Chapter SeventeenBig Jim Perkins drove down from Kailua the next Sunday afternoon. Over a dinner of Susan's lasagna and Neal's Greek salad they decided to start work on the road at daybreak the next morning.
"Workin' itself is...wrongheaded," Perkins stated somberly, "But workin' in the heat is crazy."
They went to bed after nightcaps of schnapps from the bottle Big Jim brought along, and before sunrise Neal was back in the kitchen brewing coffee and rattling pans.
That day was spent trimming and moving aside the trees felled the week before, and the next two were spent leveling the worst stumps and filling in low spots with rock and earth.
Thursday seemed to drag. Neal chainsawed the road corridor another thirty feet toward the house and then started cutting up the larger felled trees
