Note: I started writing this in late 1981, set it aside
for
awhile, and completed it in December, 1983. It's a little more complex
than anything I've tried to write before or since. I'm not sure that it
works very well, but, like the proverbial talking dog, the miracle is
not that it does it well but that it can do it at all. The whole
project might make more sense if I described its origins:
The germ was The Norse Myths (Pantheon Books, 1980),
Kevin
Crossley-Holland's masterful rewriting of ancient Nordic stories
collected in Iceland around 1200 by Snurri Sturlusson. I was
particularly taken by the last chapter, Ragnarok, which
describes the
cataclysmic destruction of everything, including the gods. But although
the earth can be destroyed, the pattern (Plato's ideal essence) cannot,
so two
humans hide inside a cocoon in Yggdrasil, the ash tree that connects
heaven and
earth, and they survive to start over again.
The cosmic ash tree got me to thinking about the importance of
wood
to us and our ancestors, and my weakness for puns determined that I
would have
to write a trilogy.
The first story, MATT, is completely fictional, and it was
where I
discovered that I'm not very good at inventing believable characters or
events.
PELLA is a vastly embellished version of a small story my
Uncle Paul
told me when I was about 12 years old. We were
out working in the fields, loading oat bundles on a wagon, as I
remember. Uncle Paul's stories were the mainstay of my sex education,
since, just like today, the subject wasn't taught in schools. I don't
know where this cautionary tale came from, as I
haven't heard it elsewhere, but I took it to heart, and have always
avoided anything too good to be true, thus disappointing stockbrokers
as well as tavern entertainment managers.
The third story is almost pure memoir, my recollection of the
time
Pauley Layman of Sunrise, MN, invaded our farm to saw our wood,
inadvertently teaching me some other important life lessons.
The trilogy title comes from William Wordsworth's poem, The
Table's
Turned:
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good
Than all the sages can.
PROLOG
Wood: it's easier said than done. Try it: purse your lips,
grunting
from middle throat, followed right away by tonguetouch to mouthroof.
Grummed out by Old English, Old Saxons, Old Germans, Old Norsks, Old
Cornishers, Old Gaels, Old Welchers. Their duty was clear. The wood had
to be sawed, split, hauled out of the dark forests; to be hewn, bored,
pegged, burned. They were Wednesday's children. Woden the lumberjack,
hanging halfway between earth and sky on the ashtree; only a lousy
squirrel for company; only a grunt to express his plight.
Tree corpses last longer than ours, but they too turn to dust.
They
can't testify to wood's importance. Look at a museum display of tools
of past cultures. See what is missing: hafts, thongs, handles, and
holders. That should convince you -- the Stone Age was really the Wood
Age, as was the Bronze Age, with miniature cast horsemen wielding holes
in their hands where once were wooden spears. The Iron Age, too, was
mostly wood. Eve tempts Adam with treefruit, and Darwin's monkeys swing
on boughs. Eucharist trees give us the wafers on which we print poems
to praise them.
Furless and with little hair, our people always needed
shelter,
and
caves are rare. If trees are nearby, shelter from wood comes easy.
Birchbark strips over a frame of spruce boughs, lashed with basswood
thongs; a fire smoldering in the center, smoke reluctantly working its
way out the smokehole on top. A multistory frame house, built by
talented carpenters; sturdy and tight, with a robust fire in the
fireplace magically creating a healthful glow in the faces of the
guests while the butler comes by with a tray of canapes to go with the
sherry. And our present age, for all its ephemeral inanimate products
of organic chemistry, is also the Age of Wood. Furniture is made of
wood, or plastic imitating wood, or wood imitating plastic imitating
wood. It all depends on what's cheapest.
I love living trees the way some people relate to domestic
animals.
But, like many pet fanciers, I have trouble handling the remains of
departed friends. Mere wood and I never got along well together. In
grade school, I devised a project in wood class that involved taking a
5" long piece
of
pine 2X4 and painting it red (for a doorstop, I think). I promptly
wrapped
it in newspaper for protection. My teacher couldn't understand why I
didn't know that newspaper, being also wood, would soak up the paint
and stick to the surface. In high school, I built a simple magazine
stand, the easiest available project. Alas, my Industrial Arts teacher
insisted I had to learn the Proper Way of Doing Things, which meant
sanding and varnishing the ill-sawed plywood deformity no less than
five times. It's looks never improved. I was still working on it the
day after school had ended, in a desperate bid to pull a "C" from the
grim-faced teacher, who also coached the football team. I did not play
football.
MATT
Since we've never been on the same plane, I have no idea how
sheltering, warming wood, pronounced with the same grunt, can be shaped
into forms of exquisite frivolous frippery. I don't mean butcherings
such as German cuckoo clocks or little cheerful Trolls. I speak of
artistry where exact knowledge of each curve of grain, each fiber, is
needed. A knowing carver can grow a shape out of the wood's structure
with such harmony that the result is what the wood always wanted to be,
the only form it could gracefully take. The master violin maker taps
the fiddleback, listening to its tone. He bends it with his fingers to
test its compliance -- each piece is different. A little wood needs to
be
shaved off in a certain spot, or perhaps entire relationships between
parts of the back must be changed. How does he know how to make a
casket that sings like a woman?
Laurie's uncle Matt had such a skill. All the relatives agreed
he
always had it. Laurie's father said it was because Matt had never
married, so he had lots of time to spend on carving. He bought a house
and filled it with wooden artifacts. His woodworking talent was of no
use to his daytime job. Baldness struck early, even including his
eyebrows, and he had no excess fat on his face, so he was easily able
to carve a self-portrait (a skull of sanded white oak) without having
to face the difficulty of chiseled hair. He collected a complete set of
wood carving tools, deliberating over each one. As he aged, he tried
more and more difficult carvings. He mastered the skill needed to
revivify a mere piece of dried cellulose into not just a living being,
but one of such importance it takes your breath away.
Well, at least when he looked at the best of his handiwork, it
took
his breath away. He noticed that, although other
woodworkers
praised
his carving, friends or relatives only glanced at them, then turned
away to other matters of more importance. He never tried to explain (to
his brother, for example) why the ability to free the buried form in a
piece of wood was so important that, by comparison, everyday work was
nothing, only a means for buying wood, tools and sustenance -- but
above
all, good aged wood: tranquil oak, frivolous curly maple, stolid
walnut, or brooding mahogany.
He found a burl somewhere with grain in an almost spherical
shape.
He quickly saw what to do with it: carve a set of nested concentric
spheres, just like an ivory Chinese ball he had seen in a museum.
Mettled, he worked every night and weekend on the project. Just sanding
the burl into a pure spherical shape took over a month. Carving the
lacy spheres was much tougher. Each smaller one was supported by its
elder brother who surrounded it. He had to get his knife inside to
carve not just the outer sphere, but all the smaller ones, so each
sphere existed only as an idea, sketched in delicate strips of
remaining wood. When he finally shaped the last part, the tiny solid
sphere in the center, it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He made many other sculptures after that, but he often fondled his lacy
ball, and even talked to it when he was alone. He noticed it could
foretell the weather. On fine days, it looked even more delicate than
usual, as if the tracery composing the spheres were about to disappear.
Maybe it was about to float away like a balloon. But when the spheres
squeezed together and the ball turned dark and heavy, Matt knew it
would soon rain.
Uncle Matt had asked Laurie to come see him. On a dry, gusty
day,
after the varsity football game, Laurie, dressed in white sweater,
short purple skirt and carrying large purple pom-poms, stopped at his
house. She hadn't seen Uncle Matt for years, and was surprised at his
thinness. After the football talk, he handed her the carved sphere. "I
want you to have this," he said. "It took a lot of work, and it's my
favorite piece. It's very valuable. I hope you'll think of me when you
look at it."
"0h, I will, I will, Uncle Matt," said Laurie. She loved to
receive
gifts.
His death was more difficult than most: lung cancer from all
those
cigarettes. Laurie's parents, who tired of the trips to the
hospital, were relieved. Laurie's father, administrator of the estate,
sold the tools and some of the sculptures to Matt's woodworking
friends. He sold the house. The estate sale did not attract wood
lovers, however, so most of the carved wood pieces were left for the
trash haulers.
The estate left enough money for college, and Laurie easily
passed
her
Home Economics courses. After playing the field for
the proper time, she found the man of her choice and married him. She
had so much self-confidence, coming from a confident family, that
courtship entailed no difficulties, and he was just graduating from Law
School, an assured future. She settled into suburban homemaking, with
all its small distresses, and, although they had no children, kept
busy. The lacy sphere was safely stored in a small box in a closet,
awaiting the moment when it would be needed.
She didn't really intend it, but somehow some New Year's Eve
foolishness led to a brief affair with a neighbor. Her husband found
out about it, and hired a private detective to take pictures. Laurie
got nothing out of the divorce. Her parents, retired in Florida,
offered no help, so she got an apartment and a job as a receptionist.
As she was unpacking, she came across the carved sphere, and thought
nostalgically about Uncle Matt.
"The only thing he gave me, and it's very valuable," she said
to
herself.
The next day, she took her engagement ring with its numerous
small
diamonds, her wedding ring, and the lacy sphere to an antique dealer.
"What will you give me for these rings and the carving?" she asked.
The dealer studied the rings carefully. "Three hundred for the
rings," he said, "but the ball isn't worth a thing."
Laurie's mouth dropped open. "What?"
"Not a thing."
Laurie returned to her apartment after going to two more
antique
dealers and a pawnshop. "Uncle Matt, you sonofabitch, you fooled me,"
she said to the ball. She squeezed it, tentatively at first, then
harder. It resisted. Surprised, she squeezed as hard as she could, but
it wouldn't even give. She had to hurl it to the floor and step on it
with her foot before it crunched like the skull of a small animal.
PELLA
Spring was definitely coming. Riding the train south towards
Duluth,
he saw the unbearably bright sun forcing the snow down a little lower
every mile. Winter at the lumber camp hadn't been too bad, really. Not
as bad as he had expected. The work was hard, but the food good. Some
of his comrades had been unlucky: two were dead, one had a broken
back, and one was missing a leg. But he didn't get a scratch, not even
a close call; and he had been able to send money home to his parents,
as promised. There's nothing to spend it on in the camps if you don't
gamble.
Others stayed on to run the logs downriver, but home needed
him.
His
parent's homestead farm was only half cleared, not yet capable of
supporting the family. Pella thought ahead to a summer of cutting
trees, burning brush and grubbing stumps. Terrible summer work, with
humidity and mosquitoes. This summer, though, they will get the rest of
the land cleared and the swamp drained. Then only one more lumbering
winter, and the farm will be self-supporting. Farming is the real life.
They farmed in Sweden, they will farm here, and that's what Pella will
do when his father grows too old. Hard work is an investment in a rich
future, and you can learn more useful things in the woods than in
school. Some boys his age, from families who had already cleared their
land, went to school during the winter. "Boy? Hell, I'm a man," he
corrected himself.
The southbound train out of Duluth didn't leave for hours, so
he
decided to see the town. To be truthful, he was looking forward to
that, listening carefully each night to the stories: a winter's worth
of exciting adventures in Duluth. The stories made him save out some
money, so he could see the sights, too. Duluth was overcast but warm.
The snow was sticky. The cutters running in the streets had actually
worn through to bare dirt in places. The lake smelled good. If it
wasn't the lake, at least something smelled good. Pella sprang
along, looking up, sideways, even backwards so he wouldn't lose his way
back to the train station. He passed the first saloon on the street,
but at the next one, he heard piano music even through the closed door.
It opened into a dark, cigar-smoke room. Most of the men at the bar
were in lumber clothes, although others were well-dressed. The music
was fast, like a polka, but syncopated so you couldn't make out how to
dance it. The tune moved into a strange dischord, then resolved itself
again, only to effortlessly change back into the weird scale. The piano
player looked as smooth as his music: dark hair smeared with macassar
oil. Pella read the advertising signs. OLD FORESTER. OLD GRAND DAD. WED
IN THE WOOD. He looked at the other drinks on the bar, and followed the
crowd with a shot of whiskey and a beer. Whiskey tasted terrible, so
beer wasn't bad by comparison. He flushed immediately. He loosened the
buttons of his red-and-black checked flannel shirt. The piano player
changed to a minor chord, and the rhythm got even weirder and louder.
His barmates cheered and whistled. A spotlight lit up a small stage.
The pianist stopped, turned to the audience, shouting, "...and now,
what you've all been waiting for, the fabulous Tanya!"
He restarted the music, and Tanya danced out on stage in a
harem
costume. She slithered shoulders and hips in time to the music. The
piano playing had been dirty all along. Pella knew this now; he just
hadn't figured it out until Tanya demonstrated it for him. Last summer,
he secretly took hold of Inga's hand at the church social, and she
squeezed his hand back. That squeeze drove him through the long winter
in the woods. But Tanya, dusky, slim and shapely, was nothing like
Inga. He riveted on every move of her body. She moved like river water
over submerged rocks, and her flow in time with the unfamiliar rhythm
was so exciting, Pella almost forgot to breathe. The backbreaking wood
labor of the past winter and the coming summer was remote, secondhand,
as if he had only heard about it. When the bartender came by for
reorders, Pella nodded without taking his eyes off Tanya. She left the
stage all too soon, and the piano player stepped down for a break. He
moved in next to Pella, ordered a whiskey, then unexpectedly turned to
him. "What do you think of Tanya?" he asked.
Pella was a little confused. His tongue wouldn't work right.
Finally, he answered, "I think she's the most beautiful thing I've ever
seen. What color is she?" He meant 'race', but couldn't think of the
English word. The piano player understood him anyway. "Why she's
Persian! Who else could dance like that? She knows every move." He
looked at Pella meaningfully.
"Do you own this place?" Pella asked, embarrassed by the look.
"No, but I'm sort of in charge of the entertainment. Look
here, I
can see you've been in the woods, probably all winter. Right? Well,
Tanya has a soft spot in her heart for loggers, particularly those who
have kept themselves pure for a long time. You have done that, haven't
you?" There was that meaningful look again.
Pella nodded while swallowing hard. He wasn't quite sure what
the
man was talking about, but it sounded too good to be true.
"Well, then, come this way," said the piano player. He led
Pella
through the noisy crowd to a door, opening into a darkened stairway
down. At the bottom was a small room with a door at the other end.
"Wait here," he said, pointing Pella to a chair. He left through the
other door. Pella shivered, still not quite sure what was happening.
He came back through the door. He had not been gone long. "She
says
she'd love to see you and show you a good time! Just take your clothes
off and go through that door, and she'll be there."
"What?" said Pella. He thought he must be dreaming.
"She can't show you a good time if you have those lumbering
clothes
on, can she? By the way, she likes to tease. Just catch her and get on
top of her."
The piano player left. Pella, his hands shaking, took off his
clothes. Before opening the door, he looked at himself in a mirror on
the wall. He really didn't look too bad. Very strong shoulders, arms
and back, triangulating down to slimmer but still muscular trunk,
thighs and legs. One look in the mirror, and his excitement fused into
an erection, organ distended with a winter's worth of semen.
Cautiously, he opened the door. It might be a trick!
The room was larger and more brightly lit than he had
expected,
but
Tanya was standing there, wearing only a shimmering transparent silken
shawl in front of her. Her breasts and triangular hairpatch were
clearly visible. Pella again thought she was the most beautiful thing
he had ever seen, but he couldn't even swallow, much less speak. After
an eternity, during which time his erection did not diminish, he was
finally able to say "hello."
Tanya smiled and began to do the same suggestive dance she had
done
upstairs, only without music this time. She moved towards him. He tried
to dance with her, but couldn't understand the rhythm, couldn't follow
her. His desire for her got worse and worse. After a few clumsy steps,
he grabbed for her shawl, but was surprised to snatch only air. She had
moved away. She danced more, smiling and beckoning to him. He
concentrated on her waving hips, and tried to grab them. Again, she
danced right out of his grasp, and again turned and beckoned to him. He
was suddenly angry. His back, shoulder and arm muscles tensed. More
desperate now, he lunged at her. She wasn't there. The harder he tried
to get her, the faster her dance became. Pella breathed harder. He was
mad. But as soon as he thought of turning back to the door where his
clothes were, she began again to beckon and smile at him with the same
desiring look. He redoubled his efforts, and finally was able to guide
her into a corner with his outstretched arms. Just as he reached for
her, she pushed on a panel. The entire corner swung around, and when it
came back, Tanya had disappeared. Pella pushed on the corner panel as
hard as he could, but it didn't move. Suddenly, the air was filled with
the awfullest pounding sound, the likes of which he had never heard
before. Looking up, he noticed that, above the lights, the room was
ringed with glass windows. Looking beyond the lights, he recognized
some of the faces he had seen at the bar. Everyone was pounding on the
windows, and he could see they were yelling and cheering. He ran out of
the room back to where his clothes were. He had a hard time putting
them on, so he thought hard about the train station. He
ran up the stairs and out the door as fast as he could, trying not to
hear the laughter, not looking to the side. Once out the door, he
didn't slow down until he got to the station. He was sweating. After
the sweating, even long after he was home, there remained the
embarrassment: hard, glittering, cold as a diamond, and as
indestructible. It outlived Pella; it outlived the one who told me this
story; it will outlive me. I now present you with Pella's
embarrassment. You can keep it. It looks good on you.
LAYMAN
Dad never knew much about money. Mom did all the bookkeeping,
and
milk cows didn't bring in all that much, anyway. Certainly never enough
to pay much income tax. He faithfully memorized Grandpa's order to
never borrow money, and he never did. The woodpile was his bank
account. He looked at it every day and gauged his wealth by it. Like
any miser, he always felt poor: there was never enough. Some years the
woodpile grew to giant size, but we lived on glacial-scarred land. The
glaciers had left only recently, and Dad could imagine a winter so
severe it would chew all the wood up by March. We needed wood in the
summer, too, for cooking. He had to follow Grandpa's advice, for there
was no bank that lent wood.
The 120 acre farm was 3 forties (3/4 mile) long, with the farm
buildings and woodpile at one end, and the woods at the other. If there
was snow, Christmas school vacation was the start of the wood season.
The first morning of vacation, after we milked the cows and cleaned the
barn, we went to the machine shed and dragged out the two halves of the
gangsled. The runners, 6-inch wide timbers, carved into graceful curves
in front, were lined with strapiron. The front sled had the horsepole
and tugs, with a heavy cross-timber (called a bunk) where you sat and
drove the horses. The back sled
was attached to the front with crossed chains, but also had a bunk
which, like the front one, had ironwood poles stuck into holes on each
end. The poles held the logs in place when we hauled them home.
December was already very cold, so we wore long underwear and
two
pairs of pants, plus wool shirt, sweater, jacket, and leather mittens
with wool liners. We used wool
socks, felt boots and rubber overshoes. If the snow was deep, we wound
Dad's dark brown wrap leggings (he had brought several pair home from
World War I) from ankle to knee to prevent wet pantslegs.
We harnessed Beauty and Bird and hitched them to the gangsled.
We
took double-bitted axes and a long two-man Swedish steel saw, which
could be bent into a loop like a Damascus sword. Dad drove the horses
across the bitter fields, while Mike and I sat on the rear bunk, our
backs to the wind. I left a Morse code message in the snow by dragging
my feet: dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot (SOS: save us
from woodcutting). The
wind wasn't
quite so bad when we reached the woods, and I swung around on the bunk
to watch the snow whiz under the open area between the sled halves. The
trees, all twig and trunk, didn't give much protection, but the west
end of the farm was an esker that deflected the northwest gales. Dad
tied the horses to a tree. The prickly ash ripped at our clothes as we
slogged through the thickets. Finally, he found a tree that was just
the right type and size: old enough to be good firewood. He axed a
niche on the side where it was to fall, a job requiring more skill than
a schoolkid could handle. Mike and I sawed on the other side of the
tree. A two-man saw works like a breeze if both men pull and release at
just the right time, and if you pull the saw straight out from the
tree. My sense of sawing rhythm was terrible, though, and my back
muscles started to spasm after the first few strokes. I pulled up on
the saw as well as outward, which made the drag worse. Mike cursed at
me. Dad wouldn't swear at me, but he never tired of telling me how to
do it. That didn't help; my back just wasn't built for lumbering. Eons
later, we had sawed the tree almost through, and Dad hammered a small
wedge into the front side of the cut. When the tree began to crack, we
stepped back, watching to make sure it fell in the right direction. A
mistake here is serious. Cut through too far, and the tree will twist
on its stump, after which it can fall in any direction. The snow plumed
upwards as the tree whacked into the frozen ground. The horses did not
flinch. We trimmed the branches with a double-bitted axe, and, with the
help of a small amount of kerosene, lit the brush into a sooty yellow
blaze, warming us and a blackened coffee pot as well.
It was easier to use the two-man saw to cut the fallen tree
into
logs. With a sledgehammer and wedges, we split them into small enough
pieces so we could lift them onto the bunks of the gangsled. When the
logs were piled above the bunkpoles, we threw a chain around the entire
bunch of logs and tightened it with a crowbar twisted around the chain
like the propeller on a rubber-band airplane, and tied the crowbar to
the chain with a rope. I was not sorry to see us head for home. After
school began again, Dad went to the woods every day, sawing down the
trees with a one-man saw. Every weekend, we went along to help load
logs on the sled. As the winter turned coldest, the logpile grew as the
pile of cut, split wood shrank. By early spring, Dad was glum. He was
feeling the sting of stovewood poverty.
One year, we collected an unusually large pile of logs, which
made
the pile of prepared firewood look even smaller. I went with Dad in the
car to Ted Richard's farm. Ted owned a buzzsaw, and for as long as I
could remember, we had hired him to saw our logs into stovewood
lengths. As we drove into the
farmyard, Ted's father, an old man with dark glasses, stepped out of
the house. Heavy solid telegraph wire ran between the house and the
outdoor toilet. On the wire was a sliding ring with a rope hanging from
it. He took the rope and slowly followed the wire to the toilet.
He turned
towards the sound of our car and waved at it.
"Why is he blind?" I asked.
"He was sawing wood and a chip hit him in the eye," said Dad.
"Then
the other eye went bad. That's why Ted always uses goggles when he runs
the saw."
Ted came out of the house before his father had reached the
end
of
his wire track.
"I need my wood sawed," said Dad. "When do you think you could
make
it?"
"My tractor isn't working," said Ted, "and I decided to quit
farming. I just rented a place in town, and I'm going to open a
restaurant. I figure people always have to eat, but they don't always
need their wood cut."
Dad's voice had an edge. "Who saws, then?"
"You might try a fella named Layman. He comes from down by the
river
bottom. But I don't think he comes through here until fall."
The old man came out of the toilet and groped for the
leadrope.
The
silvery song of the rope's metal loop on the telegraph wire ran up and
back the bluegray line like a message, repeated by the reflecting farm
buildings. The sun was so bright I had to squint. As we turned and
drove away, I asked Dad, "Can't he even see this sunlight?"
"Not a thing," said Dad.
Dad was grimmer that summer. Unsawed logs are not usable
wealth.
They must be split after sawing, and they need time to cure. We put up
the hay and shocked the oats and filled the silo with green corn. Dad
called Layman several times, but with no result.
Finally, everything was set for a Tuesday in late October. We
drove
to all the neighbors and relatives we had helped and who had in turn
helped us thresh oats and fill silo. One neighbor looked at the ground
when Dad told him Layman was the sawyer. "I know I owe you some help,"
he said, "but couldn't you find someone else?"
"What's wrong with him?" asked Dad.
"He's a maniac! Crazy as a shithouse mouse. I helped saw for
him
once. He has this old Model T engine to pull his saw, and he swears it
can't be stopped. He's invented a funny sort of buck to hold the log.
It's on a hinge, and he feeds the log into the saw just by pushing on
it. He pushes it back and forth as fast as he can, and you're expected
to keep feeding the log forward. He goes like that all day, and he
yells at you if you don't get the next log up right away. He goes too
fast. Someone will get hurt."
"I'll try to get some extra help," said Dad. I knew then that
I'd
be
staying home from school on Tuesday.
The sun was setting on Monday night, and we were putting the
milkcans into the watertank for cooling, when Layman pulled slowly into
our driveway. I'd never seen anyone like him. The members of our family
were built like the cows we milked, but he was thin as a sapling,
oakbark color from head to foot. He had a brown cap and long brown
coat, brown pants and brown boots, with socks which had once been
white, but were now brown. His face and hands were brown, powdered with
old sawdust. His hair had not been cut for a very long time, and he had
not shaved for several days.
"I thought you weren't coming until tomorrow," said Dad.
"How else would we be able to start on time?" answered Layman.
Sure enough, he was driving a Model T truck. On the back was a
circular saw attached by a belt to another Model T engine. The whole
contraption was well used. He drove it over by the woodpile and, as
darkness set in, ran around his rig, adjusting a nut here, greasing a
bearing there, covering the open engines. Both of them were cooled by a
55 gallon oil drum full of water. The drum was open on top with a hose
stuck in it. I felt the water; it was hot.
"Just wait until tomorrow," said Layman. "When my T model
starts
to
pull that saw, she boils to beat hell. I'm going to need lots of water
to keep her cool. In the winter I use snow."
After adding some more supper to her cooking, Mom went
upstairs
to
fix a bed for him. Layman did not wash either his face or hands before
he sat down to eat with us. I waited for Mom to tell him to wash his
hands, but she said nothing. In the lamplight, I saw his teeth were
brown and rotted like old treestumps. As he ate, spit ran down the
corners of his mouth, cleaning two stripes of his face.
After supper, they talked. Layman said he played fiddle, so
Dad
took
out his fiddle and gave it to him. Layman tucked it under his wirebrush
chin and sawed out some old Swedish tunes: Johan på Snippen and
Jänta Å
Ja and Styrmans Valse. The fiddle screeched -- he pushed
down way too
hard on the bow. I had never heard it sound so hard before. He had
taken some snuff, and the corners of his mouth, though wet, had
returned to their natural color. Dad took out his Hohner mouth organ
and began to play along with Layman. They ran through several more
tunes. "You know," said Layman, "I can play the mouth organ too."
"I have to go to bed now," Dad said, slapping the harmonica on
his
knee.
Even before we finished milking, Layman was out monkeying with
his
two Model T engines. I snuck out of the barn early and went over to
watch him. The grass looked even greener than usual, because it was
covered with a light coat of hoarfrost glittering in the sun. I turned
and looked at my green footprints between the barn and where I stood, a
dead giveaway. Layman had trampled all the frost away from around his
rig. He was running. He pumped his greasegun so fast it wouldn't pump
grease. His hands were shaking as he transferred the spark coil from
the truck engine to the saw engine, and tried to attach the wires. He
was swearing to himself.
"I'm almost ready," he said. "Where is everybody?"
"Still milking, I think," I said. I thought about a windup toy
walking man I once had. I had broken it somehow so it ran down in a
couple of seconds. It couldn't walk anymore, but lay on the ground in a
frenzied fit until its spring was unwound.
He took a blowtorch out of his toolkit and began to pump it
up.
"What's that for?" I asked.
"I've got to heat up the engine so I can crank it," he said.
I looked into his toolkit, and saw a wristwatch there, an
exquisite
wristwatch with a tooled leather strap. It had a sweep second hand, and
two other small hands on the face which were there for no reason I
could imagine. There were pushbuttons on the side. I had never seen
anything like it, even in the Sears catalog. "What is this for?" I
asked. I was surprised that a raggedy brown dirty madman would have a
fine piece of jewelry.
He had come over to the toolbox for a match. "Oh that," he
said,
and
his voice slowed down. "Put it back," he said. "That belonged to Arnie.
He's my son. He got it in the army."
Layman took a long breath. "It was an accident. He was home on
furlough helping me with a load of wood. We had to hurry. I chained the
load together and tightened it. He was over on the other side, and just
as I let go of it, the crowbar came loose. The logs fell on him.
Crushed him. I dragged the logs off him. It was too late. He was gone.
His watch still worked, so I kept it to remember him by."
He turned away as I put the watch back. "Shit," he said. "He
and
I
could have cut a lot of wood together." He lit the blowtorch and began
to pump it some more. The flame stayed in the cup, but a thin stream of
unlit gasoline squirted out a long ways, maybe 15 feet. "Shit," he said
again, and pumped harder. "Where is everybody? We've got some fancy
sawing to do today."
POSTLOG
So there they are, unvarnished. We are still in the axe-age.
The
old
stories of my people promise that yet to come will be a sword-age, a
wind-age and a wolf-age. May Woden have mercy on us. The two humans
hidden in the ashtree are encased in waxy cocoons. They will have to
wait a long time for their chance, after three winters without a
summer, before corn grows in fields unsown. What a bother, when they
finally break their shells to look on newly risen earth, only to find
they're no different from us.
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