back to contents

The town carpenter worked with any type of wood and planed and lathed and sanded any project his fellow townspeople cared to pay him for: head and footboards for beds and baby cribs; stock and forestock of smoothbore rifles preferred by local huntsmen; pews for congregations to squirm upon; simple sets of furniture for newlyweds; cartwheels and the carts they carried; picture frames and mantle pieces; lintels, jambs, and their slab doors; even coffins, of course. His specialty was the handles of axes, hickory, always, the grain followed with a faith only fanatics invoke. For this reason, the townspeople did not call him the town carpenter, but Axe-Man. His renown carried so far afield that buyers from neighboring villages, even the market town, came to buy his axe handles, often to give as gifts. He grew wealthy, but as craftsmen are wont to do, he continued to work, arose at the same time for the same breakfast of bread, cheese, and ale, before the same workaday schedule as he had followed when he was young and poor and considered a poor marriage match, if not an object of pity, the town fool who fiddled his life away with wood.

But today he would return home earlier than he should, if he were a more disciplined man. He had finished a large project for the local landlord, a table twenty seats long, of one solid plank cut from the oldest oak in all the forest. The local lord determined to set the table in a new great hall, the table not built for the hall, but the hall constructed for the length of the table. Not the payment offered, not the honor that would carry far beyond the simple district of this local landed gentry, but the satisfaction, almost a religious warming of the soul, that came from a job well done, gave Axe-Man respite from his labor. In his own way, when he worked his wood, he transformed into a silvan god and the lumber his transmogrified children. Today, after his toil, he looked upon his work and found it good. In an act of self-dispensation, Axe-Man indulged himself with not half of a day but half of a half of a day free from earning his bread by the sweat of his brow. On his way home, he bought his wife and his daughter the sweetest honey cakes available not only in their modest village but anywhere in the world. He was content with himself and with life.

He set his simple cobbled shoes beside the unbarred front door, as his wife requested in her constant trudge to keep their village cottage clean. Though it was a warm spring day, he wore his surcoat as a sign of self-respect for the tradesman that he was, and to match the guild’s law for master carpenters, as he also was. He hung his surcoat on a peg between the unbarred front door and the window that opened onto the sunlit garden his wife kept. He thought of calling his wife and his daughter but instead determined to surprise them with the honey cakes. He let his linen stockings slide across the well-worn maple floorboards. The stockings whispered with a swoosh swoosh swoosh. He set the plain burlap bag of honey cakes on the kitchen table then ladled himself a tankard of well water from the pail that sat on the flagstones in front of the hearth with its soft red embers. He placed his hand above the glowing ash then added a handful of wood shavings that he collected at his workshop. His hand fanned the smoldering embers. A noise, maybe the creak of a door hinge, turned his head to the hallway that led to his and his wife’s bedroom and the storage space converted into a tidy bedroom space for his daughter. After one more sip of well water, Axe-Man slipped his unshod stockings along the grooves that ran the length of the hall.

He found his wife napping in their bed. Laid out as she was upon the bed, she appeared prepared for a visitation before the procession through the village streets to the fenced churchyard. He wondered if that were how she would look on her funeral day. Would her beauty remain so intact? He knew better. As the council coffin maker, he measured many bodies. None were beautiful. Depending on the time of year, rotting sets in sooner or later, even for the youngest. He laughed at himself for the hope that somehow the young do not decay, or at least, children decompose slower than the old. He knew better. Sapwood decays faster than heartwood. Age made one hard, but more resistant to corruption.

His wife held her fingers folded as if in prayer across her ribs. With each breath, her supplicating hands rose heavenward, then descended to earth. Axe-Man set himself along his wife, between her body and the whitewashed wall. He draped his top arm across her waist and set his lowered head in the space between her neck and shoulder. As if some invisible hand calibrated their breaths, their chests began to rise and fall in unison. He closed his eyes, then opened them. In that brief time, he slept so deeply he could not tell if one moment had passed or hours, maybe even until the next day. Frightened, he nearly bolted upright. His jostling stirred his wife, who smiled, fluttered her eyes, and folded her body inside of his, as if she were an infant still inside the womb.