We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman (read aloud txt) 📕

porch with that wild-man manic energy, his beard sticking out at all angles like he stuck his finger in a socket. “I’m sorry,” I shout, jumping out of the truck before Chad has pulled to a stop. “I’m sorry.”

“Where did you go? I knocked and knocked and no one answered and I thought . . .” He trails off.

His entire body is trembling. I hold him tight, trying to approximate his weighted blanket. Dried mud cracks in the embrace. “I’m sorry.”

“My bad, Mr. Stein,” Chad calls as he lowers himself from his truck into his chair. “Aaron offered to build a ramp to your store!”

“You did?” Ira asks, solicitous even in his panic.

“We got the wood in the truck and everything,” Chad says, gesturing to the sagging bit of plywood sticking out of the bed. “We just have to pull a bit of railing down. Then maybe bolster it with a few bricks, bracket it in place. Easy-peazy.”

“You didn’t mention the railing,” I tell Chad. “Or the bolstering and bracketing.”

“What’d you think we were gonna do? Just lean the plank against the stairs?”

I don’t say anything because that’s exactly what I thought we were going to do.

“And we’ll need to take that down.” Chad points to the blue-and-yellow porch swing where Mom used to sit no matter the weather, calling to people. Invariably, they’d come up to chat with her and wind up in the store. Ira used to call her the Siren. “He definitely didn’t mention taking the porch swing down,” I tell Ira. I turn to Chad. “I think we should forget the ramp.”

“But we brought the wood over.”

“So bring it back.”

“Ah, dawg. My mom will kill me. That ramp’s been sitting in our backyard, splintering, making her miserable. So when you suggested a ramp—”

“I didn’t suggest a ramp,” I interrupt.

“I thought how great to repurpose the wood, and make your store wheelchair accessible. Plus, you’d make my mom happy.” He turns to Ira. “The sight of the wood just really bums her out, Mr. Stein. She says it’s like a constant reminder of what I lost.”

Sometimes the porch swing creaks, like Mom’s still on it. But it’s just the wind.

“I can understand that,” Ira says, staring at the swing, tugging nervously at his beard.

“So by putting in a ramp, you’d be doing my mom a solid, repurposing this wood, and making your store welcoming and accessible. It would be, like, a triple mitzvah.”

At this Ira and I gape at each other, neither one of us sure if we heard right. A mitzvah is a Jewish thing that literally means “blessing” but translates as “good deed.” I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone here use that word, much less a Best-Life Bro like Chad. In case it has not been made abundantly clear, there are not a lot of Jewish people in our neck of the woods.

I don’t trust Best-Life Bros like Chad, even if they’re in wheelchairs, and down with a bit of Yiddish. I’ve lived in this town long enough to know better. But Ira, the Giving Tree, would never deny a mitzvah, and I will never deny Ira.

And this is how we get a ramp.

Peanuts

We are about two hours into our doomed construction project when the Lumberjacks arrive. In those two hours, I have managed to pry off some spindles, saw a section of railing, and angle the plank against the ledge of the porch. I’ve sent a shivering Ira inside to warm up and am just about to send Chad packing when a few of the guys, making their daily trek from C.J.’s to Jimmy’s, decide to stop in front of our shop.

The oldest codger—his name, I will learn, is Ike Sturgis—approaches. He has a long brown beard that gives Ira’s a run for its money, and is weathered in the way a lot of guys who worked on the mountain are, which makes it impossible to tell just how old he is. He could be forty. He could be ninety.

“What you got going on here?” he asks in a whiskey-barrel voice.

“We’re putting in a ramp,” Chad says.

“A ramp, you say?” He taps the corner of the wood with the edge of his boot. “With this?”

“Must be a temporary plank. For fit,” says another of the Lumberjacks, who’s ruddy-faced and appears to be about six months pregnant with beer. Minus the gut, he looks exactly like this asshole named Caleb who Sandy used to hang out with.

“That’s what I’d assume, Garry,” Ike replies before turning to Chad and me. “’Cause you boys wouldn’t think of using plywood for a ramp, would you?”

“Well, yeah, I mean, we were, right, Aaron?”

Thanks for throwing me under the bus, Chad. “It was his idea.”

“Richie, you wanna explain to these fellows why this plank won’t work?” Ike says.

“Uhh, ’cause it’s plywood,” replies Richie, who can’t be more than a few years older than me, which would make him too young to ever have worked on the mountain or in the mills.

“And rotting plywood at that.” Ike steps hard on the ramp; it cracks. “Ain’t gonna bear much weight.”

“I used to skate on it,” Chad says. “It worked out fine.”

“Different uses,” Ike explains. “You gotta wear-pattern problem. Skateboard’s traveling all over that wood, back and forth. In a chair, wheels going up and down in the same track. More concentrated pressure. Basic physics.”

“Well, I failed physics,” Chad says.

“Me too,” Richie says.

And then the two of them share a bonding high five to commemorate their mutual failure. Our town, ladies and gentlemen, in a nutshell.

Ike shoves a wad of tobacco into his lower lip and spits into an empty bottle of Diet Peach Snapple. “Garry, what happened to the extra pine we used for your loft?”

“Nothing,” replies Garry. “Planks are just sitting in Joe Heath’s place.”

“You think there’s enough for a ramp?”

There’s the sudden shzz sound as Garry whips out his measuring tape. He crouches and squints as he sizes up the distance