34

 

       ART

 

    The cramp comes and goes, tying up my forearm in a tight little knot of hurting.  Working the hand a little eases the pain.  When the pain is gone, I can take up the hammer again and start in, pounding and placing the nails as quick as possible.  Before the pain comes back.  It's been too long since I've handled a hammer like this, endlessly like a machine, draining the stuff from my muscles until they hurt with just my breathing  in and out.  It is a feeling I'd forgotten.  Not a bad feeling really.

    The smell of the morning soon gives way to the smell of me and my work, sour and sickening yet kind of nice in a way.  It'll be a few days before the stink cleans itself out of me, leaving just the honest, clean odor of doing and getting done.

    The shape of it comes slowly, the wood forming the floor and walls of a cage.  It is not real for me.  To the neighbors, it must just be wood and cement, a banging that disturbs their meals, a reason to turn the television up.  But I see only the fireplace and the windows and the way the sun will cast shadows on the new carpet.  I see it as it appears in the magazine, the light and colors just right.  The dirt and the rough wood and the pain in my arm don't see part of that.

    I know that when it's done, I won't be able to walk on the floor without feeling each nail that holds it, won't be able to look at it without seeing the shell and the hole in the ground that it was.  That is the way it is.  I can only see it as it will be now, but then, when it is done I will not be able to believe that either.  This house will never be for me what it is for anyone else.  For me it will always be a possibility or a memory, never a home.  But then, I have had a home.

    The blue dust is all over me.  On my pants.  In the lines of the palms of my hands.  When I blow my nose there is blue in that too.  The dust from the chalk line will follow me long after I'm done, the way sand stays in your car long after you're home from the beach.  There's no way to get rid of it.

    This is a job for more than one man.  Two men could do it in no time, but I'm not two men.  It's the measuring and marked and balancing everything at once that is hard.  Doug said he'd be up later to see if he could help out but he's got a job of his own, and a man should be able to spend his weekends as he sees fit.  Should be able to do a lot of things.

    Eric said he promised Kenny he'd be over later in the afternoon, and anyway his mother doesn't want him all dirty and sweaty.  Heaven forbid.  As if he won't go off on that bike and come home a mess anyway.  But try and tell her that.  He promised, he said.

    She about hit the roof when I told her I was coming up here this morning.  I didn't need to spend all day Sunday up here, she said.  Didn't think it was particularly funny when I said the old man and I'd have our own services either.  I told her that I couldn't leave it like this, half finished, but I didn't expect her to understand that.  Yeah, the old man and I saying amen to God in our own way, winking while we pray.  Our own services.  I liked that.

    Damn anyway.  I was raised to believe a man could count on his own son.  That was something he could count on.  Not only to hold things while they were nailed or to carry and mark the wood to be cut but to do something more, to do something that his daddy couldn't, to have his daddy see it done.  Heaven knows my Daddy used me that way.  And I never minded either; I was raised to know that's the way it it.  Every man wants a son.  Every man wants to see himself again, young and doing the things he saw himself doing in his dreams.  I got a right to want that!

    My own Daddy could go to his grave knowing that carrying and loading hadn't been a bad way to live because his boy was behind a desk and higher up than he ever even tried for himself.  He said that's the American dream, to see your son up there where you can't even touch him.  My own Daddy let me believe that.  Let me go for forty-five years thinking that was the way it was supposed to be.

    And now here I am, standing here in my own stink, sweating so bad I have to take my shirt off and it's not even June yet.  Here I am, forty-five years old and all of the sudden finding out if I ever want something done, I got to do it for myself.  That's hell of a thing!  Hell, my wife's father is even using me to do something he can't do for himself!  Again I'm a son.  Again I'm a son but not a father.  No, not a father.

    The water from the apple juice jar still tastes of it.  I gulp it down quickly so the taste doesn't get in the way of the rinsing of my throat.  It is the taste of something going bad, not quite rotten but getting there.

    Okay, I can't count on nothing.  I might as well get used to that.  I got a right to it but I can't count on it.  It's not so much that he isn't what I'd've wanted, it's that he ain't really anything.  It's not that he wants to do what I don't want.  Hell, I could understand that.  It's he doesn't want to do anything.  He doesn't like to play ball.  No kind.  And I can't see that he's got any aptitude for any kind if work at all.  He's just lazy, that's all.  He can't even shake himself enough to get up and switch the channel on the television.  And his mother'll clean up after him and cut his meat for him and wipe his nose and get him out of work till he's in his middle age.  And I'll end up being a son for him too.  Doug woulda made a better son for me.  Strangeness and all.

    They're right when they say that if you want something done right you got to do it yourself.  But I never expected

    Taking a rest

    It's Lorraine, standing there at the edge of the foundation.  She's smiling that smile, the one so close to a smirk that it's worse.  Eric stands behind her in his Easter blazer and one of my ties.

    Oh, ah, yeah.  Just a little water.  Gets dusty.  Service over?  I didn't even hear the bell.  Noon already?

    Twelve thirty.  We thought we'd stop by and see if you wanted to come down home for lunch.  How's it going?

    Little by little, you know.  Takes time.

    She nods.  How's Daddy?

    I looked in on him when I first came up.  Still in bed then.  You might want to look in again.

    Appears that you got a good bit done.

    Uh huh.  Not much to it once you get it started.  Just time and a little muscle.  Mostly time.  Makes you feel

    Well, I think I'll just look in

    good though.

    on Daddy, then we'll be going down to the house.

    Eric stays, his eyes on me, his hand in his pockets.  We both smile when she yoo hoos her way into the kitchen, but you couldn't really say we smiled at each other.  We have nothing to say to each other.  Try as we might, there is nothing on which we can talk.  He has this simpering smile on his face and a way of moving his shoulders that makes you think that he's got his hands trapped in his pockets to keep them from flapping around like wings on a baby bird.  Everybody thinks he's cute, and I might too if he was somebody else's, but I've seen too many baby birds tramped on.  I've tramped on 'em myself.

    I think he likes me.  We try but there is just nothing that we both understand.  I cannot dislike my own son, but that does not keep me from cursing him sometimes for leaving me so alone.  It is as if he was never born.  Like I lost another son before I ever had him.  I think he likes me, but it is in the way that you like something you can never understand, the way you like the peculiar animals you see at the zoo; you see them and they make you smile and they act different from all the animals you're used to, and you want to reach out to touch them, but there is always the pane of glass there, and you move on to the next animal.  You may stay a while and you may even take a picture, but you always move on.  Anything I can do for you?  he tries.

    No.  I'm okay.  Why don't you go in and see your grandfather?  You hardly ever come up here anymore.  He sees about as much of you as he does of your sister.

    He shrugs; the idea doesn't appeal.

    Your mother might need some help.  He's not quite as light as he looks.

    He nods.  Okay.

    Here, I call as he starts to open the kitchen door.  Here, fill up this jar with ice water for your old dad.  It's about empty.

    He comes and takes the jar from my hand without looking at me.  The muscles in my neck ungrip and relax when the door closes behind him.  A man shouldn't tense up like that when his own son's talking to him.  It's unnatural.

    Wood has a great absorbancy for anger.  It takes all I can give.  I curse the knots.  I mutilate nails and make big half moons on the surface of the two by fours.  It is silly, but I don't care.  I will cover it up later and no one will see.  To anyone that might be passing on the street, on their way home from church, I am building.

    My shoulder hurts.  The cramp returns.  The muscles of my stomach hurt when I suck it in, and I can't help but smile at that.  Two days and already          I'll be in there, stove up and bent, swapping my imagination for his in no time.  The two of us staring at each other over a tube of Ben-Gay, soaking our feet in the same basin.

    Eric brings the water  You want anything else?  We have some ginger ale and Pepsi down at the house.  After I change my clothes, I could get my bike and

    No.  I think I'll come down for lunch.  I'm at a stopping place.  I'll have to cut some more before I can do much more.  What's your mother doing?

    You know.  He shrugs, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched.

    Get your hands out of your pockets.  You look like a real clutz; stand up straight.  Yeah, I know.  Think she'll be ready soon?

    I dunno.

    Well, I spread my arms, what do you think?  How's it look?

    I dunno.  The shrug again.  I don't know what it's supposed to look like.

    You remember when we moved into the other house?

    Not really.

    It wasn't that long ago.

    I just don't remember.

    Okay.  Well, it's supposed to look like this.  This'll be the living room.  Fireplace there.  Everything.

    He nods once.  If you're coming down for lunch, you want me to put the water back in the refrigerator?

    I look at him for a second, the anger coming back.  Yeah.  Yeah, that'd be good.  Just put it in there so's it'll be good and cold for later.  I'll just put a few nails in till your mother's ready.  You have her give me a yell when she's all done.  I'll just clean up a little.

    He starts to answer, but I drown it out with the sound of the hammer.  I feel him over my shoulder but I act like he's gone, and soon he is.  Soon the carpenter's apron is empty of nails.  I stop and listen, but there is nothing to hear.  The ringing from the hammer goes away and there is nothing to hear.