Matt Lennox - The Carpenter

Three kids in monster costumes went running past them. When Lee himself was a little kid, he’d dressed for Halloween as the Lone Ranger, year after year. A mask and a gun, which, thinking on it now, made him laugh. He’d been out to Barry and Donna’s house for supper the night before, and Barry had told him that he and Donna weren’t letting Luke and John go trick-or-treating for Halloween, because they didn’t think a festival celebrating the devil was something you wanted to have your kids take part in. Instead, they were going to a sleepover at Galilee Tabernacle, where each child came dressed as a biblical character and there was a contest for the best costume. Pete, who was also there for supper, suggested that the boys go to the sleepover dressed as Cain and Abel, with Abel murdered and the Mark of God on Cain’s forehead. Lee laughed, but Barry just changed the subject.

Lee and Helen made their way back to Lee’s place. She made popcorn on the hot plate and he mixed them some drinks and they watched a Hitchcock film- The Birds -on his TV. As they sat together, he looked at her from time to time, wondering what she’d been like as a young child.

Monday came and Lee was swinging his hammer. He was destroying the kitchen in a solitary island residence on Lake Kissinaw. The cupboards and counters were to be torn out. The bathrooms would go next. They would rip up the floor tiles and carpeting. The building and the island had sold for $60,000 to a man named Forsythe and his wife, who were said to live in New York State for most of the year. Clifton had gotten the bid for the renovations they wanted. Lee swung his hammer, caught the edge of a shelf, tore it out. A few feet away, Bud was working a crowbar on the kitchen counter.

At seven-thirty that morning they’d left in Clifton’s barge from the public landing. Clifton called his watercraft a barge but it wasn’t much of one. It was a dented twenty-foot steel push-boat with a flat bottom. The drop-gate in the bow didn’t work properly and was welded shut. It took them half an hour to cross the lake. Salvaged planks had been retrofitted in the barge as seats, and it was Lee, Bud and a man Lee hadn’t met yet riding along. Clifton helmed the barge, which plodded along, weighed down with lumber, a covered stack of pine, and a portable Monarch cement mixer. Lee didn’t want the others to take notice of how he was hunched forward with his fists pursed together. Moving over open water was chilling him to the bone. A T-shirt and work-shirt underneath his jean jacket were not going to be enough against the weather much longer. He craved a cigarette.

The barge tracked along a narrow hogback and then hooked into a calm back bay. The biggest island in the bay was sixty yards end to end, covered by white pines. The side of a boathouse was visible where the island tapered down to a rocky shore. Clifton guided them to a dock. On the shore, a material delivery had preceded them by a day or two: a couple of yards of gravel and three tons of Sakrete dry cement mix in forty-pound bags. Once they were tied up, Lee hopped out and got the blood moving in his limbs. He lit himself a cigarette and offered one to Bud, who shook his head and hustled past him onto dry land. Clifton mugged at Lee but didn’t say anything. A short path led past the boathouse to the cottage that Forsythe had purchased. It was a dejected storey-and-a-half structure, once whitewashed. A deck attached to the side of the house was severely out of level.

Clifton looked at Lee, striding along the path beside him. He said: Forsythe’s wife said she dreamed about this place. What do you make of that, mister man?

— Long as it keeps us going through the winter, boss, anybody can dream anything they want.

Lee didn’t know why Clifton was asking for his judgment. And the man was roused, more than usual. It wasn’t half past eight before Clifton invoked words of God and idleness and loosed Bud and Lee on the kitchen.

The new man who’d come out with them was named Wally. After one of the counters had been torn free of the kitchen wall, Wally appeared with a tape measure to take some measurements. He jotted numbers down on the exposed wallboard where the counter had been. Then he left the kitchen, taking Bud with him. Ten minutes later they came back from the barge with a table saw. Lee saw them setting it up in the living room.

At lunchtime they sat around the fireplace. The flue whistled and moaned.

— So you’re a cabinetmaker? said Lee.

— That’s right, said Wally.

— Lee’s a carpenter too, said Bud. He got his trade. He could do up some beauty cabinets. For sure.

— Hot dog, said Wally. Where did you apprentice?

They were looking at Lee.

— Go on, Leland King, said Clifton. You shouldn’t hide nothing.

— Say, never mind, said Wally.

— Prison, said Lee.

— Oh.

— That’s where I got my trade. Anyhow.

— Tell me what you think, said Wally.

He handed Lee a manila file folder. Inside was a set of plans for the kitchen. The cabinetry was all to be face-framed and constructed from the pine they’d brought.

— It looks good, said Lee. What do they call it … modern.

— If they stain the pine right it will come up nice.

— Sure it will, said Lee.

— Not quite like whacking together some desks, said Clifton.

— I guess not.

— Lee has come a real long way, Wally. Words and deeds and prayer, every day. Right, Lee?

— Every day, said Lee.

— We might even see you at Galilee Pentecostal one of these days, said Clifton. You too, Bud. Even you, Wally.

Wally took the plans back from Lee. He said: My wife and I like the United Church just fine, thanks.

Clifton was getting into it. His posture was erect: The United Church, that’s where-

— Clifton, said Wally, I’m thinking about something my dad used to say. All things in moderation. Religion too. You go all you want to your church and I’ll go to mine. In the meantime we’ll talk about hockey.

Wally stood up to stretch. He took a few strides across the living room floor and went outside through the kitchen door.

Clifton shook his head.

— A lot of guys just don’t want to hear the truth.

By mid-week, a great deal of scrap material had been culled out of the house. They cast the fibreboard and wiring and pipes into a midden they had dug on the back of the island. All the scrap lumber was brought down to a rocky flat along the shore. They primed the scrap with gasoline and set it alight. Bud tended the fire. He poked it with a shovel and hopped around like some kind of one-man pagan ceremony. Lee remained in the house, either helping Wally feed pine through the table saw or keeping the sawdust swept up and the tools organized. His own tool belt stayed folded neatly in a corner where he could keep an eye on it. Even Clifton was working. He was in the bathroom, putting solder on the new copper pipes.

At the end of each day when the light was fading, they took their things down and stood with Bud on the point. The coal bed gave off tremendous heat and the idea of barging out across the cold lake was a dismal prospect. Maybe even Clifton thought so, because they would stand around for awhile, instead of leaving. Nobody said anything. They just watched the red patterns shifting in the coals.

When Saturday came, Lee had a late breakfast at the Owl Cafe. Helen said she was going to be doing a tarot reading with some girlfriends that night but could see him the next day. If he wanted, of course. Lee walked breakfast off by going to the Woolworths around the corner from the National Trust. He tried on a Carhartt jacket. It was stiff denim lined with quilted flannel and it was so warm that it brought sweat out of his skin as he looked at himself in the store mirror. He moved the zipper up and down. He looked at the price tag and looked away, and then he carried the jacket and a wool toque and a pair of lined work gloves up to the cashier.