K Parker: The Belly of the Bow

– Which was apparently some sort of cue, because Bardas woke up and saw that it was first light, and a cold, weak sun was swimming in thin grey clouds. The boy was fast asleep a few feet away; Bardas smiled and prodded his shoulder with his toe.

‘Wake up,’ he said. ‘The good news is, the wolves didn’t get you after all.’

The boy grunted and turned over, tugging at the blanket. Loredan pulled it away. The boy grunted and sat up, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles.

‘Get the wedges,’ Loredan said. ‘Come on, we’ve got work to do. You’d better pay attention, because this is important.’

The boy mumbled something as he dragged himself up off the ground, but it was too indistinct to make out and Loredan was pretty sure he didn’t need to hear the words in order to get the general idea. He sat down opposite the log-end and examined the growth rings.

‘What do you want me to do?’ the boy asked.

‘Fetch the saw,’ Loredan replied. ‘We’ve got to trim off the branches before we do anything else.’

The sun was high by the time they’d finished dressing up the log. There was no wind, and even a slight suggestion of warmth. ‘We’ll get four good staves out of this one,’ he said. ‘Maybe even five if we go steady. A lot depends on how cleanly it splits. Right, you sit on the log, I’ll drive in the first wedge.’

He placed the blade of the wedge on the line he’d chosen and tapped it gently but firmly with the back of the axe-head, one-handed, until he was sure it had bitten into the wood. Then he stepped back with the axe in both hands, left hand in the curve at the end of the handle, right hand just below the head. He fixed his eye on the head of the wedge, concentrated and swung. The back of the axe-head hit the wedge pretty square, and the first signs of a split began to show along the line he’d hoped he’d seen.

‘Got that?’ he said, straightening up.

‘No,’ the boy replied. ‘I can’t see anything from here, remember.’

Loredan sighed. ‘Come round here and take a look,’ he replied. ‘See how it’s just beginning to go?’

Ten or twelve hard blows opened the split up to just on five inches; long enough to admit the next wedge, which Loredan drove in from above with another dozen carefully weighed blows, each of them being nothing more or less than the weight of the axe-head falling from the top of his swing. ‘That’s really important,’ he said, stopping to catch his breath – was he really short of breath after a few swings with an axe? Getting lazy, or old. ‘Remember what I told you. Just let the weight of the axe do the work.’

‘You said.’

Two more blows were sufficient to widen the crack far enough for the first wedge to fall out. Loredan picked it up and pressed the blade a quarter of an inch into the top of the crack. ‘And so on,’ he said. ‘Are you paying attention?’

‘Sure,’ the boy replied guiltily. ‘I was watching, honest.’

Loredan grunted. ‘You ought to be watching this carefully,’ he said reproachfully. ‘There’s a lot more to it than you’d think. It’s not just a case of splitting it any old how, it’s got to be clean and straight or we’ll have wasted our time and a perfectly good tree. Did you find that axe-head you broke off, by the way?’

‘I’ll look for it later, I promise. Go on with what you were doing. I’m watching.’

‘You better had be. You’re going to be doing the next one.’

Loredan was pleased with how it went, each wedge in turn opening the crack a little further, splitting the wood along his chosen line and releasing the previous wedge until it could be lifted free without effort. Curious , he mused, the way my life’s become a sort of celebration of mechanical advantage. It’s enough to fool a man into thinking he’s in control of things . The final wedge, driven in diagonally, split the last couple of inches and the two halves of the log rolled apart on either side of his synthetic line, as neat and consistent as a proposition in algebra. He nodded, and handed the axe to the boy. ‘Your turn,’ he said. ‘Split the halves into quarters. And if you cock it up, you’re walking home.’

The boy looked at him resentfully, then stooped down to gather the wedges. ‘I’ll bet you didn’t get it right the first time you did it,’ he said.

Loredan laughed. ‘As a matter of fact, I did,’ he said, as the boy knelt down and studied the timber. ‘It was the second time when I wrecked the stave, chipped the wedge and broke the axe. It was two days before I dared show my face in the house again. So think on.’

‘Huh.’ Loredan watched the boy scrutinising the grain with all the fierce, brief concentration of youth, and suppressed a grin. It was like stepping back and watching himself, as if in a dream. He could remember that same furious indecision, the frustration of not allowing himself to ask advice. Look for the flaw , he wanted to say, there’s always a weak spot in every billet, it’s just a matter of knowing where to look . But he managed not to; let the boy work it out for himself, and then he’d know it for ever.

‘Got it,’ the boy said. He looked up and saw the stump of the tree, then slid the billet along the ground until it was jammed against it. Loredan nodded his approval, but the boy wasn’t looking. That was a good sign, too.

‘This time,’ he said, ‘for crying out loud don’t bust the axe. We’ll be here all week if we’ve got to stop and make new handles.’

‘All right ,’ the boy replied, annoyed. ‘I’m trying to concentrate, you know,’ he added.

‘Sorry,’ Loredan said meekly. ‘You carry on.’

The boy took a deep breath and started tapping the wedge. The axe was too big and heavy for him to be able to manage it single-handed with any degree of comfort, and the wedge refused to bite. At the third attempt, the boy rapped his knuckles and swore.

‘Want me to start it for you?’ Loredan asked.

‘It’s all right,’ the boy said angrily. ‘I can manage.’

Loredan kept quiet. In the back of his mind he could see his father showing him the other way of starting the split, standing up straight with one foot bracing the wedge, holding the axe by the end of the handle and letting it swing gently like a pendulum to apply the small, measured degree of force necessary for the first bite. He could remember himself, raw-knuckled, red-faced and close to tears after he’d tried so many times and failed, and been told to get out of the way. On the other hand, this was a job of work, not an Academy seminar. ‘Stand up and brace the wedge with your foot,’ he said. ‘You might find it easier that way.’

As the boy straightened his back, Loredan looked away and then down at his hands, noticing the calluses that fringed his palms, the thick pads of skin between the first and middle joints of his first three fingers, the shaven patch on his left arm just above the wide purple bruise across the inside of his wrist, the characteristic and unavoidable injuries of his trade, that had become part of him over the last two years; because every human occupation leaves its own very specific disfigurements, and these were at least preferable to many. An observant man would know at once from these who he was and what he did, or at least what he did now.

The crisp chime of the axe-head on the wedge made him look up. ‘It’s starting to go,’ the boy said proudly. Loredan nodded. ‘Steady does it,’ he replied, ‘don’t go mad.’ The boy didn’t reply, he was concentrating on what he was doing, and without having to be told. Loredan turned his back. He could tell if the boy was doing it right by the sound of the axe-head. It didn’t sound too bad.

‘There, all done,’ the boy said. ‘Come and tell me if that’ll do.’