by Barry Rachin
******
In the morning, Grace left the house a half hour earlier and drove up Lexington Boulevard to the police station. She entered a small vestibule but there was no one to talk to. A sign on the wall next to a black phone said:
SPEAK INTO THE HANDSET TO RECEIVE ASSISTANCE.
Grace lifted the phone. “Hello? I need to speak to someone.”
“Is this an emergency?”
“No, not at all. It’s a personal matter.”
The phone went dead and a burly patrolman with a red face and moustache opened the door a crack. “What’s this in regards to?”
“A teenager on my street is causing problems.”
The officer brought her into a room in the rear of the station and closed the door. She told him about Dwight Goober. “Yah, I know the kid,” The officer said. “Been to his house a half dozen times or more.”
“Maybe you could talk to his parents about -”
“Mother,” the officer cut her short. “There’s no father in the picture. Just the old lady and, in answer to your question, talking won’t do a damn bit of good. The woman’s a screamer. Any time there’s a complaint against her beloved Dwighty, Mrs. Goober, starts hollering like a locked-ward lunatic.” He shook his head and pressed his lips together in a disagreeable fashion. “There’s no reasoning with that woman.”
“The kid’s prowling outside my house at ten o’clock at night.”
“There’s no curfew. He’s completely within his rights.” A voice came over the intercom requesting the a.m. crew report to the roster room. “Look, the snot-nosed punk’s on probation,” the officer said. “My advice is to go down to district court and speak with his probation officer or even the clerk of courts. They might be able to strong arm the little creep.”
“The little creep is six foot tall.”
“I was thinking,” the officer replied drolly, “more in terms of mental capacity rather than height.”
******
On Saturday morning Angie was scheduled for her first lesson, but Carl called and told her to meet him at the lumberyard in the Marieville section of town. “I’ll drive you over there,” Grace suggested, “and then you hitch a ride back with Carl.”
At the lumberyard, Carl was waiting out front besides a Chevy pickup truck. Grace kissed her daughter and made a motion to leave. “You can join us if you like,” Carl said.
Grace killed the engine and slid out of the car. They went inside. A plump man with a red beard and plaid flannel shirt reached across the counter and shook Carl’s hand. “Didn’t you women see the sign on the door? No females allowed unless they’re swinging 30-ounce Estwing framing hammers.”
“Don’t mind Fred,” Carl explained. “He missed his calling in life as a standup comic.”
A contractor plunked a cellophane bag bulging with sheetrock nails on the counter and went off in search of something else. Fred weighed the nails on a scale and wrote the price on the outside of the bag with an felt-tipped marker. “If you’re looking for cherry, you’re out of luck. We got an order from an overseas, Asian firm. They bought up our entire first grade cherry for a massive, building project in Japan. Paid a small fortune for the lumber.” Fred shook his head thoughtfully. “All we got left is low-grade seconds.”
“Maple and walnut are fine,” Carl said. “Mind if we go up into the loft?”
The contractor reappeared with several tubes of clear caulking and a Forstner, flat-bottom drill bit. Fred started ringing up the order. “Watch your step, ladies. Stairs are narrow and it’s a long way down.”
They headed back outside. The temperature was frigid and Grace could feel the icy air burning her lungs. Crossing the lumberyard, the threesome passed row upon row of neatly stacked lumber - two-by-fours and pressure-treated decking, thicker boards for roof trusses, floor joists and decorative lattices. A forklift puttered by with a stack of cedar fencing. At the far end of the yard was a huge shed with a steep flight of stairs leading up into a darkened loft. Grace peered up the stairwell but the landing was invisible from where they stood.
Carl led the way up the narrow stairs, which ascended twenty feet before reaching the second level where more wood was stacked on pallets up against the walls. He flipped a light switch on. “It’s colder up here than it was down below,” Angie said between chattering teeth.
“Here’s some maple.“ Carl gestured toward a stack of cream colored boards. He pulled a six-foot, coffee colored plank off an adjacent pile and stood it up on end. “This hickory’s beautiful but hard as nails. You’d run through a dozen sanding belts just trying to shape one box.” He moved on to the next flat. “Ash is a bit softer but brittle with an open grain and hard to finish.”
“And I thought wood was wood.” Grace made a tent over her nose and breathed out forcefully trying to warm the flesh. Judging by the pins and needles shooting up her calves, her feet were growing increasingly numb.
“What’s this?” Angie asked, indicating a reddish brown board with a smooth, textured grain.
“Honduran mahogany. A mature tree can reach 150 feet high with a trunk diameter upwards of six feet. It’s still very plentiful over there,” Carl explained. “Unfortunately, most of the exotic, South American timber is seldom replanted so it’s becoming endangered.”
“This wood,” Carl ran a hand over the Honduran mahogany, “is grown on tree plantations; it’s a renewable, resource.” He turned to Grace. “Remember the Beetles?”
“The rock group from the sixties?”
“Ringo’s drums were made from mahogany. The wood produces a very warm, resonant tone. It’s also great for guitars.”
“Some of the finest musical instruments - violins, pianos, basses, and cellos - were originally made from European hardwoods. Native American spruce found in the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, where the trees grew taller and straighter, was also greatly prized. The straighter the grain, the richer the tone.”
“That metal beast over there, “ he gestured at a huge machine that took up most of the left side of the room. “is an industrial grade planer. When contractors needed lumber sized to a special thickness, they run the wood through the machine, which thins the lumber in tiny increments.”
Carl finally pulled up in front of a pile of coarse boards. No one had bothered to trim the bark; the slabs were random thicknesses and lengths. Unwanted, mismatched orphans and ugly lumber ducklings.
“Gross!” Angie turned up her nose.
“Gross and just what we are looking for.” Carl grabbed the roughest plank, which was a solid inch thick and handed it to Angie. “Watch out for splinters. It’s still got most of the bark on the back side.”
“What’s so special about that one?” Grace asked. The pins and needles in her toes were beginning to crawl up her ankles and she stomped her feet on the floor to get the blood flowing.
“This homely slab of black walnut is drop dead gorgeous, but its true character is hidden away under all the bark and dirt.” He flipped the board over. “Look here.” Angie and Grace stepped closer and stared at a section near the top of the board where the rough, scaly bark had been trimmed away. The chocolaty grain swirled in glorious unpredictable patterns. “We can buy this board for half the price of the others, trim the bark and mill the finished wood ourselves.”
Carl picked over several other rough-cut boards then sent Grace and Angie down the steep stairwell. When they reached the bottom, he brought the lumber down from the loft, one unattractive plank at a time. Paying for the lumber, he loaded the boards in the rear of his truck then went back inside. Fred was at his post behind the cash register. “Got any exotics?”
“See for yourself.” Fred gestured with a flick of his head. “Just stay away from the pear and butternut. It’s all wormy.”
Carl led the way into a backroom cluttered with broken picture frames, sharpening stones and carbide-tipped router bits. Up against the wall was an odd collection of smallish lumber, some cut at jagged angles. Carl
pointed to a dark brown board with brilliant swirls rippling through the grain. “Morado from the mountains of Chile.” He grabbed Angie’s hand and pressed the heel of her palm up against the wood. “Morado belongs to the rosewood family. There’s so much natural oil in the wood, you don’t even need to apply a finish. You can polish the surface to a high gloss with nothing more than your bare hand.”
He steered Angie’s hand in a figure-eight and the surface of the chocolaty wood soon began to glow with a subtle richness. “I want some of that,” she whispered.
“Perhaps next time.” He reached for a thin board, light as skim milk and shot through with orange highlights. “Tulipwood. Also from the rosewood family.” Carl took a small penknife and peeled a paper-thin shaving from the board. A pungent, sickly sweet perfume wafted through the room. He showed them an unusual African mahogany flecked with gold and a dark wine colored board with the peculiar name bubinga. There was a small bar of bluish black wood no longer than a Louisville slugger, baseball bat - kingwood. Even with a crack down the middle, the scruffy ‘bat’ was worth fifty dollars. And a tiny scrap of ebony—black as coal and twice as hard. Angie lofted the absurdly heavy wood in her hand. When she put it down again, her fingers were smudge with a blackish soot.
******
Later that night, after Angie showered, Grace held the blow-dryer while her daughter combed out her thick, wheat-colored hair. “So what did you learn today?”
Angie lifted a tuft of hair in the back. Her mother waved the dryer over the wet strands, causing them to flutter and spread like a golden fan. “Woodworking resembles the Catholic Church with its endless, repetitive rituals.”
“Such as?”
Angie explained how each jewelry box required a set number of pieces all cut to exact specifications. The poem boxes, which were really quite simple, contained eight individual sections, but each had its own unique dimensions. Before any of the intricate joints or decorative elements could be added, the pieces had to be properly sized. “You know that industrial planer we saw up in the loft at the lumber yard?” Angie switched from the hairbrush to a wide-toothed comb and began untangling the bangs. “Carl has a similar tool but smaller.”
“How nice!” Grace was admiring the look of her daughter’s skin, the way the freshly washed hair caressed the bronze neck and fleshy shoulders. “What else did you talk about?”
Angie curled her lips and tossed her mother a questioning look. “Wood,... we talk about making things from wood.” Grace backed off one setting on the dryer and began working the front of her face. “To make an heirloom quality box requires humility—the humility to fail a dozen times and keep plugging away until the artisan’s flawed skills overtake his inner vision.”
“Carl said that?”
“He’s a little bit queer in the head like Mrs. Shapiro. They both talk in riddles.” Her daughter relieved Grace of the blow-dryer and directed the warm air over the side of her scalp, lifting the hair between her fingers to exposed the last few damp strands. “For an older guy he’s really in great shape. Probably good in bed, too.”
“Angie, for God’s sake!” Grace sputtered and fidgeted with her hands.
“Anybody who’s that passionate about woodworking -”
“I think your hair is sufficiently dry.” Her mother kissed her daughter’s cheek and hurried from the bathroom.
Back in her own room Grace couldn’t get the image of Carl Solomon out of her mind - the undisguised look of reverence that seeped from his hazel eyes when he ran a hand over a plank of mottled hickory up in the frigid lumber loft. When was the last time anyone had looked at her with that much honesty?
With Stewart, everything was about possessions, social status and image. When the marriage fell apart, they tried marriage counseling. What a joke! Stewart conveniently never bothered to show up half the time, and the psychologist branded her husband a phallic character disorder. Grace thought it rather crass and unprofessional for the man to share such damning details, but the counselor wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. Stewart only cared about himself. An incorrigible, phallic character disorder, the man driven by enlightened self-interest - what’s in it for numero uno!.
******
Every Saturday and two afternoons a week Grace dropped Angie off at Mrs. Shapiro’s house. If they were still busy in the basement when she returned to retrieve her daughter, Grace would sip a cup of Twinning’s tea and keep her company. By now she was used to her eccentricities, the way her thoughts floated off in a dozen unrelated directions. The perpetual streams of consciousness - it all made sense after a while, because there was always that gossamer thread that held the disparate ideas together.
“Are you religious?” Mrs. Shapiro asked. Grace noticed that the old woman’s hands trembled later in the day as her physical strength ebbed.
“No, not at all.”
“An atheist?”
“More like an agnostic,” Grace hedged her bets.
The old woman became strangely animated and wrenched her crippled body up straighter in the chair, “There’s a theory that Jesus Christ was a member of a secret organization, The Kat Yam Hamelech, the Dead Sea Sect. They broke with traditional orthodoxy, believing that Jewish religion had become too rigid with all its formal laws and ritual. Because elitist rabbis held all the power, there was nothing terribly democratic about religious life for the common Jew.”
“Like the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages.”
“Yes, a hundred times yes!” For the moment, her hands stopped shaking and her face took on a youthful, almost radiant glow. “The Dead Sea Sect believed that the brain was grossly overrated. The nefesh – human soul or whatever you chose to call it - could lead a person closer to God in a heartbeat than all the stultifying rituals in the Talmud or Shulchan Aruch.”
“You love someone and treat them kindly,” Mrs. Shapiro continued, “that is all the wisdom a person needs to live in harmony with the universe.”
“I thought you said you weren’t religious?” Grace challenged.
“And I’m not,” the woman tossed the words out defiantly. “I haven’t set foot in a synagogue in thirty years.”
In the basement the sawing and planning had died down altogether. Carl and Angie were sweeping sawdust and putting hand tools away. “There was a medieval rabbi who couldn’t find it in his heart to believe in a traditional God.” The tremors in her hand had returned and now extended through the forearm causing the delicate China cup to clatter in the saucer she was holding. “He scoffed at the notion of a Jewish deity with a flowing white beard shaking his patriarchal fist in divine wrath. Self-righteous malarkey—that’s what he called it.”
“A Doubting Thomas of the Jewish persuasion,” Grace said.
Mrs. Shapiro collected her thoughts before replying. “Refusing to worship God in the conventional manner, the heretic rabbi proclaimed, ‘the scent of a rose is proof enough for the existence of God!’”
“The scent of a rose,” Grace repeated softly. “How beautiful!” She was thinking beyond the medieval rabbi, remembering how Carl sliced the paper-thin membrane of tulipwood and the bittersweet fragrance wafted like a benediction through the back room in the lumberyard.
******
After her personal life fell apart, Grace turned away from religion altogether. Father Callahan, the priest where they attended as a family, was a staunch advocate of hellfire and brimstone. If he had lived in the fifteen hundreds, Grace was convinced the good father would have burned the books of Erasmus and Thomas Moore while, in his spare time, waging holy wars against the Huguenot infidels.
According to Father Callahan, original sin was endemic, a virulent plague for which there was no cure. Each Sunday the priest demanded parishioners acknowledge their sinfulness. His piercing eyes always sparkled with righteous indignation.
Indignation or hubris, stiff-necked spiritual pride?
If Father Callahan came out of the rectory one morning and found his
Jeep Grand Cherokee up on cinder blocks, would he be so magnanimous and forgiving toward a Dwight Goober? And then there was Stewart. Because of his marital indiscretions, Grace was compelled to kneel alone patiently in the pew while the ‘faithful’ received Holy Communion.
One Sunday during a particularly prickly homily, Grace leaned over and whisper in her daughter’s ear, “Phony baloney!” It didn’t seem right to attend church regularly and harbor such vile feelings toward the church, so the following Sunday morning Grace told her daughter, “Get dressed. We’re going to Adam’s Diner for breakfast.”
“What about Mass?”
“Church is for God-fearing Christians and true believers.”
“And what are we?”
Grace thought a moment. “What we are right now is hungry. Let’s get something to eat. Unless, of course, you’d rather check out the Episcopalians.”
Angie’s face dissolved in a toothy grin. “Let’s eat!”
******
The first Tuesday in December, Principal Skinner cornered Grace between classes. “Test scores are in the toilet. I’m soliciting suggestions.” Earlier in the day, Grace had noticed Ed Gray sitting in the principal’s office. Neither man was smiling. An ugly rumor was filtering through the school; if trends continued on their downward spiral, the state could withhold the district’s education funds or, worse case scenario, put the entire program into receivership.
Many of the English faculty were afraid of Principal Skinner. A large-boned hulking figure, he swilled Maalox as though it was a soft drink and kept a roll of antacids, unashamedly in full view on the top of his executive desk. “What does Ed suggest?” Grace asked.
“He’s pushing for a full revamping of the curriculum to shadow last year’s MCAS.”
“Teach to the test.” The principal nodded politely and waited for her response.
“It won’t work.”
