The Seary Line (19 page)

“That you got married?”

“No. You knows what I meant.”

Stella smirked in the darkness.

“I'm going to grow old with you,” he said through a yawn, wide like a trap door. “Love your face even when it looks like a, like a. . .” Yawned again.

Stella stayed awake long after she heard gentle puffs of air, intermittent snores from pursed lips. Their sides were touching, and he lay straight in the bed, arms and legs neatly arranged, never straying or kicking. She believed he would be a considerate sleeper. Stretching her leg, she ran the arch of her sole over his cold twisted foot, her mind already venturing forward to the following evening.

Though Leander worked with wood his entire life, he was not always a furniture maker. He had spent several years
training to become a cooper. Mr. Jones, the local expert, had taught him the art of forming barrels and wooden buckets. After a very short time, Leander was able to fashion a barrel that did not leak, not even a drop. As he sawed and planed and sanded and shaved each individual piece, he had a sense when the angles were correct. A feeling of rightness in his stomach. And when he held the pieces together, knocked the hoops down over onto the wide section of the barrel, the joints closed, practically invisible to fingertip or eye.

“Jaysus,” Mr. Jones had said. “No doubts you've done this before.”

“Not really,” Leander had replied, rubbing his hands over the wood. “Only learnt from you.”

“Nope, you've done it before, my son. Maybe not in this lifetime, but you've done it before.”

In no time, he mastered the trade, fashioning barrels for salt meat and liquor, used soft pine for barrels holding apples or grain, and casks for dried fish. His tubs and barrels were in demand. Practically everyone in Bended Knee owned one of his specially designed butter churns. He tried to incorporate a dash of art into each churn by turning the tops of the paddle handles with the lathe.

As a wedding gift, he used his keenly honed coopering knowledge, and made Stella a small wooden tub from various shades of wood. The inside of the tub was sanded and polished until it was so smooth and shiny, in bright sunlight it would offer up a distorted reflection. Like no other tub, the lip of this one curved slightly, perfect for resting working arms, or the most vulnerable neck. Just the right size for bathing a newborn child.

By its rope handle, Stella had hung it on a hook in the porch. At first she dusted it regularly, and sometimes Leander would arrive home for lunch and find her seated in
the porch, tub in her lap, her hand running round and round the bottom of it. But as the months went on, the care of the unused tub waned. Leander noticed she stared at it less often, and after two years dissolved between them without a child, her eyes were no longer wistful. Now coats and sweaters often shared the hook, covering the tub, hiding the reminder of her perceived barrenness.

Stella was right to conceal it, let it hang there and warp with the changing seasons. What else could she do? He certainly didn't want her to focus on what was missing from her life instead of feeling the continual warmth of what was already there. So, he never said a word, never moved an article of clothing. But still, it hurt. He couldn't shake the connection that covering his best work was akin to giving up. Forgetting their plans for a large family. A large happy family. The satisfaction he derived from fashioning perfect barrels and seamless tubs began to wane. One leaked. A woman complained of splinters. It was time to move on to something else.

Once Stella and Leander were married, Percy visited every Saturday, slowly easing his way down over the hill from his widower's roost with his uncle. During warm summer afternoons, he and Leander would sit out in the front garden, two chairs crouched deep amid a tangle of lilac shrubs and unkempt grasses, lupines and goldenballs. Percy often slouched in his chair, knees a mile apart, dangling a strand of wild wheat nipped between his teeth. He'd grin when Stella brought out tall glasses of lemon crystals dissolved in water, ice chips.

Sometimes, when it was particularly warm, Percy and Leander would doze together, like father and almost son. Then they would eat an early supper, Stella languid on a quilt before them, cold meat and pickles, whole wheat bread, maybe a few caramel squares relaxing on a plate, liberating their brown sugary ooze.

Leander had always considered Percy to be a stern man. Stolid, even. Never had he seen his father-in-law smile, or nudge another in the ribs after a good joke. But in the years after Amos went off to war, Percy gradually emerged from his depression a looser man. Untroubled. Stella even dared to suggest content. She told Leander she believed his mind was “going soft,” and Leander agreed. Losing practically everything could do that to a man.

Every Saturday, he would arrive in the kitchen, stare at Stella with glossy eyes and sing with unconcealed fondness, “How lucky, how lucky, how lucky is I. To see my star outside of the sky.”

She always beamed and blushed, replied, “Now, Dad, don't be so foolish.”

“If only he'd stay just like this,” she'd said to Leander as they watched him make his way up the lane in an awkward cane-reliant skip. “I even seen him lollygagging over Miss Fuller. Wouldn't that be lovely? They gets on well, gets married, and perhaps she'll forgive us our credit.”

“Folks says she idn't right in the head. A few rooms unpapered.”

“I never noticed.”

“And besides, that'd mean you'd have her son as a brother.”

“Who? Alistair? He seems perfectly fine.”

“That's because you don't know him like the men do.”

“Well,” she had replied, “I was only teasing anyways.”

Percy spent hours in the red flaking shed with Leander, showing him how to turn a leg or sand in the direction of the grain. “You have to love the wood,” Percy had said the very first time he'd taken Leander into his tiny workshop. “Respect it. Each tree yearns to be something, I always thought. But I weren't much good for figuring it out.”

“I seen your work,” Leander had replied. “'Twas fine. I minds you made a high chair once for Mother.”

“I don't remember ever making no high chairs.”

“Well, she said 'twas the most solid piece of furniture in the house.” Leander picked up a length of wood, smelled it.

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.”