Four New Messages

by Cohen, Joshua

  Tub kept us on time, managed the workflows, made sure everybody made their right contributions in the right order and that when it was too early to do the plumbing or electric, for example, Bau and Lo weren’t allowed to just hump away at the edge of the lot—the field had been referred to as “the lot,” or “the site,” then gradually Greener’s appellation spread, I spread it: “the college borough”—but were instead redirected to help with unloading trucks, or putting up scaffolding, aiding—meaning following and learning from—Mesh and the region’s most skilled masons on their facadework. (Mesh was assigned the facade, that intricate, fripperant facade, only because the surfaces of his literary work were so terribly transpicuous, so banally boring—simple declaratives rife with simple vocabulary. Plain. Unadorned. Also it’d be shabby not to note that at this juncture, the unions—Locals 5, 15, 35, and 86—were pitching in for nothing, in a recruitment initiative, whenever they had shifts to spare.)

  Tub himself wasn’t exempt from this diversification and though his primary talent was obviously organizational—he was a frail, wan guy—Greener insisted that he assist on the grunt jobs too, and so not only did he learn, as we all learned, something of every discipline, he also built up his chest and arms and successfully overcame chronic asthma. And Greener, it should be said, wasn’t exempt either: out straining among the elements, stooped for lift over pallets, it was as if he too would be receiving a grade. A fountain of sweat. Tanned in even his creases. He never cleaned his workboots or helmet. He looked wonderful (no, no: he looked like he was wonderfully dying).

  It was late in the afternoon, about an hour after we’d returned to the hotel from the NYU tour, in the middle of the brief nap we’d scheduled before beginning to plan which of Dem’s tapas reservations to honor—

  My phone rang a strange (212) number, but I answered it anyway, figuring it was the airline or an autoconfirmation of our visit tomorrow early to Liberty Island.

  It’s Tub, he said, Tub Deminty—why didn’t you tell me you two were in town?

  How did you know?

  Reardon emailed with your number, it’s been forever, I hope you’re not avoiding me.

  It’s not you I’m avoiding, I thought but only repeated, Damn straight, forever.

  And I’m told you have a girl doing the rounds of our fair borough’s higher ed?

  You’re on top of it.

  Dem sat up in bed.

  I know this is rushed, but will you make time for me tonight? I fly tomorrow for Frankfurt.

  Dem cocked an ear.

  I’ll get you tickets to Witties, that play that just won the Pulitzer—I’m friendly with the producers. Three tickets at Will Call (I have a meeting)—you’ll see the show then after we’ll eat, when the restaurants aren’t so crowded. Sound good? You in the mood for Turkish?

  Dem snatched the phone from me, yelled, Have you heard of this taverna on East 66th?

  And hello to you too—Tub had heard of it. He said that tables were scarce but he’d try. If that was a bust, he knew an exquisite rawfood trattoria.

  He’d be the man with the olive umbrella, waiting just up the block from the theater.

  Tub—why had I wanted to steer clear of The Tub, who used to write minuscule essays of sublime erudition but of no argument, no sway or opinion, just compressed paragraphicules of unremitting fact? Did I think he’d outgrown me, transcended our Midwestern muddle, advantaging his expertise, relocating to New York to do architecture, still scrupulously unmarried, still no children, if I had to pry gay, on staff at the Landmarks Commission—impeccably preserved himself—responsible for approving all reconstructions and refurbishments, all additions and subtractions, to the city’s historic buildings?

  Nope, it wasn’t anything that petty, nothing that begrudging—it didn’t pique that he was the only one of us who’d published (though it was only an academic monograph on the history of brick)—no, my problem, getting down to street level, was just that he was the closest of our classmates to the edifice itself, a New Yorker who probably passed that prototype daily and was probably solely responsible for its welfare. How could he take that? how lucky can you get with your education?

  Now just like the professionals we become after we graduate aren’t constructed merely from our student experiences, literature isn’t built merely of words—instead both require an extra material, whatever quantity of indefinable spirit that sent Tub to parts east, me up to the roof, and Dem to designing and decorating even after, especially after, what happened with Greener.

  A writer, or a couple of exwriters, staying in this city at the W Hotel, might express their room’s bed and chair and desk by just repeating the words bed and chair and desk—while any deepening of a reader’s appreciation would depend on deepening the descriptions.

  Would depend on, inspiration.

  Following Greener, however, Dem preferred to choose a room’s furnishings rather than choose the verbiage that furnished their details.

  A writer can write “the room had a couch,” or a writer can just give up writing, go out and drag a couch back into the room, having selected the appropriate model—it’s this total specificity, this absolute precision, that allowed Dem, having left the arts, to once again keep her exterior flawless and her interior private, her own.

  By early evening, Dem had become particularly obsessed with the W’s room’s curtains—while I shaved twice, fussed with a suit, and pretended to worry about being late, this was her attempt to distract me.

  On our way out she stopped at reception to ask, Where did you source it? that gorgeous microruffled white muslin?

  The concierge didn’t know but said he’d do research, And, Madam, you have excellent taste.

  He was a boy with a face from home, which he bowed to his tie, to repolish his accent.

  I piled the family into a taxi, instructing the driver—Iranian? Iraqi? allow me to claim I’m too bumpkiny for such distinctions—to head uptown, but to take the West Side Highway (I should’ve subwayed, though which train’s a mystery).

  Dem—vacillating between nervousness at traveling to an unknown, possibly even undatabased restaurant, and guilty joy at finally gaining the island’s northern latitudes—suppressed those sentiments out of concern: she was staring out the window then canting back in my direction, fixing me with her big blue salty puddles.

  Veri wasn’t privy to any of this—didn’t know about that past, not even rumor. Inevitably she knew I’d roofed that dilapidated campus building modeled on another dim building dimly in New York—but how was that remarkable when I’d also roofed her friends’ houses, our neighbors’, our own barn and stables and four-bedroom, five-bathroom mock Colonial Revival, Mesh’s manse, and every home ever mortgaged by Bau and Lo from starter rancher to condo? She was gorging on the trailmix Dem passed her. She was very excited for her first Broadway show.

  At Canal Street the darkling driver said, Too much the traffic is, an accident must be, as he swerved to continue north on—Bowery.

  I asked, Can’t I choose the route?

  The cabbie said, Bowery is best.

  My phone rang a txt from Tub, No Greek or Ital, Yes Tk meze korean bbq v. delish.

  I return txted, Whever?

  As the avenues split I cried, No, stop, but Dem turned to mouthbreathe, No, you stop.

  Dad? Veri said.

  Sirs? said the cabbie.

  Enough, Dem said, you’re a man.

  I slouched, resigned—I’m the roofer.

  The avenue gave way to Park.

  Tub wasn’t there at the end, I mean the very end.

  He was away doing what Veri was doing now, checking out schools, for him architectural school, not just touring but having his interview, “his intellectual texts” (that was his terminology)—like pot or hallucinogens—a twentysomething hobby.

  Not just him, nobody was there at the finish—they were all in their dorms, cramming the New York City building code of the era, or out at the library studying the Beaux-Arts
.

  Ultimately there was just me.

  The roof is, by default, the last.

  Can’t build the ceiling before the floor.

  I went up after a fierce spring storm to check the coping—the balustrades, that overbearing cornice (unnerving resemblance to Greener’s chin)—ensure all my work had withstood its final exam.

  Topside was wet, slick. Ponds sloshed across the verdigrine tar, drowning the ducts.

  Greener stood, trembling.

  We all knew he’d been living in the Fauxiron for a few weeks, but nobody had dared to say anything beyond, If you need a shower or are peckish, don’t hesitate, drop by. Dem had outfitted him with a decent penthouse suite replete with foldout sofa, stocked minifridge, full bath, but mostly he slept—as evidenced by the Baby Ruth and straw wrappers, the Coke cans and bourbon fifths and butts and last week’s bundled socks—in the halls or in random other studios. Or up on the roof come April and May, with the term almost over—he had no summer plans (he’d been using his rejected manuscript as pillow until, over springbreak, with us away at Dem’s parents’, he burnt it in his suite’s trashcan to test the alarms, or so he’d told the authorities—the alarms worked, the sprinklers worked, did damage).

  The taxi approached the intersection—I was sitting on its west side, was fated to that side.

  On the roof I reached a hand out—reached a hand out the cab’s window too—pointing a finger at the air.

  The wind the smoothest traffic.

  Dem held my knee and Veri, bright with recognizance, shouted, Hey, where are we?

  The intersection of voids, the corner of nothing and nothing.

  I turned to the rear window.

  A laugh.

  There it was in its rude sedate slant, there it was in its glory.

  The height from which he jumped.

  SENT

  I. The Bed

  _________________

  Beds are made of trees, and coffins are beds with lids. Death is sleep without bottom. Its nature silent and consciousless and densely dark—

  Imagine you are walking through a dream. But your dream is not just that, not just open. Your dream isn’t just one big gray open scape of mist you can step into, you can walk anywhere through, stick a hand or arm or leg into and just wiggle anywhere, no.

  There are obstructions, even here. This is a dream with obstructions.

  And so it is real. So it is real life.

  You are walking through the forest but you cannot walk straight, you have to walk where the forest says you can walk, around the trees that tell you Here and There and Here. If straight is your goal you will have to go crooked. If crooked is your goal you will have to aim crookeder. No, better a fairy should tell you, some sort of dryadish creature: “If straight be your goal you must go crooked. If crooked be your path go forth and crook.”

  Yes, fairy. Yes, cretin sprite.

  I am a woodsman. A forester. No. You are a woodsman. You are a forester. No. Shake the tree. Uproot the roots. He, yes, he is a woodsman, he is a man in the woods. He is thick like wood and brown like wood and nothing about him is green. He has a bark beard. Knots for eyes and knots for ears and a knot for a mouth but while walking he is silent. His wife he has left behind in their hut. From there, noises. Their hut is made of trees, is made of tree, unwindowed. She lies on the ground expecting a child. This would be their first. New leaves, new leaf, a child shaped in lobes with a stem between the legs. She lies there in labor, lies on the earth belabored, olid and fat. She screams and screams and her eyes are angry. (He needs to move quickly.)

  Fairies? “You need to move quickly!”

  Thou spirits of lilim and such? “Hurry, hurry fast!”

  He must build her a bed. He must build her a bed she can give birth in. And it must be built well so that the birth will be well. But he has to do this soon, has to rush.

  His ax has a name but no one will know that name. That name is a secret unlike the name of his child that everyone will call him or her, he is expecting a Him. The axname is secret because that is the name he calls when he needs the ax’s power. The ax was smelted especially for his father, with magical powers that his fathers believed in and that he, the child of his father, believes in occasionally. But he also wonders occasionally why an ax should have an axname like a child has a childname but the ax’s name secret, and there is an unease in that wonder that he does not understand fully or want to. (Enough to know that the ax is sharp, though he’s not sharpened it since he was married. Not a whet since he was wed. He has cut hairs with it, though, his, his wife’s, he’s cut with it the throats of hairs and the limbs of wild game and is not worried.)

  The seed for the tree came on a whistling wind when God was new or the fathers were gods or when there wasn’t much of a difference between them—it was blown in on the wind and then the wind stopped its whistling and there the seed fell and became planted with the force of its fall and was watered with raining. Weather, nothing more eternal than the weather. The woodsman was not a godtype, he couldn’t have been one even if eternal. He was ugly and fat and short. “O God Above [but this was just a thing he said] I am ugly and fat and short of haft!

  “But my ax is strong.”

  The tree grew to be an amalgam of trees. A composite of marbled meats thick and dark under a bark. When struck, splintering like a muscle stretched apart. As a tree it was the widest but most stunted like him so he chose it and cut it because it was like cutting himself, which is what a child will do, he will cut you. Imagine you chopped open a tree and inside was a very small tree. That is what it’s like to be human. To be both conscious and conscious of one day not being—and so we seed another.

  The tree—which had been rained upon by centuries, its shoot trampled by armies invading and the sport of the hunt, having shaded picnics with Mama and lovers around its expansive trunk graffitied with the endearments of pocketknives and quivering arrows—took only an afternoon in which to fall, after which the woodsman dragged it through the woods under the lush green eyes of its upright fellows, shedding leaves shaped like tears and hearts and leaves back to his hut where he left it in the clearing, just outside the door. He did not go in to greet his wife, the sounds of her shrieking told him she was still alive and had not birthed yet. He did not need to go in, did not need to hear her shriek, already knowing that all would be well, that all would be Male: in the woods he’d buried a hunk of the dung he’d squatted for in the rough hole left by the uprooted tree, in order to propitiate (thank) the forest powers.

  And though he did not believe in those woody powers anymore as his father had believed in them, and though he told himself that he often enough did not believe even in God anymore, still he squatted in pressure and heat and left in gratitude what he left—a stillborn blackish coil.

  Then he made the bed.

  But I should tell this story the way one should tell this story to someone who has never made a bed. When you tell this story to a fellow bedmaker you just say, He made One!

  What did he do? he made a bed (not with sheets but with wood and nails), what kind of bed? a big wood bed he nailed—nevermind how, you whose beds at home be unmade, nevermade. Nevermind the chop chopping, the lathe hump of knots to flatness and the plane, the planing. Nevermind those nails, which in days of yore my little squirty grandkids you had to make yourself, not buy, you couldn’t buy them. He made the nails from out of dug earth, fingerdug—but there’d be no need to tell this to a nailmaker. Or to a fellow storyteller. Fill it in yourself.

  There, the bed is done.

  I will next explain its symbols.

  “Please explain …”

  To begin with the bed was built and was built plainly given the haste, and babies were birthed upon it, but then over the years in his rare eventide leisure the woodsman would carve into the bed, would make carvings into the footboard of the bed, and into the bed’s headboard too, with that selfsame ax held nearer the blade and then his practiced knife.

&nb
sp; On the footboard, the lions he carved represented the strength of lions. The four bedposts he topped with carvings of antlerlike crowns represented authority. Or they might have signified majesty instead, we’re not sure and neither was he, guided by hand and whimsy. Yet again the entirety might only have represented “Representation.”

  On the footboard he carved swords and fearsome wings that might’ve been of eagles or ravens if they had to be of something, something flying and not abstract. And he carved lances and bound sheaves of wheat but perhaps it was not wheat because who could grind it? who could grind wood and taste of it and think, wheat? That would be magic! That is the magic of saying This is That, of saying Here is There but it’s not but it is, and that is poetry, which is a kind of art!

  The woodsman carved into the footboard’s wood a shield and a helmet and a pike and a mace, he carved a wood wolf, he carved wolves, carved a wooden steer, a stag and lamb, antlers, antlers more and more ornate, a boar, a bear. This was all hopeful, this was wishful, in a sense—this heraldry coming before the family to be heralded was finished. The woodsman, late at night, unprepared for sleep, was inventing the insignia for his family before family he had, because one daughter is not a family and neither are two daughters, but three daughters like in the olden stories, one pretty, one smart, one stupid and plain, are a family and then a son, who ignored the bed because he was too busy building his own life—he was too busy building his own life plainly and then, once finished, decorating it with ornament: with children of his own, grandchildren of his own.