He tried to borrow the money from his brother in law, but his brother in law just laughed.
``Fifteen thousand? You must be kidding!''
``Fifteen thousand or they take my land. My house.''
``Why'd you wait so long?''
``Kept thinking I'd work it out - something would happen...''
``So now they're coming to throw you out.''
``I have to be off the place by Friday - but I was thinking -''
``I knew it. What?''
``I was thinking I could get the house off the lot before then.'' He'd built the house one long summer when the woods were closed. His house. His money, his labor.
``How? It would take for ever.''
``I was thinking we could saw it in two and load the two halves on a couple flat beds. I was thinking yours and Ted's. We could do it in a day.''
``Where'd you put it?''
``My sister's place.''
It wasn't much of a house. He'd never really finished it. Once they moved in he just couldn't get up the effort. Truth was he was ashamed of it. The best he could do, the best he could afford and just look at it. It was warm though, in the winter with the stove going.
It didn't take long. Two men with chain saws and two women and three kids doing the dirty work. Even with reinforcements of two by fours the roof and floor started to collapse, but they got it set up on his sister's twenty acres.
It never really came together right. The roof leaked worse than it ever did, and where the floor was rejoined, people were always tripping. They told the county it was being used for storage though everyone knew they were living there. He put in a cess pit. He didn't want to spend the money on a septic tank when they might throw him out again.
In the end they moved away to try life somewhere else. His sister stored hay in the house, and a family of raccoons were pleased to call it home, even after a Doug fir fell on it one stormy day and split it down the middle once again.