Scratching the peppery stubble on his neck, Percy said, “Put your tongue to it.”
“What?” Frowning.
“Go on, my son,” Percy pushed. “Don’t be shy. Just put your tongue to it. Then try this one. You’ll see. Each wood got a different smell to it. A different taste goes along with that. Some is sweet, and some is bitter.”
“Yes, I sees,” Percy replied after licking several lengths of wood. “Hmmm. Never would’ve guessed it.”
“I’d hope not.”
“Which wood do you like best?”
“Don’t be daft now, Leander. There’s good in all wood. You needs both kinds, of course. Both kinds to make up a strong forest. Makes more sense if they’s together. Don’t you think?”
“I do,” Leander replied. “It makes great sense.”
Percy smiled, nodded. “Now, sit down. There.” He pointed to the bench, covered with the remnants of a previous project, long abandoned.
“What? On that pile?”
“My son,” Leander said with a liberated roar of laughter, “if you wants to perch on a mound of sawdust for a spell, see if you can hatch something out of it, then who is I to question it.”
“I just meant. . .” he said as he sat down.
Percy plunked down beside Leander, shoulder to shoulder, touching. “Now, hold this scrap of pine in your hand.” Leander took it. “What do you think?”
“’Tis a bit damp.”
“Of course ’tis damp, but anything come to mind?”
“What do you mean?”
“I means, what do you want to make?”
“I haven’t a clue. Where do you start?”
“How in God’s name do I know?” Percy winked at no one in particular. His silver hair stood up in patches and he ran his fingers through it, not to smooth, it appeared, but to ruffle it even more.
“Maybe a washstand? Feels like a leg.”
Percy seized the length of wood from Leander, tossed it up in the air and caught it, then rapped it against the wall. “Yes, I believes there’s a leg in there too. I can hear it plain as the nose on my face. Wanting to kick its way out.”
“I was right?”
Percy didn’t acknowledge the question. “Do you see that lathe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me tell you something classified.”
“Classified?”
“That’s what I said. Just because I been living in an outport my whole life don’t mean I don’t know a thing or two that’s classified.”
“I never meant. . .”
In a low voice, Percy whispered, “Once there was this feller who was a furniture maker who had a dog.”
“A dog?”
“Did I say something other than a dog?”
“No, sir. You said dog.”
“Then why, in God’s name, is you asking me if I said dog?”
“Well, I don’t rightly know. Just banter, I suppose.”
Percy’s mouth hung open, and he shook his lower jaw. “I idn’t keen on banter, buddy boy. I’ll tell you that right from the get go. I don’t like banter, and I won’t have banter. If you got mind to banter, you can go banter with some other feller down the road. If you wants to listen and learn, then plug it up, you hear me, you?”
Leander nodded, pulled his lips in over his teeth, pressed down.
“Well he had this dog. A dog. A good-sized d-o-g. And he had that dog trained to go in that drum there. See those steps inside, like a round-about ladder?”
Nodding again.
“He’d run on that. Power the whole contraption.”
“Really?”
Percy cocked his head, stared at Leander through one eye. “You don’t believe me?”
“No, no, that’s not–”
“Smells like another whiff of that banter business.” Percy ran his hands down over his thighs, held onto his knees, elbows locked.
“No, sir.”
“Never could get a dog to do that myself. Though I tried. Time and time again. Not too many even knows about that. You’d have some business then, I allows.”
“I’ll bet.”
Percy rubbed his hands in the pile of sawdust, then put his palms to his nose, inhaled deeply, and sighed. Looking up, he said, “Had a son once. Did you know that?”
“Of course. Amos. He was a good feller. My friend.”
“Never much took to wood, you see.”
“No?”
“Didn’t like the solidness of it. What you see is what you gets.”
“I minds he loved the water, though. Is that right?”
“Ah, the water.” Percy stood and turned, swiped his forearm over the grimy window that offered a slender view of the sea. “You can’t trust the water like you can a tree. Water is tangly.”
“I never thought about that before.”
“No. I doubts you would. Young folks don’t think much, or else they thinks about all the wrong things. About saving the world. Water got nothing to do with that.”
“You don’t think?”
“I knows. You remember the flood?”
“What? No, sir. I don’t recall no flood ever. No.”
“You don’t never read the Bible? Read about the great flood?”
“Oh yes, that one. That flood.”
Percy rolled his eyes, rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, when I was a young one, we had to keep ourselves right still on a Sunday. Sit and read the Bible. And we was good boys. And that’s what we did.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me, what caused the flood?”
“What caused it?”
“Is you asking me or is me asking you?”
“Ah, the rains?”
“And what did the crowd do?”
“Built a big boat?”
“Exactly.” Percy snapped his suspenders. “It’s all there. The whole world saved by a few trees. Saved from the water by a few good trees.”
“You got a point, Mr. Abbott.”
“She took away my son.”
“Who?”
“The sea, boy. Haven’t you been listening?”
“But, Amos went off to–”
“Took him away, she did. With nar thought given to it. I never seen him again. I’ll never forgive her for that.”
Leander wasn’t sure how to respond, so he said nothing, only nodded. Perhaps Percy was beginning to forget, could only recall seeing Amos leave in a boat surrounded by early morning mist. No question of where he was going. Leander decided it would be better for such a memory to dissolve.
Percy pulled the door wide open, brightness filling the musty room. “Must go on in, I reckon, and find my star. See if she can scare me up a drop of tea. Leave you to get started on your washbasin. Washstand. Whatever ’twas you said.”
“Ah, yes, sir.” Leander stood too, elbow against the window frame, wood held idly by his side. “Washbasin. I means washstand.”
“And remember, Leander,” he said as he stepped out into the day, “a tree is a noble creature. Each one is blessed by God above. Rooted down, good and reliable.” He swiped his nose with his thumb. “The ocean, she’ll cut you, if she sees fit. Run a hole right through you and leave you to drown. Stay with the trees, my son. And you’ll live a fine life. Stay with the trees.”
Percy clicked the door closed behind him, the pure light diminished to a shaft seeping in through the unused keyhole. Leander tugged open the small window, watched Percy hobble the short distance to the stoop, arms out at his sides and bouncing. When he reached the house, Percy hollered, “Where’s you at, my star.” Stella appeared, and he laughed, said, “Some feller up there got his gob stuck right tight onto a bit of wood. I’d steer clear if I was you. Steer clear.” Tapped his noggin.
Leander slid back down to the bench, stared at all the dim corners in the shed. Spaces that clearly belonged to someone else. An axe, crosscut saw, chisels, drills, files, homemade tools for which he couldn’t fathom names, let alone their function.
&n
bsp; “I best get started,” he said aloud, turning what now felt like a sacred piece of pine over and over again in his hand.
In three days, plenty of blisters and splinters, nipped fingertips, he had constructed his first piece of furniture. A little washstand that teetered on uneven legs and with a front door that wouldn’t open. Leander wanted to destroy it, but Percy slammed back the door of the shed before he’d had the chance. And when Percy saw it, he clapped his hands together, picked it up with one hand, held it to his chest. Told Leander it was absolutely perfect.
chapter eight
In the week following that faded April day of the funeral, Stella saw a fat bird on the windowsill. It hopped along the wood, cocked its head as though it were staring through the glass at her. She put down the trousers she was mending, and went to the counter, slowly leaned in closer towards the window. The bird was familiar, with its shiny black eyes, and innocent eyebrows a solid ribbon of brilliant yellow. Weighting its face was an enormous bill the colour of weathered bone. She had seen this type of bird before, knew it liked to hide amongst the trees, bouncing on spruce branches or rubbing its wings against new pine needles. More than once, her father had said, “Do you see that, my star? How it plays with the trees? So free.”
“Look, Leander,” Stella said when he came in from the shop. “Over there.”
“What?”
“That bird. On the ledge. It’s been there all day.”
“All day?”
“Off and on, I means.”
“Must smell your cooking, maid.”
“Do you think?”
“Maybe it’s sick.” Leander stood. “Here, I’ll shoo it away.”
Stella put her hand to his arm. “No, no. Don’t do that. Leave it be.”
Throughout supper, it sat on the ledge, then hopped from one side to the other. More than once, their conversation was silenced by the subtle riffling sound as the bird pushed its cone-shaped beak into the corners where the window pane met the frame.
“Must want at some bug or something,” Leander suggested as he split a potato in half with his knife, then jabbed it, shoveled it up and into his mouth.
“Or else he wants to come in.”
“Well, we don’t want no bird in this house. You know what that means.”
Stella swallowed hard, took a sip of her tea, and put her hand to the middle of her chest. “Dry,” she managed to say. “The fish is right dry. I didn’t mind it well enough while it was frying.”
Reaching over, Leander held Stella’s wrist, her fork still poised in her fingers. Though the backs of his hands were riddled with nicks and scrapes, dusty nails and rough knuckles, his palms were sand-papered to baby softness. “I’s sorry, my love. ’Twas a thoughtless thing to say. Damned thoughtless.”
Stella nodded, not because she was agreeing with Leander, she simply wasn’t sure what to do with her head. Even though everyone was expecting it, when her father died, she was dazed. She had tricked herself into imagining that he was a permanent structure, a stable support. And when he vanished from her life, she felt exposed, uncomfortable, and peculiarly embarrassed by her reverberating grief.
At the funeral, he was laid out in a knotty pine box, every seam sanded smooth by Leander. He wore his black wool Sunday suit, and though no one would ever have noticed, every pocket was sewn shut. Stella knew this, as she had done the job herself – to honour one of her father’s requests. He had made her promise to seal every pocket as he explained, “Dead men don’t need them in heaven. No need to carry nothing, and I don’t want no empty spaces.” As she stitched the wool fabric, she thought of a hundred things to tuck inside those pockets. Useful earthly things. A coin, a button, a shiny nail. But she resisted, was tormented with thoughts of his vacant suit as he was laid in the newly thawed earth.
She could scarcely control herself during the service, during the burial. And though there was a hand on her constantly, an arm around her shoulder, it did nothing to ease the hollowness that was choking her. In a moment when her tears subsided and the sadness showed itself in only a shudder, Stella realized that the Smith sisters were staring at her, whispering just loudly enough to be heard.
“Not like ’tis a child,” the older one snarked quietly.
“He was an old man.”
“Gone soft at that.”
“Had a good, long life.”
“’Tis a sin to be so strickened over it, if you asks me,” the older one replied, talking into the handkerchief covering her mouth.
Stella stared at the raw edges of the hole before her, then straightened her back, did her best to tuck away her tears, compress her emotion back into more private space. She glanced over her shoulder at the sisters, and they smiled sadly at her, then pursed their lips resolutely, and nodded. Maybe Stella had actually imagined their voices in her ear; maybe those were her own words disguising themselves. Should she be feeling so distraught over the death of a gentle man who lived a good, decent life?
In the hours afterwards, when everyone ate and drank and chatted in post-burial cadence, Stella thought about this. Perhaps she might feel differently at another time, but right now she was convinced that deep sorrow was the correct emotion. Though she’d never be able to articulate it, she sensed that when Percy died, the whole world was somehow poorer for it. A portion of history was now unrecoverable, a million tiny branches perished. Was she mistaken to believe that the irreplaceable loss of a realized life outweighed the sketchy potential of a life unlived?
For several years, he had what Stella believed to be a joyful life. An untethered life. In summer, with hardwood cane in hand, he wandered the woods filling a bucket with berries or sawing birch trees and hauling them out a couple at a time. Most wintry afternoons, he could be found in the shed with Leander, spending quiet hours sanding the runners for a sleigh or planing a length of wood. As he meandered between Stella’s and his late uncle’s house, he could be seen standing on the cliffs that surrounded the harbour, gazing at the gulls as they dove into the sea, searching for food. From the window over the table, she watched him sometimes, cane dropped on the rock, hands to his chest, elbows out, head back, and she imagined he was mimicking their shrill cry.
During his last few months, his decline had been fast and furious, as though he had reached a crest, and plummeted. Leander found him collapsed in on the marshy bog near the river, and after that, both his body and mind began to give way like a long decayed stump. He moved back with Stella, took to resting on the daybed where Stella’s mother Delia had spent countless days. So many times she looked at her father, fresh questions piled up on her tongue. But, in the increasingly rare moment when he was lucid, she hadn’t the courage to ask them. Then, by the time she was certain of her words, he had grown silent and sullen, and rarely looked her in the eye.
As she sat beside the daybed, the burden of her ignorance gnawed away at her. She never really knew her father, never knew about his childhood, or his favourite meal, or how he learned to turn a piece of wood. She would never know if her mother had been the first girl he’d kissed or if her grandfather had ever told a good joke. It was her fault, this ignorance, as she hadn’t taken the time to ask. With the daily life business of weeding and chopping wood and curing fish and knitting socks, these bits of knowledge had always seemed insignificant to her. Until she realized they were trapped. His life story wholly inaccessible.
One of their last sensible conversations, a riddle of words, replayed in her head, taunting her. It happened a few weeks before he collapsed, and in hindsight, she understood he was placing a soul door before her, and she hadn’t the common sense to open it. They had been sitting on the back stoop, the two of them staring up at the same sky. She leaned into him, noticed his cardigan was mis-buttoned, one side of the collar jutted upwards, the other side tugged down. As she readjusted the sweater, she inhaled his smell, an old damp book, pages moulded together.
“Sometimes,” he had said to her, “there’s a moment in your life that
shapes you. Shapes you up, tight like a supper bun.”
“I’d imagine a million moments is shaping me, Dad. Dozens of supper buns.” She slapped her well-nourished thigh, laughed lightly, but he never joined her
“That’s because you’s lucky, my star. For others, though, there’s an instant that puts them square on a path, and they got nar chance of stepping off.”
At the time, she had listened casually, another part of her thinking about the stew on the stove. It was time to poke the chopped carrots in around the chunks of meat, whip together some dumplings. Leander had wanted a late supper.
But now, if she could replay it, she would ignore the stew, pay attention with both ears, and ask him if he was unlucky, if there was one moment in his life that changed its direction. She would ask him to describe the path he had been on. And in reflecting on everything, had it been a good path? How she dearly hoped it was.
“My grandfather once told me,” he had continued, “that sometimes it takes more courage to stand by and watch. Takes more guts to do nothing. Do you know that?”
“Uh-huh,” she replied, the stew still on her mind. In a moment, she would have to leave him and tend to it. Shifting logs could create a hot spot, and what a disaster it would be if the liquid had boiled off, meat stuck on.
“He said there’s only room for so many fighters.”
Stella cleared her throat. “Are you talking about Amos, Dad?”
“What? Ah, yes. Amos. He idn’t alone. Not alone.”
“No, Dad. He sure idn’t.” She reached over to hold her father’s hand, his skin cool and dry, warmth retreated.
“’Tis a lovely evening. Can almost feel heaven pressing down on me.”
She sighed. This talk of heaven again.
“And I got it in my mind,” he continued, “that I’d right love another slice of that lassie bread.”
“All right, Dad. Come. Sit to the table. I got to go in anyways.”
They went indoors, and Stella cut him a thick slice of bread, the piece compressing with the freshness.
“Spare a drop of tea, my star?”
Kettle already warm on the back of the stove, she spooned loose tea into the pot, filled it.
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