by Joe Derkacht
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Sensing Ferd would eventually wish to follow me, I left the back door ajar. Thirty feet from the small porch and down the path of crushed oyster shells stood another building, a smaller twin of the house, complete to the eyebrow windows. The door, painted in green exterior enamel, opened at a twist of the knob. No need for locks here. Flipping on the lights, I saw a green rubber doorstop that could be used to keep the door wedged open, something Ferd might appreciate.
The place was a workshop. As I walked in, the first thing to strike my eyes was a host of machines, their names coming grudgingly to mind: band saw... radial arm saw... jointer... planer... drum sander... and others that refused to come to mind at all. As I walked around them, trailing one hand over their surfaces (triggering oddly familiar echoes in my brain), I found racks of lumber stock. Workbenches. A dizzying variety of hand tools hanging from the walls on hooks. A large shop vac.
I came to a sort of display shelf. On it stood three different items, projects I thought of them, in various stages of completion. What they were supposed to be, I couldn’t quite visualize. Two of them reminded me of coffins. The third, nearly identical in its dimensions to the others, might be a skeleton, with wood stretchers for bones, awaiting its skin of veneers. But for coffins, the dimensions were oddly narrow and in an unfinished state the doors (or lids?) cried out for panes of glass to reveal their hidden parts.
Close at hand were boxes of polished metal tubing and chains, neatly arranged bins of abalone shell, colored glass, and thin slices of various types of polished stone. Further on paints, varnishes and glues filled several racks.
Something brushed against my leg. Gazing up at me from blue, warmly luminous eyes, Ferd began to purr with undisguised pleasure. I bent over to run my hand along his back, before continuing my tour of the shop. There were paint sprayers; grinders and polishers; a wall of clamps; sturdy sawhorses. Whether new or used or seemingly antique, all of the equipment appeared to be well maintained.
Another door was located in the far right corner. Behind it I found a toilet and sink. On the toilet tank sat an old tuna can I appropriated for a spittoon, and immediately discovered that I must not quite have the hang of Copenhagen. The brown juice dribbled down my chin. I rinsed off in the sink, and came back out.
“I see you’ve found everything,” a smiling Zell said from the front door.
I nodded, wishing I had brought my Copenhagen with me from the house.
“What do you think?” She asked, walking in and gesturing broadly.
Wondering what I should say, I let my gaze trail over the shop. The oddly-sized “coffins” were close at hand. I pointed to them.
“What are these?” I asked.
“Wh-What?”
I guess I looked blankly at her. Briefly, I wondered why people like me were put in asylums for stuttering, yet she had never mentioned being in one herself.
She must feel ill. Her lower lip trembled and tears welled in her eyes. Perhaps it was her allergies. Although the place looked generally immaculate, with the concrete floor painted a marine gray and interior studs covered with taped and mudded drywall, I could see a light coating of dust. I dragged a chair from beside one of the workbenches and sat her on it.
Ferd jumped instantly into her lap. She absent-mindedly stroked his back.
“You really don’t know?” She asked.
A harvest gold refrigerator stood in the alcove between the shop’s bathroom and its entrance. Inside its magnet covered door (all of them miniature replicas of either power or hand tools), I found a roll of Copenhagen cans. Hesitating momentarily, I tore off the paper, thumped a can on my knee, and fumbled with it until I finally managed to pop the top. I took out a pinch and lodged it in my cheek in the old, familiar place.
“Don’t know what?” I asked, happy once more.
She didn’t look nearly so happy as I felt, her gaze going from me to the Copenhagen in my hand.
“You haven’t forgotten everything.”
“No, I guess not.”
“This is your workshop, John,” she said, staring bleakly at Ferd. “Just like the house is your house.”
“Oh.”
I dropped the Copenhagen tin into my shirt pocket and did another circuit of the shop. Like the house, nothing really rang a bell. I was seeing everything as if for the first time, a fact that did not seem to matter to me in the least. Instead, I vaguely wondered why I hadn’t been able to make the connection between the house and the shop, that both of them belonged to me. Maybe the real owner would show up at any moment, catch us here, call Blackie?
“These—?” I asked, gesturing to the mysterious wooden cabinets.
“They’re Grandfather clocks, John,” she said. “They’re how you make your living.”
Dumbfounded, I stared at them, not in wonder as much as in stupefaction.
“You store the clock works in that far right cabinet.”
“I guess I’m in trouble,” I said, though not really feeling like I was. I may as well have been watching a scene from some television soap opera while half asleep. Her eyes searched my own.
“Why?” She asked, bracing herself.
“You, you know, ever looked at something and wondered how in the world somebody coulda made it?”