The first woman who called had seen my mother’s Facebook warning about me. She wanted an estimate for new gutters. Three days after discovering I owned Bluff Country Gutters, Mom had tagged the business and urged people not to hire me. By that night, my office manager had logged 31 new estimate requests.
The woman on the phone was named Judith Larsen.
She lived in Onalaska, about fifteen minutes from our shop, and had been dealing with overflowing gutters every time it rained.
My office manager, Paula, asked how she’d heard about us.
“Oh, I saw that Facebook post,” Judith said. “The one about the owner’s mother.”
Paula glanced through the open doorway toward my desk.
I was standing beside the filing cabinet, holding a cup of coffee that had already gone cold.
Judith continued.
“I read what she wrote. Then I read what everybody else wrote. I’d like an estimate from the fellow who carried his grandmother.”
Paula covered the receiver.
“Fletch.”
I looked up.
“Yeah?”
“You might want to hear this.”
She repeated the woman’s words.
For a moment, I couldn’t speak.
Nine years earlier, I’d carried my grandmother to her resting place behind a little Lutheran church in Holmen, Wisconsin.
That had been the last day my mother acknowledged me as her son.
Now people I’d never met were calling my business because they’d learned what happened at that funeral.
I sat down slowly.
Paula watched me.
“Want me to take the estimate?”
I swallowed.
“Of course. She’s got a gutter problem.”
Paula nodded.
Then she returned to the telephone.
“Mrs. Larsen, we’d be happy to take a look.”
By lunchtime, the calls were coming faster than she could enter them into our scheduling system.
By evening, there were thirty-one requests written across two yellow legal pads.
My mother had wanted to warn the whole town about me.
Instead, she’d reminded people of the one person I’d loved enough to lose my family over.
My name is Fletcher Larson, although everybody calls me Fletch.
I’m forty years old, and I own Bluff Country Gutters in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
We have nine field employees organized into three crews, a small office, several work trucks, and one seamless gutter machine that has probably caused me more sleepless nights than anything else I’ve ever purchased.
I love that machine.
My wife, Nina, says I talk about it like it’s an additional member of the family.
She’s not entirely wrong.
We install gutters, downspouts, leaf protection, and drainage systems on homes, barns, churches, and small commercial buildings.
It’s not glamorous work.
In summer, the aluminum gets so hot you can feel it through your gloves.
In autumn, every homeowner wants the job finished before the leaves come down.
And when a heavy storm moves through the Mississippi River valley, our telephone usually starts ringing before breakfast.
My favorite part of a job is the final test.
Before we leave, I pour water into the gutter and watch it travel toward the downspout.
Sometimes I close my eyes and listen.
My foreman, Gundy Gunderson, thinks that’s ridiculous.
He says I inspect downspouts the way a doctor listens to someone’s breathing.
Maybe he’s right.
But a bad connection has a sound.
Water catches where it shouldn’t.
You hear a little gurgle.
A hesitation.
A joint that needs adjusting.
When everything is right, the water moves cleanly.
No fuss.
No unnecessary noise.
My grandma Pearl taught me to appreciate things that worked properly.
She also taught me how to make coconut cake.
And if you want to understand why my mother hadn’t spoken to me in nine years, you have to understand Grandma Pearl.
Pearl Ann Heggie lived on a farm outside Holmen for most of her adult life.
My grandfather, Halvor, raised cattle and grew hay.
Grandma managed everything else.
She kept a vegetable garden big enough to supply half the neighborhood.
She canned tomatoes, baked bread, and seemed to know precisely when someone needed a hot meal.
I spent nearly every summer there from the time I was six until I started working full-time.
Grandma taught me to drive the little farm tractor.
She taught me how to pick beans without pulling up the plants.
She also taught me that the secret to good coconut cake was adding a little orange zest to the frosting.
“Not enough that people notice it,” she’d say. “Just enough that they wonder why yours tastes better.”
When I was eight, she told me I couldn’t help frost a cake until I learned to crack an egg with one hand.
It took me three weeks.
I dropped more eggs than I care to remember.
Grandma never got impatient.
She simply cleaned the counter, handed me another egg, and told me to try again.
Her kitchen always smelled like coffee, cinnamon, or something baking.
There was a little radio beside the sink.
She listened to weather reports every morning and could tell when rain was coming by the way the clouds gathered above the hills.
Sometimes I think my love of construction began on that farm.
Grandma never treated ordinary work as unimportant.
A straight fence mattered.
A clean gutter mattered.
A gate that opened properly mattered.
“People notice the big things,” she’d tell me. “But the little things are what keep a place standing.”
My mother, Sandra, was Grandma’s oldest child.
She had a younger brother, LaVern, who lived over in Sparta.
Mom and Grandma had always been close in a complicated way.
They could spend hours laughing together.
Then disagree over something small and avoid speaking for days.
Grandma usually made the first move.
She’d bring over a loaf of bread or a jar of homemade jam.
Mom would accept it.
And the argument would disappear without anyone acknowledging what had happened.
That arrangement worked for years.
Until Grandma sold the farm.
She was eighty-two.
Grandpa Halvor had been gone for some time, and maintaining the property alone was becoming difficult.
Her doctor encouraged her to consider a smaller home closer to town.
So she sold the land and moved into a little house two blocks from her church.
She put most of the remaining money into savings.
She knew she might eventually need assistance with daily living.
And she wanted to be able to pay for it herself as long as possible.
My mother had other plans for the money.
Mom and Dad wanted to purchase a larger house on the north side of Holmen.
It had a three-car garage, a sunroom, and enough space for the family gatherings Mom liked to host.
They’d been looking at it for months.
The problem was the down payment.
Mom asked Grandma for forty thousand dollars.
Grandma said no.
I was there that afternoon.
Grandma had barely finished unpacking her new place.
Moving boxes stood beside the hallway.
The curtains weren’t hung yet.
She sat on the porch with a glass of lemonade while Mom explained why the bigger house would be better for everyone.
“We’d have room for you whenever you wanted to visit,” Mom said.
Grandma smiled gently.
“That’s kind of you, Sandra.”
Then she shook her head.
“But I’m going to need that money.”
Mom’s face tightened.
“You’ve got plenty.”
Grandma looked toward the little garden.
“Not as much as you think.”
She explained that assisted living and long-term care could become expensive.
She wanted to be prepared.
Mom stood.
“So you’re choosing your savings over your own daughter.”
Grandma looked hurt.
“No, honey. I’m making sure I can take care of myself.”
Mom picked up her purse.
“Well, I hope your money keeps you company.”
Then she walked down the porch steps.
Grandma sat quietly for a while.
I remained beside her.
Finally, she looked at me.
“Would you like some more lemonade, Fletch?”
I nodded.
“Sure, Grandma.”
She went inside.
I watched her through the screen door, moving slowly around the unfamiliar kitchen.