After finishing another cut, he wiped the sweat from his brow with a flannel sleeve that left a smear of sawdust stuck to his wet forehead, and adjusted the board for the next cut. The table saw made quick work of the hard cherry wood and he remembered the primitive process when he was a younger woodworker with only a miter block and hand tools. How long this would have taken back then, he thought. He was very glad he hadn’t needed to do this project at that time.
His hands worked quickly with an assuredness earned over years of practicing his craft. Once the measurements were taken and the lumber marked, his mind could drift off as his body toiled in a trance. And it did drift, his mind, thinking of past projects of which he was proud or of the person to whom he would gift the current project. This particular work was to be for his wife and it had to be perfect. It had to last her forever.
As the hours passed the stack of lumber climbed up the wall of his shop in meticulous stacks and sawdust fell to the cold cement floor like snow and made streaks on the floor under his boots as he paced around his workbench for better angles. Like stones in the snow, the scraps of wood that had been excised from the working pieces lay half-covered in the dust. He used to gather these blocks up and sand them and give them to his son to play with so he too would have a gift to accompany his mother’s, but this particular project was not fit to share with the boy.
The cutting was complete and he powered up the belt-sander to run the cuts through. Again he thought about how arduous the process would have been in his analogue days of working by hand, and again he thanked God he didn’t have to do this back then.
While the noise of the sander blanketed the room, the boy crept in to check on his absent father. Between boards the woodcarver turned for the wet rag he used to wipe clean the cuts, and caught the boy sitting in silent curiosity on the steps to the house. The man was startled and became enraged at the child. He yelled at him fiercely and banished him from the shop. The boy didn’t understand; he had watched his father work plenty of times—even helped with some of his easier tasks—but he didn’t question the man. As his admonisher turned back to the workbench and leaned over, he noticed a tear caught in his glasses.
He continued working well into the night with an obsessive diligence. It was all he could muster to begin this piece, and he knew that should he took a break, it would require a will he didn’t possess to start it again. So he trudged along: gluing and clamping the pieces, sanding again, assembling the bottom hull, then the top, connecting the two with fine dovetail joinery, before hand carving a single vine of ivy around the edging—it was her favorite plant. Many times his fastidious eyes would dry out from long durations of studying the joints, and especially during the hand carving, and he would have to stop himself, doff his glasses and rub his tired eyes before returning to the grueling task. Finally, the piece was together and ready for finishing. The cherry wood had a beautiful coloring and he didn’t want to disrespect that with a stain, so he chose a simple coat of mineral oil and wax to give the wood a rich, hydrated shine while protecting it from moisture.
While the chopped wax melted in the oil pot, he leaned back ‘gainst the table and rested his eyes. He had been dreading taking on this project for a long time, as anyone dreads an inevitability over which they hold no sway. The only say he had now was how magnificent the piece would be; and damned if it wouldn’t be.
Each sweep of the brush coaxed more of the oil into the grain and steadily brought out the deep reds and streaks of amber in the cherry. That brush passed over the wood seven times—a strange number he thought when he was first taught the method, but one that insured an even coat without bubbling or dripping—paying special attention around the band of ivy. He stood back and admired his work, not in its beauty—he couldn’t see that—but solely in the craftsmanship of it. It was well built, because it had to be, and it would serve its purpose finely. The woodcarver gave a final wipe to the shell and tossed the rag to the dusty floor. He would wait to clean up the shop and to put away his tools. Right now he only wanted to sit. He’d been up all night and could hear the nascent of the birds’ morning song. Inconsiderately the man lumbered back into the warm house, his boots making loud echoes beneath him, poured himself a large 3-fingers of bourbon, and walked out to the porch to a greeting of loudly chirping birds of the dew-shined lawn.
The sun was half-up now and the early fog was beginning to burn off. He sat on his rocking chair—half of an earlier project of his that had fared well over the years—and looked at the empty counterpart next to him. His own counterpart was gone and his life felt as empty as her chair. The boy, awoken by his heavy boots, came downstairs to join him, sitting at his side in that empty over-sized chair. His small, bare feet couldn’t touch the ground, but he managed to make it rock by reaching over his head and pushing off the house behind him, then once he got it going, his stretched toes could push off the porch to keeping it rocking.
The two of them sat there in silence on the porch in that cold morning. The boy was refraining from talking in case he was still in trouble from the night prior, but the man was miles away in thought. He rested a large, consoling hand on his son’s head and jostled his messy hair further out of place. He was a good kid and his mother had made him beautiful. The woodcarver forced a sad smile. She too, he thought, would look beautiful tonight at the ceremony in that Cherry wood casket.