Matt Lennox - The Carpenter

— Uncle Lee, said Pete.

They all looked at him. Barry paused mid-story.

— I’m going to drive into town in a minute or two, said Pete.

— I’ll grab Helen if she can stop yapping, said Lee.

The guests said their goodbyes, Lee curtly and Helen with the same rambling exuberance she’d shown through supper. Donna did not come out of the kitchen. Barry saw them to the front door. He told them he’d be happy to see them at church.

They got into Pete’s car. Pete was tense and he did not know why. Every darkened field he passed he found himself looking for avenues of escape, as if it should be a sudden and uncalculated move. Helen laughed about something.

— I didn’t know you had a goddamn kid, said Lee.

— That was another life, said Helen. It doesn’t matter any more.

They came into town. Lee told Pete to take them down to his place. The trees in the lakefront park stood like black bones against the snow.

— Funny, said Lee. I never thought about it before, but if anybody asked me I couldn’t tell them where you live. I got no idea.

Helen laughed: Oh my God, Brown Eyes.

Pete pulled in behind the variety store. Lee said that he would see him around and got out of the car. Helen patted Pete’s knee.

— So nice to meet you.

Pete watched them. Lee dug for his keys and Helen hitched at her pantyhose and stepped side to side in her shoes. She swatted Lee’s backside. Lee looked at her and she shrugged.

Emily was walking on her street. She had her head held high and her hands in her front pockets. She got into Pete’s car and she kissed him, cold lips and warm mouth.

— I’m glad to see you.

— I’m glad to see you too.

— I can’t stay out for long. Five minutes.

— It’s okay. Five minutes is enough. How are you?

— School today was asinine. I feel like my work here is done, you know?

— I know. I’ve felt like that for a long time.

— What does it matter. Christmas break starts next Friday.

He could listen to her forever. Her hand was on his except when she lifted it to emphasize a point. Once again, nothing else in the world mattered. He wondered how, fifteen minutes ago, he’d been thinking about escape.

— I have to go away this weekend, said Emily.

— You do?

— Peter, you look broken-hearted.

— No …

— I am a little too. We could have gone bowling again.

— Where are you going?

— Our annual trip to the city, my mom and me. We’ll do our Christmas shopping. We’ve been doing it almost as long as I can remember.

— Where will you stay?

— In a hotel. Very fancy. Or maybe not, I don’t know. It’s close to downtown. Somewhere you can see the CN Tower and the lights and everything else. This is the first year we’re bringing my sister. But let’s talk about next Tuesday.

— Next Tuesday.

— You’re invited to dinner.

— Where?

— My house, Peter.

— With your folks?

— Who else? Do you accept?

— I do, said Pete. For sure.

When she kissed him, he could feel her tongue moving and then she grinned against his mouth. He drove her down to her house. She kissed him once more and she got out of the car. At the front door she turned and waved at him and then she went inside.

Pete drove around for awhile before he went home. His mind was at ease, which was funny to realize, since half an hour ago he’d been thinking about a sudden and uncalculated escape from everything. But now, the smell of Emily’s perfume or shampoo lingered in the car. As he drove, Pete found himself reconsidering his plan to move west. Maybe he had a reason to stay here, after all. Maybe he would rent an apartment in town, like Lee’s. Maybe, for once, everything was okay.

Pete left work in the middle of the afternoon on Friday to take some magazines and evangelical cassettes to his grandmother at the hospital. Later, he would think that Roger and the others must have followed him, looking for an opportunity. The gas station was too busy, too exposed.

He did not park in the visitors’ lot at the hospital, where they charged a toll. Instead he parked on a gravel patch at a small construction site a little way down the street. Then he went down the sidewalk, through the hospital entrance, and up to see his grandmother. He didn’t stay long-she was drugged and sleepy. He delivered the items he’d brought, and he stood looking at her and fighting the constriction of his throat.

He was going back across the gravel patch, thinking about Emily, and how the city had taken her away for the weekend, when the boys jumped him. They’d been waiting in a wood-panelled station wagon. They piled out and set on him hard from all directions before he could even make sense of what was happening. He felt knuckles slugging the side of his head. Someone punched him above his right eye. Someone kicked him in the thigh and he stumbled, and they pushed him over into a ditch alongside the gravel. He raked damp snow off rotting leaves as he slid down. He could feel his forehead swelling.

Roger stood on the edge of the ditch and told Pete to stay the fuck away from the Heron Heights girls.

— Four of you, said Pete.

Roger came down and kicked Pete in the stomach, driving the air out of him. He thought he might vomit. Then Pete heard the station wagon pulling away and they were gone. He hauled himself up. There were leaves clinging to his back, leaves in his hair. Nobody had been around to see anything. He managed to get himself into his car, where he sat for a long time, beaten, ashamed.

The radiator made soft clanking noises. Early headlights moved through the predawn outside the window. Lee was sweat-sodden on the pullout bed. First he dreamed the old dream, the boarding house basement, the crippled caretaker shuffling towards him. Then he dreamed he was in solitary confinement in the penitentiary. Brick and steel, enclosed on all sides. In this hole there was no door.

Workless afternoons prior to his hospital visits, Lee would walk the town. It was a strange time for him, when idleness gave way to dark thoughts. Bud frequently occurred to him, the jokes he’d get wrong, and particularly the image of him face down in the bottom of the barge. He thought also of Donna, and found himself looking for things he might get the family for Christmas. Donna used to make Luke and John write to Lee annually, this time of year. Once, a couple of years ago, they’d written about Lee spending Christmas Day with them sometime in the future, after he would be released. The idea had appealed to him, more than he cared to admit, but he hadn’t yet been invited. He didn’t know how to ask.

Everywhere around him was the bustling industry of the holiday season, the store windows packed with signs peddling sales, the ceaseless clatter of Salvation Army bells. Lee went about in his work boots with his collar turned up.

One day, Lee went into a furniture store he’d passed many times. The showroom was warmly lit with crafted desk lamps. Every article of furniture was made of unvarnished wood. He was drawn to a dining room table, ten feet by five. The tabletop was an inch and a half thick. He ran his hand along the rasping smoothness of the naked wood. A grey-bearded man appeared from somewhere.

— All our pieces are handcrafted, said the man. This table is solid oak.

— You make this? said Lee. It’s a hell of a nice piece.

— Thank you. We like to keep our prices negotiable too.

— I got Christmas coming up. I got some people to buy for. Where does the price start out before you negotiate it?

— This table starts at three hundred dollars.

Lee laughed dryly. He seemed unable to withdraw his hand from the sanded tabletop. He cleared his throat and said: Actually, I was wondering if you ever hire. I’m a carpenter myself.