The days blurred together for Marty. He tried to ignore the time passage, but his internal calendar plagued him like an emotional indigestion, popping in whenever he emptied his mind, churning his stomach and tightening his throat. Two weeks passed by, fifteen days, sixteen, another full moon, the second one since he’d been here; his only relief was the mental numbing of hard work. Of course, the harder he worked, the more effort the other three men put into the construction effort—they couldn’t let a white man, an old white man, outpace them in trimming and notching the timbers. But, the competition was friendly with everyone a winner: the houses were coming together quicker than Red Shirt had figured which meant that the trip to The Trees would be sooner. Marty even constructed an improvised pulley system to hoist the topmost timbers into place. He was humble about the design and even tried to give credit for it to the chief, but Red Shirt wouldn’t accept it.
