Collected Short Stories: Volume II

by Barry Rachin

  Kendra Ryder, who wore a pair of jeans and cotton blouse, was rather harsh looking. A smattering of laugh lines and crow's feet dimpling the corners of the watery blue eyes; a certain feminine delicacy in the thin lips and squat nose was offset, neutralized by a brittle obstinacy in the pokerfaced expression. The skin was pale, translucent. Frankie noted a fleeting prettiness but only when the woman smiled, which she didn't seem to do that often.

  Kendra set a plate of Oreos on the table between them and then began picking at her fingernails. "Glue… epoxy," she said by way of explanation. "It's a bitch trying to get this stuff off your nails. Mineral spirits doesn't really help and the more volatile stuff like lacquer thinner just burns."

  Frankie was trying to figure what the woman had been doing that her hands were so frightfully calloused, but she didn't readily volunteer additional information and the boy didn't feel comfortable asking. A short while earlier he was standing in the yard next to a forty-foot, white mulberry tree bawling his fool head off, and now he was sipping coffee and nibbling cookies. He felt strangely safe, no longer vulnerable. All the anxiety and confusion had sloughed off like so much dead skin.

  A timer on the microwave suddenly beeped. Kendra rose. "This won't take long," she said, disappearing down a narrow stairwell just off the kitchen. When she was gone ten minutes, curiosity got the better of the boy.

  Unlike the kitchen, the unfinished basement was flooded with a bank of fluorescent lights. An array of woodworking tools - table saws, belt sanders, jointers, planers, drill presses and a six-inch Ryobi band saw - were arranged about the concrete floor. Kendra was releasing the pressure on a steel clamp. Lifting a square block of solid maple, she turned the surface over to reveal a parchment-thin web of blue masking tape rimmed with glue.

  She looked up and smiled when he approached. "Here's the fun part." She began gingerly peeling the tape away to reveal a decorative mosaic of exotic woods arranged in an intricate pattern not unlike a patchwork quilt. "That's bubinga," she pointed to a dark,wine colored wood shot through with black, "a form of African rosewood. The golden veneer with the pale flecks is Brazilian satinwood."

  She eased another strip of tape free of the surface and tapped a greenish, scaly wood that ran around the perimeter of the design creating an inlaid, quarter-inch frame. "This here's a domestic species… sassafras." When the last piece of masking tape had been removed, she wiped away some excess glue with nail polish remover and laid the rectangular object aside."

  "But what is it?"

  "A keepsake box," the woman replied.

  "Where's the lid?"

  Kendra pointed at a band saw in the far corner of the room. "Tomorrow morning, I'll saw the lid free of the carcass, round over all the sharp edges on the router table and insert the brass hinges.

  On a separate work table a grouping of ornate jewelry boxes were arranged in various stages of completion. "Did you paint the woods?"

  Kendra flashed a closed-lipped smile. "No, they're exotics. That's exactly how the lumber looks in its natural state. After sanding, I wipe them down with light Danish oil to bring out the lustrous warmth of the grain but nothing more."

  "But where did you -”

  "Edgar," Kendra interjected, anticipating his train of thought, "was a master woodworker. We met at a craft fair. I was selling crappy jewelry at the time. After we started dating, I took over finishing and placing his merchandise in art galleries. By the time Eddy took sick, I had already picked up enough of basic woodworking skills to actually design and build boxes.

  Before they left the basement, Kendra lifted a strange looking contraption from a pile of discarded odds and ends. A woodsman fashioned from a slab of half-inch thick wood stood alongside a pile of fresh cut pine logs. “My lumberjack,” the woman murmured with an odd mixture of gentle humor and pride. “It’s a whirligig,” she added, when there was no immediate response from the befuddled boy.

  Chop. Chop. Chop. With a taut index finger, Kendra spun a slender propeller, and the blade of an ax bobbed up and down in the direction of an upturned log. “Edgar used to build a few dozen every spring and sell them along with the boxes. They make great lawn ornaments… conversation pieces.”

  Chop. Chop. Chop. She twirled the propeller a second time and with a frenetic fury the woodcutter attacked the log. Frankie ran a finger over the brass brazing rod that served as the drive shaft for the animated project. “You don’t make any?”

  “No… too complicated.” Kendra’s head wagged from side to side. “It’s not just woodworking skills. You gotta learn to bend the wire, attach all the moveable parts, and decorate the finished project.”

  “Jewelry boxes,… you build an project and that’s the end of it. With the whirligigs there’s always a problem.” “Here, let me show you.” She pried the top from the base to reveal an eighth-inch metal rod that ran the length of the project. “Originally, when Edgar built this project the brass drive cam kept binding up against the wooden carcass.” She indicated the wooden base where the lumberjack’s feet were glued in place. “Edgar, who was an ace at solving problems, simply recessed nylon bushings on either end of the base. Problem solved.”

  Frankie eyed two ivory bushings strategically positioned at the ends of the drive shaft. The plastic spacers held the rod in position, allowing the propeller to spin effortlessly.

  Kendra chuckled self-consciously as though at a private joke. “Whirligigs are sort of like life… an endless series of pain-in-the-ass complications, Chinese fire drills and mechanical calamities.”

  “Edgar painted the whirligigs?”

  “For the most part… when he got too sick from the medication, I helped out some. The words caught in her throat and she momentarily looked away. Tossing the whirligig back onto the messy pile, she added, “It ain’t the Sistine Chapel... just crude folk art, tole painting on unfinished boards.”

  Frankie took a parting glance at the lumberjack before Kendra flicked the basement lights out. There was nothing amateurish in the choice of pastel, earth tones. The middle-aged woman had painted a patch on a pant leg and grizzled beard on the woodsman’s face. With a tiny, fan-shaped brush, she even feathered in the wispy stamens and pistils in a patch of orangey-gold wildflowers.

  "Me and Eddy… we met at a rainy, late October craft fair," Kendra confided. They were sitting back in the kitchen. "Not terribly romantic by most people's standards." She glanced at a clock over the stove. "Your parents are probably wondering where you are." The implication was fairly obvious.

  "What do you do with the jewelry boxes?" Frankie blurted.

  "Already told you… sell them through art galleries, flea markets, craft fairs, whatever." She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes with her glue-stained fingers. "You gotta go home now."

  "Can I come see you again?"

  "I dunno," she hedged. "Maybe, if your folks don't mind."

  "Yeah, they won't care."

  "And you can't go near the tools. They're dangerous as hell." Kendra held her hands up in front of his face. "How many fingers?" The boy counted ten, all intact. "Touch any of my power tools, and that will be the last day you ever set foot in this house."

  Frankie lingered in the doorway. "I wonder if the McElroys are still partying."

  Sensing his reluctance to leave, Kendra disappeared back down the stairwell. When she returned, the woman was holding a small strip of cream colored wood delicately veined with orange. "Smell this." She stuck the milky wood up under his nose.

  "Don't smell nothin’."

  Kendra scuffed the wood with a piece of 120-grit sandpaper she was holding in her free hand and extended the wood a second time.

  "Cripes!" An intoxicating sweetness resembling an expensive, designer perfume wafted through the room

  "It's tulipwood and, like bubinga, also from the rosewood family." She handed him both the sliver of wood and the sandpaper. "Next time your parents have a tiff or the McElroy clan is stirring the pot, take a whiff of tulipwood and
it will calm your nerves." She gently pushed him out the door into the warm night. "Goodnight, Frankie Dexter and I hope your parents can work things out." Kendra stood out on the landing and watched the young boy reluctantly shuffle off down the empty street.

 

  * * * * *

  "You got in late last night," Mrs. Dexter was in the kitchen cooking waffles. She added a tablespoon of vegetable oil to the mix, an egg and a splash of milk. With his brown hair and fair complexion, friends claimed that Frankie was the spitting image of his mother. They both had dimples that only surfaced when they smiled and a malleable softness about the mouth.

  "I met the lady who lives in the slate blue cape."

  "The Lomax place?" His parents still referred to it as the Lomax place even though the owner was long dead.

  "She does fancy woodworking… said I could come back and visit as long as I got your permission." Before his mother could respond, Frankie jumped up from the table and ran out of the room. He returned a moment later holding the slender length of tulipwood and the sandpaper. "Here, smell this." He rubbed the sandpaper over the surface briefly and held it up to his mother.

  "What a delicious scent!" Mrs. Dexter grabbed a whisk and stirred the batter to a frothy consistency.

  Frankie told his mother how Kendra took over the woodworking business after Edgar became sick. "She said I had to get your permission," Frankie repeated.

  "Well, I don't know," his mother wavered. "A woman living by herself and…"

  "For God's sakes, she's older than Aunt Helen!" Aunt Helen was Mrs. Dexter's younger sister.

  "I'll think about it," his mother replied evasively, "and let you know later tonight." Spraying the waffle iron, she poured the batter onto the griddle and lowered the lid.

  Frankie was about to argue the issue but held his tongue. His mother, who wasn't being contentious, seemed genuinely pleased with the fragrant tulipwood along with the notion of a woman building ornate boxes. "Well, that lays one mystery to rest."

  "Which is?"

  "Whenever I passed the Lomax place coming home from market," his mother remarked, "I heard the sound of heavy machinery and wondered what they were doing. Now we know."

  Frankie went upstairs and lay down on his bed. An older woman had held him tight up against her wiry body. This was unfamiliar territory. He had to think it through. Not that there was anything much to think about. Kendra had pulled him close in the feral darkness out of pity not lust. The 'poor baby' was clearly meant as an expression of sympathy and maternal affection. The way she held him, Frankie could feel every crevice, fleshy bulge and contour of her body.

  "Aw, shit!" It suddenly dawned on him what changed when Kendra ran off to the bedroom, slamming the door shut. She had slipped on a bra. Even alone in his own bedroom, the stolid, middle-aged woman's sense of modesty and decorum caused the boy to blush self-consciously.

  The Lomax place resembled a safe haven, a protective womb. The several hours spent there was like a idyllic dream - unfortunately, a dream that, similar to most pleasant fictions, seldom last. Before leaving the basement, Kendra had shown him a crate full of finished boxes. The artwork was meticulous. Marquetry - the handicraft dated back to the Italian Renaissance - was the name of the technique she used to puzzle the tiny slivers of wood into intricate design patterns.

  After the glue dried, Kendra sanded through eight, increasingly finer grades of sandpaper ranging from two-twenty to fifteen hundred before applying Danish oil. "Chatoyance," she spoke softly rubbing a thumb lovingly over a glassy wooden surface. "From the French œil de chat, meaning cat's eye." "You sand the wood until it's so smooth that, when the finish is applied, the surface flings the light back at you in shimmery brilliance." She held the box up to the light and the decorative surface exuded a luminous glow that caused Frankie's breath to catch in his throat.

  * * * * *

  In the early afternoon, Mrs. Dexter went off somewhere and didn't return until late in the afternoon. "The police visited the McElroys' place last night?"

  "How do you know?"

  "The Hispanic lady who lives diagonally across from them works behind the deli counter in the market. She says the two brothers got plastered and started beating on each other. They're out on bail now."

  "What about Kendra, the lady who makes the fancy boxes?"

  "Oh, yes," Mrs. Dexter replied almost as an afterthought. "You can spend time over there but don't go near the machinery.” Frankie's mother shifted the several bags she was balancing in her arms and headed in the direction of the kitchen. “Now I've got to make supper."

  Later that night while he was lying in bed, Mrs. Dexter came into the room. "Kendra goes to church Sunday mornings over at Saint Stevens… she also volunteers stocking shelves at the food pantry." After a brief pause, she added, "Ryder… her last name is Ryder. Kendra Ryder."

  "How do you know this?"

  "If you go to visit and hear machines running down in the basement," she sidestepped his question, "don't set foot in the house until the noise dies away."

  "Okay."

  "I'm doing laundry in the morning. Do you need any clothes washed?" Frankie had a bad habit of burying dirty laundry under the bed.

  "No, I'm fine," the boy replied. Mrs. Dexter went away.

  * * * * *

  "Your mother came to visit," Kendra said the next time Frankie stopped by. It was a Thursday afternoon. The black sky had been spitting warm rain off and on all day.

  Rain was the kiss of death to crafters. The previous Saturday, Kendra had set up her ten-by-ten foot canopy at the Stonington Craft Fair only to see her profits literally washed away by a torrential downpour. Forty-seven soggy exhibitors spent the day staring bleakly at one another in an otherwise empty field. Only a small handful of diehard customers, sporting rain gear and umbrellas, visited the fair. They didn't linger and nobody was in a buying mood. Luckily, the fair extended straight through the weekend, and Sunday when the sky cleared Kendra was able to recoup her losses and turn a small profit.

  "I gotta cut slots for the brass hinges," Kendra said. "Sit over there," she pointed at a folding chair a good thirty feet away from the drill press. “Don't belch, fart or pick your nose."

  As she explained it, the tiny, razor-sharp slot cutter, which measured a meager three inches in diameter, was, far and away, the most dangerous tool in her arsenal. The Delta, ten-inch table saw made a god-awful racket and ripped through rock maple with lethal indifference, but stock could be guided safely along a metal fence or miter gauge.

  The tiny slot cutter afforded no such luxury.

  Kendra fashioned a right-angle brace from scrap lumber and clamped the lids onto the brace before cutting slots. Reducing the speed on the drill press to a sloth-like six hundred rpm's, she inched the wood across the table until the horizontal blade barely kissed the grain. Then she locked her elbows rigidly against her sides and eased the wood forward in tiny increments.

  Thuck. Thuck. Thuck. Thuck. Thuck.

  When the blade cut to a depth of half an inch, she pulled back, freeing the stock from the whirring blade. "What's that for?" Frankie gestured at a can of silicone spray that Kendra waved over the slot saw.

  "The slippery silicone lubricates the metal teeth so there's less chance of the wood seizing up in the middle of a cut."

  "What if the blade grabs the wood?"

  Kendra cracked a gritty smile. Rummaging around on the floor under the workbench, she located a badly shattered box with an amboyna burl lid. "If the slot cutter blade seizes up, you concede defeat and let go."

  She handed him the ruined box. The orangey wood was speckled with reddish-brown, black and gold highlights. "Amboyna burl is imported from the jungles of Cambodia. The sheet of veneer that lid came from set me back a pretty penny."

  Later that night at home Frankie could still picture the willowy woman hunched over the drill press, her elbows straight-jacketed against her slender waist. Just before she pressed the wood up again
st the slot cutter, Kendra filled her lungs with air. Listening to the mute language of the slot cutter blade as it blindly wormed its way through the black walnut casing, she didn't breathe again until the cut was complete. Thuck. Thuck. Thuck. Thuck. Thuck.

  * * * * *

  In September, Frankie returned to school. He dropped by the Lomax place a couple days after school. One afternoon as the boy was approaching the slate blue house, the front door opened and a middle-aged man bustled past him. Climbing into a Buick convertible, he slammed the door and drove off in a rage.

  Kendra was in the kitchen. A rather imposing tea box fashioned from red birch was resting on the counter alongside several sheets of flamboyant handmade paper. "I found these beauties," she said, "at the Rhode Island School of Design."

  "Nice stuff!" Frankie gazed at a pile of velvety, cream-colored papers.

  "A slurry of twigs, leaves and flower petals are added to the moist pulp. When it dries, the paper has an organic, three-dimensional quality." She transferred a piece of the ornate paper to the top of the unfinished, birch tea box. "I'm thinking of using it as the medallion to showcase the wood."

  Kendra told Frankie on more than one occasion that 'presentation' was everything. The artisan needed some central theme or unique feature to draw the consumer in. "Yeah, I get it… the mint green and dark purple…that’s swell!"

  She lay the paper aside. "Of course, we can't use wood glue... too brittle" She was thinking out loud. "Maybe an acid-neutralized PVA."

  "What's that?"

  "Water-based white glue with a vinyl additive." She turned and smiled at the boy, a conspiratorial gesture. "Did you get a chance to meet Edgar's brother as he was leaving?"

  "Almost knocked me over."

  "Yes, well, the man was a bit upset." Kendra rolled the exotic, handmade papers in a bundle and fastened them with a pair of elastic bands. "He wants to put the house on the market… gave me thirty days to pack up my belongings and clear off the property." She sipped from a cup of coffee. "After he took sick, Edgar warned me that his brother was a greedy bastard and might try some funny stuff. That's why Eddy went to an attorney and redid his will… signed the property over to me, free and clear."