All I could do was grunt back until the thing was laid down and tacked in place. “Shouldn’t you get some help?” she yelled. “And miss all the exercise?” “Sometimes doing everything yourself isn’t manly, it’s pigheaded.” The sun was almost directly overhead, so despite her sunglasses she had to shield her eyes when looking up. She wore a pair of denim shorts, a T-shirt and sneakers. “So come on up and help.” “Me? I’m not a carpenter.” “Hands and back is all you need.” She was right. There’s no simple way to handle a four-by-eight sheet of anything by yourself, especially plywood, especially suspended on ladders and scaffolding. Having her help made it possible to lay up one full side of subroof, from eave to ridge. The effort cost her a few splinters, while demonstrating the superior exercise value of genuine labor over the simulated health-club variety. As compensation I fed her beer from my dwindling stock of Burton’s fancy imports and let her back-nail the subroof with a power nailer.
