hearts and barns

There were two of them building the barn. Brothers. Or that’s how he explained it. “Well, he’s like a brother to me,” the first carpenter said. “See, he dated this woman for a while and then he married her and they had two kids. Then, see, they split up. And later, she and I got together. Now me and that woman, we have two kids of our own. So he’s like family to me. I’m helping out, giving him this job” I smiled at him, but took it as a warning.

First it was just a clearing in the trees, then a patch of packed earth, then a row of posts. Then the posts were connected with beams and covered with bright, new plywood. Alexandra watched the progress through the kitchen window and worried that it would never finish. I picked raspberries and listened to the two men talk. They rattled off numbers mostly. An eighth inch here and a thirty degree pitch there. They weren’t super educated, but I know I couldn’t have figured out all that math in my head. Every once in a while they opened the doors of the pickup and blasted away the silence with heavy metal. They were country folk. They were bored with silences.

Then one day, the second man, the brother, picked up a long beam and slung it over his shoulder; suddenly turned white and dropped the whole thing. A sliver, a nearly pencil-wide piece of wood, had slid through his flesh and broken off into his palm. He held his hand out like a child while his partner used pliers to try to pull it out. But it was wedged in tight. “Yeah, we’ve got to go to the hospital,” said the older of the two, throwing the circ-saw in the back. The younger man tried to smile, but the skin on his face was ashen and his hand shook. “That thing’s not coming out on its own.”

Later they told me that all the muscles in his hand had contracted around the offending object so that it couldn’t be forced out. In the end, the piece of wood had to be removed surgically, from the back. I thought about that for a long time afterwards. How, if only his muscles could have relaxed, the sliver would have just slid out, just the way it went in, and it could have healed on its own. It took me a long, long time before I realized, that is exactly what it feels like. I guess it’s the same for everyone. You suffer a pain, and it’s like there’s an involuntary muscle somewhere, contracting around it, keeping it in.

The carpenter returned two weeks later with a giant cast around his arm, and tried to work one-handed. Alexandra tore her hair with worry that the barn wouldn’t be finished on time. But it was. On the last day, they sealed up the last of the windows, and Kelvin nailed an old, twisted cherry branch on the door to use as a handle. We shoveled dirt on the ground and threw handfuls of hay and pine shavings over it. And then, it’s as if there was a click. That patch of earth changed from being part of the “outside” world to an inside. I stood in the brand new inside space and marveled.

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