Somewhere in the lush hot fields of August are born the first snows of October, November at the latest. Soft cold crystals falling, piling on to the unfinished works of man, bringing calamity. If a house has an incomplete roof, openings in the walls, openings in the sheathing, snow drifts in, settles, gets heavy and wet. Then mold, warp, expansion, seepage, freeze and thaw, freeze and thaw, the forces that split boulders. In no time, a floor pops up, walls twist, pipes leak, ice penetrates a joint, part of a roof shears off. Nature reclaims the materials. In these mountains, a house begun but not closed in, exposed to one winter, becomes a ruin. And in the spring, you may as well just tear it down and start over, if you've still got the money and the will. Most of them don't. They sell at a loss and go elsewhere.

There was one such ruin, a hulk, abandoned but still standing, off a road near our site up in the Village. It was said that the owner of the hulk was in a southern desert, not responding to inquiries.

***

“No,” I said to the phone, “No wedding.”

“No wedding,” I repeated, for emphasis, and punched off the call.

“The point is, no wedding party,” I explained to my foreman.

“What's the problem?” he asked.

“Where those guys are from, they have a saying that at a wedding party, if nobody died, if nobody got killed, it probably wasn't a good party.”

***

Our owner's name was Mark. I discouraged referring to him as The Mark. Mark was standing in the driveway beside a delivery of logs and windows, and with Mark was the Building Inspector. It was the Inspector's first visit, his introduction. Mark took charge, all dense and restrained, like he'd been called upon to show a cathedral to a shepherd. He told the Inspector I was the general contractor, and led us all to the drawings, such as they were. Then he extended a hand toward the house . . .

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Cover photos: “Night Medicine Men”, by Edward S. Curtis, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Edward S. Curtis Collection, Reproduction # LC-US262-101185