Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

“Just scabs,” he replied with a smile.

“Only if they’re not insolent.” She stepped out of the house and shut the door. “This way.” She took him out back and showed him the job site.

The backyard, like the front, was wide, deep, and secluded, with more of the same big trees. At least one tree’s worth of dressed lumber was neatly piled behind the house along with several Sonotubes, concrete premix, and several pounds of nails. Leaning against the stack of lumber was a clamshell auger.

“What’s that for?” Thomas asked.

“I thought you knew about doing this kind of thing. It’s for digging the post holes.”

“What I meant was, where’s the power auger?”

“There isn’t one. This is better for you. The work is very Zen.” When he gave her an arch look, she shrugged lightly and added, “So I’m told. It’s the way my husband wants it, anyway.”

Thomas set down the tools he had brought with him. There was a hammer that he liked the heft of, a Lufkin tape measure, and a plumb rule that had been his grandfather’s and of which he was particularly proud. Then he picked up the auger and gauged it. “Your husband at work?”

“He’s out of town,” she said.

Thomas nodded, wondering how long before the come-on started. He was no fool, and it wasn’t as if a job that started in the backyard hadn’t ended up between the sheets before. Oh well, he reasoned, it would come when it came. “Where are the plans?”

She unfolded a sheet of homemade drawings. They seemed to be to scale and he figured they would work, although he usually just winged it and hoped for the best. “All right. I better get down to it.”

“If you need anything, I’ll be inside,” Mary said, but Thomas had already turned his attention to the job.

It took more than an hour to measure and stake the layout. It was going to be a big deck, thirty feet wide across part of the back of the house and twenty-four feet deep. One corner was to be trimmed at an angle with three steps leading down to what would be a flagstone patio. Thomas wondered if they would want him to install that, too. He hated working with flagstone, but he would do it if asked. Or perhaps he would subcontract the job to Pig Eye, who had probably done more flagstone than farmers’ wives. The hot-tub area was at the far right as you stood with your back to the house, the structure to be elevated from the rest of the deck, with built-in benches on three sides. This, Thomas decided as he paused to look at the framework of string, was going to take more than a week. He picked up the auger.

The first holes were tough. The soil was largely clay, heavy and wet and clinging to the blade of the auger. Thomas lifted the device as high as he could, standing on tiptoe, and drove it into the ground, jarring his shoulders. He pulled the lever, closing the machine’s jaws, then muscled the load of dirt out of the hole, dropped it, and went through the routine again. He had to go down three feet to be sure the concrete would be below the frost line and the cold weather would not cause the deck to heave. If a job was worth doing, Thomas thought, and he cursed his way through the third hole.

After ninety minutes, his shoulders ached and his shirt was off. As he finished the fifth hole, Thomas looked up. Mary was standing by the pile of lumber holding a bottle of beer and an empty glass. “I thought you could use this,” she said.

“Thanks.” She was wearing a halter top and a short denim skirt with plain brown sandals. Her limbs looked toned and smooth. Thomas tried to avoid looking at her, sensing that only trouble could come of it.

“Do you want the glass?” she asked. Thomas could feel the sweat rolling down his chest and arms, and he knew he looked good, the work causing his sinews to stick out. He could feel her looking at him in a way that was more than casual.

“It comes in a glass,” he said, and drank half of it without coming up for air. The second half went almost as quickly, and then, with another “Thanks,” he turned back to the job. A couple of minutes later, when he risked a quick glance around, she was gone.

Halfway through the fourteenth hole, Thomas’s new pawnshop watch told him it was almost time to quit. The going had gotten easier now. The soil seemed looser and not as wet. Thomas figured he could finish the rest the next morning and then start mixing concrete. He lifted the auger and drove it down, pulled the handle, lifted, and released. Again, lift, drive, lift, release. And a third time. He lifted and drove the auger down. It stopped with a jolt that nearly shook it out of his hands.