Bram lifted the cart’s front end while Ada pulled a stone from beneath its wheel. His shirt tore at the shoulder.
“There,” he said. “Ironheart still earns his name.”
Ada put the stone aside. “Your sleeve didn’t.”
She owned the mill at the edge of Bell Hollow, a small town in the old frontier country. Everyone knew Bram could carry more than they could. They asked for his help often. He never let them finish explaining the job.
Today a fallen beam blocked the mill’s side door. Ada needed that door open so she could bring her flour sacks indoors before the rain.
She had hired Sol to help. He waited by the mill with three wooden rollers and a long iron bar. A rope bag lay at his feet.
Bram saw the bag and looked away.
“We can roll the beam to the wall,” Sol said. “There’s room once we clear those boards.”
“Put your things down. I’ll carry it.”
Sol kept hold of the bar. “That’s why she hired both of us.”
Bram bent over the beam. It had dropped from an old lean-to roof and lay across the doorway at a slant. He got his hands under its high end.
The timber rose. Sol moved toward the other end.
“Back,” Bram said. “I’ve got it.”
He pulled. The beam turned against the doorpost. Its far end slid into a gap beneath the steps. Now it was wedged at both ends.
Bram tried again. His torn sleeve opened wider. The timber did not move.
Ada stepped off the porch. “Leave it.”
“One more try.”
“No. Come away from it.”
He let go. She waited until he was standing beside her before she spoke again.
“I asked for my door to be opened. You’ve made it harder.”
Sol knelt at the steps to look at the trapped end. Bram stared at the rope bag. A bit of blue cord poked out through its mouth.
Years before, in another town, his friend Len had lain under a fallen roof beam. Bram had pulled until his hands slipped. Len had said, “Get someone. Get rope.”
Bram had run. At the nearest house, he had pounded on a shut door and shouted for rope. No one answered. He ran to the next house. By the time he came back with two men, Len no longer spoke.
After that, Bram had grown stronger. People started calling him Ironheart. He liked the name because it sounded like a man who would never have to run away for help again.
At Ada’s mill, rain struck his bare shoulder through the tear.
“There was a man I—” he began.
Ada was dragging a flour sack under the shallow porch. “Tell me later, if you want. Right now I need this dry.”
Sol stood. “We have to move the beam back the way it came. Just a little. Then free this end.”
“I could break the steps,” Bram said.
“And leave me with two repairs?” Ada asked.
Bram looked at the sacks still on the cart. Rain was darkening their cloth.
“Show me,” he said to Sol.
Sol pointed out where the beam caught. Bram listened all the way through. Then they cleared the broken boards together.
They worked slowly. Sol used the bar while Bram held the near end steady. Ada kept watch on the gap and called when it opened. Once the timber was free, all three set it onto the rollers.
It took Bram’s strength to start it moving. It took Sol’s care to keep it straight. Ada moved each spare roller forward as the beam passed over it.
At last the timber lay along the wall. The door opened. Bram went to the cart, but this time he asked how many sacks Ada wanted him to carry.
“One at a time,” she said. “The bags are old.”
By the time the rain settled in, the flour was inside. Ada counted out Sol’s full wage, then Bram’s.
“He did the thinking,” Bram said. “Give him mine too.”
Sol closed his hand over his own coins. “You did the lifting. Keep yours.”
Bram stayed on the porch while Ada swept wet grain away from the sill. He did not tell her about Len. He might another day, when she had time to hear it. Today she had asked him to move a beam, and it was finally moved.
He walked home by the mender’s shop. Usually he joked that a torn shirt showed how hard a man worked. He stopped at her door and held out his sleeve.
“Can you mend this?”
She turned the cloth in her hands. “If you leave it here.”
Bram took the shirt off, folded it, and set it on her counter.
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