Brian Holte, OWP 1998

Water runs downhill. It ran downward into the little crack I left in the roof after taking off four rows of shingles to check if there was dry rot beyond the rotted edge sheathing. Downward, down into the light fixtures and into the grooves between the square sections of old-style sheet rock, dripping, almost gushing onto the floor, onto the new carpet in the kids' bedrooms.

It is three a.m. and I am awakened by my wife's scream coming from downstairs, a scream in the middle of the night from where my kids are sleeping. Rushing down I am not met with the horror of something bad for my kids, nor of the results of a night burglar or some other emotion intrusion, but rather with the one possible problem, the one big concern my wife had when I had told her that I was going to do the re-roofing: that it not leak, that water not get into the house and ruin anything, that the vision of running water and large raindrops hanging from the ceiling in the manner of heavy dewdrops clinging to the underside of maple leaves in the backyard . . ., that this vision, this scene, not become real.

So, what did I do? Or, more importantly, what didn't I do? As tempting as it was, and as much as I wanted to squirm, lie, excuse, and sneak my way out of my less-than-intended creation,&emdash;with, "How in the world could so much water be coming in through the little half-inch gap that I must have left uncovered?" and "Please appreciate all the time I've spent and and sweat I've exerted on all the different projects in this house," and "I worked 'til twilight last night and I was tired," and "My intentions were noble," and "Sorry I'm not perfect like you . . ."&emdash;the two-second glance that passed between my wife and I slammed shut any escape I may have found. This was my doing and my problem, and by god, I had better fix it as quickly as Iu can. It took a couple more seconds for me to actually look at the ceiling, to see actual water dripping down into the room from a hairline crack in the plaster, and another second to realize it wasn't a good thing to have the lights' hanging bowls filled to the brim and dripping with water.

It was time for a quick decision, but I was faced with a dilemma: should I sop up what I can inside the rooms (instead of standing here just watching the water flow), or should I climb up onto the roof&emdash;the now wet roof&emdash;and cover it up the way I should have six hours before. I guess it took another five seconds to know the answer, which was to do both, at the fastest pace I'd moved in a long time. So I grabbed a bunch of towels and laid them on the floors in the two rooms, tilted the light covers and spilled (oops! damn!) the water out of them, pulled the comforter off one bed where some drops were beginning to land, and made a quick swipe all along the ceiling crack. And then with a red towel flying behind me, I high tailed it to the backyard, up the ladder that seemed to be waiting there for me, and onto the plywood- and visqueen-covered, nighttime roof to complete the mission.

Almost immediately I saw the source of the problem&emdash;somehow in my haste or ignorance or inattentiveness or disbelief that it could rain after all the clear days we'd had recently&emdash;I had layer the temporary covering so that it would be effective against the rain only if the fallen water stayed where it fell; I had put the lower layer of plywood on top of the higher layer of visqueen (I had stapled its lower edge to the roof sheathing prematurely, having worked from top to bottom, rather than bottom to top) and wished and cursed that I had taken the extra ten minutes hours before to lay one more layer of covering; and too, that I'd known that water, as it runs downhill, needs only a minute opening, any sort of invitation to move as directly to the earth as possible. And in those few minutes I learned the essentials of roofing that humans have practiced for thousands of years, but which I had never had the occasion or the occurrence to so practically understand or contemplate: water runs downhill, from upper surfaces to lower surfaces, always pulled by the gravity that grounds and humbles us.