once his
own house was done, in there.
    Got so they’d dine with Mr. Swayze one time a month — whether
at his place or theirs. And oh, those dinners would be fine! Mr.
Swayze was a real good cook — a magic cook. He could take a chicken
and make it taste like Thanksgiving turkey; make a cheap cut of
steak into a restaurant-fine meal that’d dissolve on the tip of your
tongue. He wasn’t much on vegetables, but that was fine — neither
was Ernie, and Janie didn’t much care one way or the other.
    Ernie figured that Mr. Swayze cottoned to them so well because
there weren’t many others who’d accept him in town. He lived
alone, and Ernie said many in town felt that might be because he
was whoo-whoo. When Ernie said whoo-whoo, that meant he was
talking about a fellow that liked to lay with men and not women.
But Janie didn’t think that was true about Mr. Swayze on a couple
of counts.
    For one thing, the way Mr. Swayze was working, she didn’t think
he’d have time to lay with anyone , man or woman. The day he moved
into his house at Fenlan, he started writing. From dawn to dusk,
he wrote and wrote or so it seemed. When she was working in his
yard, the typewriter was going clackity-clack all the day long. When
they got together, there was always a new stack of paper by the
typewriter and he would often go and just look at it, making a mark
here and there. One time she asked him how he wrote so much, and
Mr. Swayze said, “Because when I’m here, I feel like it. The place here
inspires me. It’s got a soul to it. I just look at the rocks, and there’s a
spirit in them. Sometimes I can find it written in their face. Do you
understand what I’m saying?” “No,” she’d said, which was the truth.
So he winked at her. “Maybe you just inspire me, Janie.”
    Which was another reason she didn’t think he liked to lie with
men.
    When she got up with a stack of books in her arms to look at the
shelf, she saw what’d happened. The shelf was the kind that screwed
into the walls, and right on this wall a couple of those screws had
come loose. The shelf must have fallen off. Screw-holes must’ve
been stripped, and it must’ve fallen off. Probably happened while
she was outside just now.
    Probably the wind shook