Gods of Wood and Stone

by Mark Di Ionno

  Horace would pick up a dry leaf.

  “What color is this?”

  “Brown,” Michael answered.

  Then he’d grab a pinecone or acorn.

  “And what color is this?”

  “Brown.”

  Then a handful of path dirt.

  “Brown.”

  “All brown, but all different,” Horace said. “Even drab, lowly brown comes in more shades than we can describe with words. That’s what I want you to understand. The world around you is full of things to discover.”

  Horace did similar experiments with sounds: bird calls, the different tinkles of water in feeder streams to Otsego Lake, the crunching of their feet on the forest floor of pine needles and decomposing mulch.

  “Close your eyes and stay quiet . . . ,” Horace would say. Then ten seconds later, “Now, tell me all the things you hear . . .”

  “Birds. Some other kind of chirping, maybe squirrels. Wind. I can hear wind. I hear a stream.”

  “Now, if you listen long enough it kind of makes a song, doesn’t it? The stream is the background. The wind is, too, but not as constant. Then in come the birds, and they go back and forth. The sounds are layered over each other. It’s how you make music.”

  That was fatherhood, Horace thought, as he slammed a sledgehammer into a wedge with a clean hit, watched the log split evenly in two, from top to bottom. He picked up a half, and divided it again with the same swift skill. He worked through the afternoon, turning thick, round hunks of timber into four or eight burnable pieces. He stacked them, alternating two down, two across, building stacks of square towers with good airflow so the splintered logs would be seasoned by winter. He tried to think of the last time Michael worked with him on the woodpile. He was ten, maybe eleven, and Horace told him it would improve his baseball swing.

  “Whip an ax or a maul for a few hours and you’ll be hitting ’em out of the park,” Horace said.

  Michael gave it a few hours, then struck out every time the next day. Horace said it was just a coincidence, but Michael’s coach told him the motions were different; that the vertical swing of the ax was nothing like the horizontal swing of the bat. Horace argued that it would at least make him stronger, and he could swing the ax into an upright tree as much as he wanted when the work was done, but Sally said he should listen to his coach.

  Now spring was here, another baseball season and another few months of Horace working by himself. This time, though, he was so alone. The sound of the ax seemed to echo more, and there was no movement in the dark, dead windows of the house. Everything was changed. His son was gone. At the end of the day, Horace suddenly felt tired and beaten, without enough energy to move or even stoke his anger. He sat down on a pile of uncut wood. The Pugilist at Rest. Samson, blind and enslaved at the grindstone. He was breathing too hard and his loneliness terrified him. He felt weary, and his weariness weakened him, from his soul out. He snorted back the gob of snot that was choking him and swallowed it. He closed his eyes and asked God to help calm him. He let the evening air cool his sweat, and thought of a happier time.

  He saw Michael with him at the farm, when he was little. Horace let him duck under exhibit ropes to climb on the horse-drawn buggies and sleds, antique tractors, and Model T trucks. Michael knew he was breaking the rules, and delighted in it. Horace took him into the smithy, let him shovel coal into the hearth, then helped him muscle the bellows. He liked it best when Horace gave him the tongs. Horace covered Michael’s hands with his own, and together they would dip a piece of red-hot pig iron into the cooling vat. The hiss and explosion of steam made the boy think he’d done something magical. Horace remembered the day they looked across the farm museum valley, past the lake to the mountain above it.

  “We live up there,” Horace told him, pointing to the hill. “And every day when I’m at work, I look over at the mountain and know you’re there at home.”

  Horace saw him on his toes in the apothecary, looking at the jars of licorice and peppermints, the choice all his. He remembered how he mastered the ball-and-cup toy from the general store, maybe the first sign of his gifted hand-eye coordination. He was allowed to hand-feed the goats and horses, collect eggs from the chickens, and watch the cow milkings. A little man about the village, polite and inquisitive, well liked by the rest of the staff.

  “He’s one of us,” Jim Tremont, the cattle master, said to Horace. “Not like those spoiled little pain-in-the-ass kids who come in from out of town.”

  Nancy Schneerer, the small-animal and poultry caretaker, who also played the minister’s wife in holiday celebrations at the church, was especially nice to Michael. She let him bottle-feed the goats and sheep and baby calves. At shearing time, Michael was allowed to gather the wool in baskets to take to the spinning shed.

  Even old Jacque Angstrom, the German keeper of the draft horses, let Michael get pretty close to the big boys under his supervision.

  “Hees a goot boy, dat Mikey. He haf reschpect for da beast.”

  One year—was he six or seven?—he played an eighteenth-century farm boy during “family life” days. He wore an authentic straw hat, high-waist woolen one-button pants with suspenders, and a plain cotton shirt, like he came out of Tom Sawyer. Michael showed visitors how to pet lambs and billy kids without spooking them, gaining trust with a cooing voice and a palmful of grain. He demonstrated chicken feeding, sowing the ground with shelled corn, roasted soybeans, and nutrient pellets from a tin bucket, as hens and roosters flapped and squawked around him. Michael did this unafraid, even as birds crowded him and pecked at his feet. He stood tall, showering them with feed, a little lord of the fowl. The other kids and parents marveled at Michael’s command of the animals, and Horace watched, proud, like the father of the star player.

  And that’s what Michael was now. Maybe Sally was right. Not right, exactly, but maybe she had a point. Horace’s distaste for the things Michael later enjoyed forced him to withdraw from the kid’s life. Horace thought of his own father, now old, but always a little stoic, distant, and authoritarian. Early on, when he talked, Horace listened. Later, the more he talked, the less Horace felt understood. His father was outside his life, a judgmental and irrelevant voice. Horace drifted away. Like fathers, like sons. And yet Horace came back in his own way. He was the keeper of the family culture, dead as it was.

  What he gave to Michael in those early days was still in there, somewhere. But what Horace was taking from Michael now—a father’s attention and approval—could never be replaced. He saw this only now that Michael was gone, and he was ashamed of himself for drifting away from his son. Maybe Michael didn’t yet feel the hole, that recessed blackness in the soul that came with the absence of love, but Horace knew it well. All those years with Sally. Lonely in his own bed. Empty arms, emptying heart. Horace ached for his boy, and knew the pain that would one day come to both of them if Horace didn’t fix this. The tears that came to his eyes brought more, and more, until they ran down his face, and deep sobs shook his massive back. He cursed himself for his strength and weakness; his strident conviction of a man making his stand in the world was all fine, until it brought this sadness and isolation, and reduced him to this.

  “You big, fat fucking baby,” he said out loud, wiping his eyes and nose with his dirty long johns sleeve.

  He prayed again, asking God to rescue him, to quell the whimpering mess his insides had become.

  “Fix this,” his own voice said. “Get off your ass and fix this.”

  He stood up, walked over to the leafless silver maple with the ax, and took a mighty baseball swing, burying the blade into the bark.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The next day after work, Horace walked into the Verizon store in a local strip mall, in full blacksmith garb, hands and face blackened from the coal soot.

  “I need a cell phone, the cheapest thing you got,” he said to the first red-vested clerk he saw.

  “You have to check in at the help desk.”

  �
��I don’t need help. I need a phone.”

  “They’ll help you. They’ll check your account and the status of your upgrades.”

  “I don’t have an account and I’m not upgrading, goddamnit. I just need a phone.”

  The clerk seemed confused, and maybe a little scared. “Still, you have to go over there.”

  When his number was called, he was put in the hands of another clerk. The kid began to spew words Horace barely knew: apps, Google, Instagram, Twitter, Siri, Snapchat, Wi-Fi. All these silly names, Horace thought.

  “All I want is to make calls.”

  “No texting? Nobody really talks anymore,” the kid said.

  “Okay, then. Texting.”

  “Let’s see, I think we got a few flip phones left . . .”

  This was the first step into Michael’s world. Or a try, at least.

  In the weeks since Sally and Michael left, the only calls on the answering machine she once insisted they needed were from collection agents. Horace wanted to tear it out of the wall now, but he didn’t want to miss a call from Michael. He played it every night in the empty kitchen and hoped to hear Michael’s voice, returning Horace’s messages. When the clerk said “nobody talks anymore,” Horace thought maybe it wasn’t so much rejection, but Michael being afraid of how the conversations would go. Texting would be stilted, but efficient.

  Can I see you? Horace clumsily thumbed out on his new phone.

  K.

  When?

  Game, t’nite. Legion Fld. @ 7

  See you then.

  K, c u.

  Later he got a text from Sally.

  change first please.

  This was an old wound. Horace knew his work clothes embarrassed Michael. Sally’s terse words made him remember the first time he saw that shame in Michael’s eyes. He was in fourth grade, excited for the school’s Halloween parade and party. Horace argued with Sally over his costume. He wanted to help Michael make something with his own hands out of the rag bag. A pirate. A cowboy. A farmer. Michael wanted a store-bought cartoon-character costume, Ninja Duck, or some bullshit like that. Sally backed him, and Horace was irritated even more when Michael was one of five Ninja Ducks in a class of eleven boys. So much for individuality, he said to Sally, who ignored him.

  Horace left work for the noon parade, and watched in his blacksmith garb. In the classroom later, parents served jack-o’-lantern cupcakes and store-bought cider—even though there were at least a half dozen cider mills operating around Cooperstown in those days. Horace stood, towering over the miniature desks, muzzling his thoughts. The teacher, a pretty young woman with earnest intentions, clapped her hands to get the children’s attention and thanked the parents for their efforts.

  “. . . and I see Mr. Mueller even came in costume!” she said, cheerily, pointing to Horace as some of the kids giggled.

  Horace didn’t let it pass.

  “It’s not a costume. These are my work clothes,” he said, his voice with more edge than he intended.

  He looked at Michael, whose eyes reddened and tears gathered. Then he looked at Sally . . .

  Before this moment, Sally always handled comments about Horace’s appearance and work with humor, in mild defense of him.

  “Horace works as a blacksmith, the Pony Express wasn’t hiring,” she’d say. Or “Horace works at the farm museum, but his hobby is time travel.” These little comebacks left room for a “how interesting” remark and Horace would explain his work.

  But on this day, Sally turned away, toward Michael, and Horace saw she not only shared Michael’s humiliation but was angry her boy was hurt. It was a moment of clarity for Horace. She was pulling her support, joining forces with the “them” he railed against.

  * * *

  THINKING OF MICHAEL’S GAME, Horace walked into a strip-mall hair-cutting place after work, ignored the stares, and settled in on a vinyl couch. Soon a Dominican girl with purple nails summoned him and led him to a washbasin.

  “No, it’s okay,” Horace said.

  “It’s the rules, Papi,” she said.

  Horace sat as she hosed hot water over his head and lathered up his scalp. He felt her nails through the long mat of hair and the latex gloves as she dug in. It felt good and he closed his eyes. He heard the jingle of her gold bracelets next to his ear, and felt the brush of her black nylon smock against him.

  “It’s been a long time, hmm, Papi,” she said, in a low murmur.

  “Yes, it has.”

  She took a warm towel and dried his hair with the same vigor, then sprayed it with a detangler. She led him to her chair and covered him with a black cape. She buttoned it on the back, then moved to his front, and pulled and straightened the hem out over his lap. She moved behind him, gathered his damp hair in both hands, and pulled the residual strands out from underneath the cape. She took her hands and moved them from his neck out across his shoulders, ironing down the cape fabric.

  “Strong,” she said. “A very big man.”

  She gave an approving nod, then moved to her workstation in front of him, and bent slightly to pick up shears and a thick comb. Her eyes met Horace’s in the mirror, after she caught him dropping his glance to her butt.

  “So what are we going to do?” she said, moving behind him again to stroke his hair with the comb. He told her he wanted to keep it long to the shoulders, but not this excessive. Beard, too. Trim ’em up.

  She went to work, and clumps of strands fell to the floor, or into his lap. He closed his eyes again and said, “Samson and Delilah.”

  The girl laughed, surprising Horace that she understood the reference, and said, “Isn’t that always the way?”

  * * *

  AT HOME, HORACE CLEANED UP. He threw his half-used bar of Octagon in the trash, and unwrapped a bar of deodorant soap. He got in the shower, washed his hair and body with a shampoo Sally had left behind. He scrubbed under his arms, smelling them every few seconds until he was satisfied the stench was gone. He dug out blue jeans and a light flannel shirt from his drawer and looked at himself in the mirror. He saw, underneath the added muscle and few strands of gray, pretty much the Cornell student he once was. That was not the intent, and for a second, he worried that Sally might see it that way: an attempt to get her back. It might move her to consider reconciliation, and the idea threw a chill in Horace. He thought of changing back into his blacksmith garb, to protect himself. The truth was he didn’t want her back. All he wanted was his son, for a few hours a week, if that’s all he could get, free of Sally’s interference.

  And then there was Natalia. Smart, like-minded Natalia, who seemed to respect what he stood for. Now he was free; a man abandoned. Separated. A sympathetic character. She was winding down at the farm, heading back to Rochester for the fall semester. Still, there was time. He’d been watching her from the iron storage room at the back of the smithy; he could see across the muddy goat pen into the cow barn.

  A few days earlier, he walked over while she was giving a milking demonstration to a group of Girl Scouts. Horace stood at the back of the group and watched with carnal fascination as her hands delicately but firmly pulled and stretched the long, supple teats of an oblivious Holstein. Was it his imagination, or when she saw him, did she yank it to a greater length, and playfully manipulate the tip? He felt himself getting hard. She smiled at him with a warmth long missing from his life, then raised her eyebrows, then bit her lower lip, as if she knew the effect she was having on him. What the hell? Even one of the Girl Scout leaders picked up the vibe, and her eyes inadvertently went from Natalia’s hands to Horace’s face. He got out of there. Back in the smithy, he watched from the privacy of the dark storage room through a sooted window, got a clean rag and took himself out of his breeches, and thought about those hands working on him. Jesus, how long had it been.

  * * *

  HORACE DROVE TO LEGION FIELD, tucking the Escort behind a monstrous new Chevy Suburban with its tail end plastered with magnetic stickers for Cooperstown kids’ sports a
nd cheer teams. Michael was in the outfield with his teammates, tossing the ball. He was the tallest boy and Horace saw how they congregated around him. But there was no laughter; Horace was surprised about how serious they all looked. Michael more so, and every few throws, his face would harden and he would unleash the ball with ferocity into the glove of an equally intense teammate. It was after one of those throws he saw Horace and waved his glove; a friendly, if slight, gesture of acknowledgment. Horace returned an equally understated wave, and felt, at that moment, he and his son shared the language of men.

  It had been a while since Horace saw one of Michael’s games, but Sally more than made up for it. During the first few years of Little League, she was the Team Mom. She brought snacks and drinks, huddled the boys for pictures. She wore their colors to games.

  No such things happened in Horace’s baseball days; he would walk or ride his bike down Route 20 over to the lumpy LaFayette High School fields near his house to play on Saturday mornings. Most kids came alone. No mothers toting coolers of Gatorade, no fathers handling baggage. No matching uniforms with embroidered names and numbers. Horace remembered his “uniform”: cheap T-shirts usually donated by a local business, canvas sneakers, and whatever pants his mother scratched off the good clothes list. Horace’s mother never came to a game, dedicating Saturday mornings to cleaning the house, and his father was busy with yard work or some other home-improvement project. Once in a while, he would show up in the late innings and maybe treat his hot, dusty boy to a vending machine soda from a nearby Esso station. They never talked about the game; instead, they talked about the home project his father was doing, and how Horace could help.

  His father never complained about Horace’s playing time to coaches, or bitched about a bad call. It just wasn’t that important to him. And Horace liked it that way. Men in his generation said more with silence.