On the third morning, when dry wall was being hung, Edna Mae Yates walked the plank.
It was a thin, springy board, and the 75-year-old didn’t need a hand to help her ascend from the dirt to her porch. She wandered into her house, her head bobbing as she pointed out the bedrooms.
“I got kinfolks upstate, and they might come to visit me,” she said.
Then she picked up empty cans and tossed them in the trash.
The workers grinned while she stooped for more.
“She’s a bird,” said one.
When everybody left for lunch, Yates stayed behind. She would guard the materials as she had the day before. She didn’t need any lunch.
“I don’t eat that much. I try not to get myself overweight,” she said.
“I’ve never been sick in 12 years.”
She painted the foundation blocks in the afternoon — a light blue-gray, to match the siding. For the third day she wore her straw hat, her blue skirt and her white shoes. The paint, like the dirt, did not get on her. She stayed clean.
“I know how to paint,” she said. “Yeah.”
Storm clouds came in the afternoon, and a worker drove Yates home.
She sat in her little duplex, which has been condemned by the city, and listened to the rain. If it came down really hard, she knew, her ceiling would start dripping.
But over at her new house, the roof had just been finished.
“It’s all right,” she said.
And new shingles turned the rain away — the third day.
