Free (2006) When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin

had any-a more panoramic view of the lake.
    My house is a two-story, four-bedroom cedar shake with a red tin roof and heart-of-pine guts. Emma and I bought the land, an old fish camp, seven years ago after Charlie saw both lots come up for sale. We thought it'd be our weekend getaway, maybe someplace where I'd take a leave of absence and help nurse Emma back to health after her surgery. Emma thought we'd spend more time here, teaching our kids to swim and water-ski on the lake. She had big plans, and with her gift as an artist, she sketched them in detail.
    Emma's plan called for three structures-a house, a dock, and a workshop. About five years ago, Charlie and I started construction on the workshop. Given Charlie's condition, much of the actual work was left up to me, but don't think Charlie was uninvolved. Born with power tools in his hand, I'm convinced he was a carpenter in Herod's workshop in a past life. While I sweated, grunted, and smashed my thumb with each whack of the hammer, he stood beside me running his fingers across the grain and cut of the wood, sensing the way it joined, held fast, or trimmed off a room. We subbed out the electrical because I know my lim its, but anything having to do with running water or sewage, or with the cutting, sanding, shaping, or fashioning of wood, we did. I guess it goes along with my carpentry and plumbing roots.

    Countless times Charlie made me redo something I'd already cut two or three times because he didn't like the way it joined together, the way it made a seam, or because it left a gap. As a result, I got better, but I'll stop short of saying respectable.
    My property slopes down to the lake at about a thirty-degree angle, so when we first bought it we hired a guy with a front-end loader and asked him to flatten the fish camp and then haul out about two stories' worth of rock and dirt. When he finished, we had a flat spot about ten feet above the level of the water that cut seventy feet into the side of the hill, where it met a huge rock wall like the kind you see along highways. We dynamited the wall, flattening it, and then built up from there.
    On the last blast, we pulled away the rubble and discovered a small L-shaped cavity in the rock. It was about large enough to drive my truck into and tall enough to stand in. Nearly flat and level, we cleaned it out, hung a lantern or two, and then built a bunk along either side. During the hottest months of summer, we slept in our "cave," where the rocks kept it from getting too hot. It made for a silent and safe retreat.
    Half the first story of the workshop sat underground, while the second story rose out of and above it. The fact that half of it was surrounded by dirt meant that after we installed the potbellied stove, we stayed pretty warm in cool winters. And because those hills stay cold long after daylight, we kept cool in the summers. The workshop opened up through two sliding doors that, when opened, allowed you to drive two cars side by side straight through.
    Charlie could tell you more about tools and construction in five minutes than I will know in a lifetime, but like a lot of other good teachers I've known, he taught me at my own pace. Once we finished the structure of the workshop itself, he left the finishing details to me.

    We covered the walls in solid cedar and hung an exposed steel beam from the ceiling, running front to back, that would allow us to lift and move heavy and large objects like boats using a system of rolling pulleys. We installed four ceiling fans and recessed lighting, shoved the potbelly into the corner, and wired surround sound through ten speakers, indoors and out.
    I made several dozen more trips to Home Depot, Lowe's, and Sears and started stocking the shelves with tools of every kind and brand. I bought two band saws, a planer jointer, three disk sanders, several rasps, files, rubber mallets, wood mallets, clamps, a case of Titebond glue, two ninety-degree drills, a Dremel, two