by Rilla Askew
So anyway, this particular afternoon I’m speaking of, there wasn’t no customers around and my dad wasn’t around because he’d gone to Brown’s Prairie for some kind of horse-trading business—now, I knew that already, I knew my dad wasn’t going to be there and wouldn’t likely get home before the next morning—and maybe that’s how come me to go around. I don’t know why there wasn’t anybody else around, unless folks just knew my dad was gone and they reckoned they’d just wait to get their work done till they knew he’d got back. Well, Lodi didn’t have any work he’d ought to do nor would get paid to do, and it was getting dark outside and raw—but do you think the man went on home before the snow come, like any normal man would? Not a chance of it. He was working day wages, and my daddy’s day wages said a man worked till six o’clock, that’s how Lodi’d worked it out with my dad. So even without him with a piece of work to do for nobody, he still set there in the shop. And he was working wood by the forge, and that forge was flat cold as ice. Wasn’t nothing to heat that big old barn but the woodstove over yonder, you’d think he’d’ve gone over to sit by it, but his place was by the forge there at his bench, and that’s where he set.
Well, I come in, see, and I don’t know what-all I had on my young mind, I can’t for the life of me remember that. Probably I just meant to watch him work a bit without my dad around to find me something useful to put myself to, I don’t know. I did like to watch John Lodi work that iron; it was just like a miracle to me. I had the thought in those days that if I didn’t turn out to be an outlaw I might learn me some blacksmithing, but of course I never really did. Oh, I can make you a good fitting for a mule shoe—I always did prefer shoeing a mule to a horse, even if they are ornery sonuvaguns. Their feet’s just so little and neat, hardly any trimming to ’em, just give them a lick or two and that’s it. You don’t have no trouble with them if you know how to act—but I never did have any real skill for it. About like my dad. But you know, when you’re little you’ll think anything, so I thought I’d turn out to be an outlaw, but blacksmithing was my second choice.
So here I was. I blew in with that wind rising, bang! that old roughcut door slammed behind me, liked to whupped me in the butt. He looked at me, never missed a lick with the plane he was using on that piece of wood.
“Son,” he says, and nodded. Hands never stopped.
“Evening, Mr. Lodi,” I says.
He was bareheaded, and you didn’t hardly ever see him like that. Well, it wasn’t warm in there, not hardly, not with the forge blowed out, so I don’t know why he was sitting there without a hat. He was pretty near a bald man, or he didn’t have too much hair on top; you’d think he’d a been cold. I can see him just as well. Looked odd, you know, because he wasn’t an old man but his forehead was near as smooth as glass, it slicked right back yonder, like what little hair he’d got was crawfishing back from his brows. His eyebrows was about as brushy as new wood. He near looked like two different men with his hat on and hat off. With it on, his eyes would go all shaded, and he’d look, in fact, if you can believe it, more like an old man than he did with that forehead shining, on account of how the shadows under his eyes would do. It was strange. Take the hat off, his eyes would lighten, he’d drop about twenty years. Isn’t that something? He’d appear younger-looking with his hat off and that bald pate just a-shining than he looked with it on. Made him look . . . I don’t know . . . easy. Soft, I almost want to say, though you knew good and well he wasn’t a soft man—but that light forehead of his, it’d look nearly as soft as a little child’s. That’s how it was.
So I don’t know, I felt easy with him, how he had his hat off, and—now, I don’t know why, because it wasn’t any too warm in there—I took mine off too, and took a step over toward him. Ordinarily I wouldn’t. Ordinarily I’d do about like the rest of them, just hide and watch. Who can explain it? I just lay it off to him sitting there without a hat. But he didn’t bite me or nothing, so I took another step. You know he was working by kerosene. They wasn’t no electric lights in that blacksmith shop—no electric lights nowhere any closer than McAlester I reckon at that time. You just had your lanterns and your natural light from the big door, if you were in a position to stand it open, which not in that weather you were not, so the light was pure yellow yonder, sitting on top of the mounted post vise, throwing shadows, shining down on his hands. His hands were something else again. They were that big—and stubby? Looked about like they belonged to an old sawmiller, cottonpicker or something. Cracked and fissured all through, his fingers blunt as a square. He was missing the nail entirely on one finger, and the little tip was was gone off of one thumb. You wouldn’t think, couldn’t imagine, how he did what he did with them hands. They looked like bearpaws nearly, just big old awkward things, and he could do what he did with them. It was something. Well, his hands never paused an iota, and you know he was looking at me. He wasn’t looking down at what he was doing, and here these hands went, just smoothing, smoothing that wood.
Well, maybe that was it partly. I don’t know how come me to ask him what he was doing, but I did. It was strange then. He blinked, looked down at that piece of wood, and it was nearly like he just then found it sitting there. Like he never even knowed he was working it. Well, I blinked too then, looked down, got a good look at it. I seen it then. Clear as a bell. Cut-out piece of red oak, and the long end of it stuck way under the bench. Gun stock. That’s what he was making. Most precisely, a rifle stock, and it was the old-fashioned kind, a muzzle loader—what you used to call your Kentucky rifle or your longrifle—and it went from here to yonder, but I didn’t know it then. I couldn’t see it, ever bit of it, from where I was standing, but I could see enough to recognize it. I didn’t think nothing but them two words—gun stock—and I didn’t know what else to think.
“What are you making, Mr. Lodi?” I asked him again, like a fool, but I couldn’t think of nothing.
Still sitting there, looking down at his hands, looks up at me, surprised, like he don’t even know. Just looks at me quiet a minute, don’t say nothing. Then, like he’s waking up from something, he shakes his head. Like a horse, you know, trying to shake loose the bit. Looks down again, starts turning that piece of red oak over and over across his lap between his hands. Says, looks up at me, says, “Why, son, I’m making you a gun.”
Well, I liked to swallowed my breath. Oh, you know I’d been after my daddy and been after him, ever night nearly. I was good and growed up ten. I believed I was due a rifle for Christmas and I believed I was going to get me a rifle for Christmas—I’d just sucked down my pistol wishing, sucked down the fact I’d be done turned eleven by then—but now, people, I had my mind set on a pretty little Winchester. I’d seen one up at Lolly’s was just what I meant to have. I didn’t know nothing about gunsmithing, can’t say I could tell you to this day much about it and I watched him start to finish, but I knew one thing in that minute: I didn’t want no damn homemade gun.
I wasn’t even sure but what he meant to give me a toy wooden gun, even if I could see that that stock was as long as I was tall. Looked about like a toy, somehow, the way it was cut out flat and square, like a outline or an idea of a gun. I was just heartsick. I guess I had a face on pretty bad. I don’t guess I knew how to hide it if ever I’d cared to, and I just stared at the man. He leaned over right quick then, picked his hat off the bench and put it on his head. Well, Lord, that changed him, liked to scared me to death. Whatever face I’d pulled, I reckon I put back on another’n. Lodi looked at me fierce.
He says, “Come over here a minute, son.”
What are you going to do? I’s ten, and here he was, about my master as far as I knew, a big old growed-up man. Every inch of my skin was aching backwards to that door yonder where I’d come in at, but I did like he told me. Edged up to where he’s sitting on that old nail keg, he gets aholt of my arm. I had this old bunchy brown coat on, I’ll never forget that. It was my brother DewMan’s before me and I reckon Clyde’s before him. I hadn’t grow
ed into it yet, had to shove the sleeves up to get my hands out—well, that old cotton batting didn’t want to shove up, it was bunched all around my elbow and arm. Lodi picks my arm up. I might’ve been trembling a little bit. He says, “Hold still a minute,” kindly growls at me, “He-e-ere, now,” stretches that arm out, bends it, sticks the butt of that stock up there in the crook. Well, my hand couldn’t reach to the comb even, much less the place the trigger went, and Lodi eyeballs it, jerks it away, and now he just went jessie on it with the big rasp. Knocked, I don’t know what, three inches and more off the butt, just laid it out the same woman shape, but shorter, near about like a half stock, and it didn’t take no time. Half an hour maybe, I don’t know. I was watching him close. He jerks my elbow up again, tucks the butt in there, wraps my hand around the rifle wrist. Lays my thumb on the comb. Well, you can believe it or not, people, but it was just a fit. He’d measured that stock out about like your mama’d measure you a new suit of clothes, and when he laid it back in there, it fit me like a skin.
Now, I’ll tell you something, that little act turned a screw in me, and I can’t explain it any better than this: I went from where I wouldn’t’ve had a homemade gun laid out on a silver platter to where I felt it and seen it my own, same as if it was finished and cradled in my arms. Felt the heel snugged up there like I was born with it, plumb through that old heavy brown coat. I tried to lift it, sight along it, I couldn’t do it—and it wasn’t nothing but a stock blank, just the wood shape and nothing else to it, but I couldn’t hold the sonuvagun up. Lodi had to help me. Now then, I’d had a half-dozen guns under my arm before that time—my dad’s shotgun and Uncle Jack’s and whatall—and I’ve probably had a flat hundred since, and I never in my life felt anything like it. I just changed toward it. I can’t tell you how.
Well, you know what he done then, he went and fired up that forge. He did so, nearly five o’clock of an evening, he laid a load of coke in, shoveled it, went to work with the bellows. Now, you didn’t do like that neither. Forges was just like anything: you didn’t fire it up for a little while, you did it for the whole day’s work and then you let it quit. Fuel was expensive, and it took a long time to get it hot enough where you’d want it, but you couldn’t let it get too hot, you had to know just where you was at. But Lodi set that stock down, stood up and turned to shoveling a load of coal. Next thing I know he’s over yonder at the iron pile, scraping and shoving things around. His back was to me then. I just had to do it, I reached out there on the bench and touched that piece of wood. That oak was as warm as a woman’s belly, you’ll pardon the expression, but, now, it was. It was just the very living wood. I reckon if I wasn’t in love already, I sure was from that minute, and I just stroked it. Couldn’t keep my hands off it. Here come Lodi, I jerked back, but he didn’t even act like he seen me. He’d found him a long old piece of wrought iron, and he got them tongs cracking and put that bar in, laid on them bellows a minute. Like he’s got a clock in his head or some kind of gauge, he knows just when to take it out. Goes to work with the big sledge on that heated barrel stock, he didn’t have no mandrel or nothing, just laid it out on the anvil and pounded it around a broken piece of a brake rod. Just went to town.
I don’t know how long we stayed in there. Wind howling. For a while you could hear sleet pecking that old wood-shingle roof. When we come out, there was a little dusting of snow on the ground. Wind had died some. The stars was out. Lodi didn’t say a word to me, just picked up the lantern and hunked up his shoulders, walked off north through town. I know I got a licking from my mama when I come in the house—supper’s cold on the table, fire’s down, the whole rest of the family in bed. She got up when I come in, asked me where I’d been, I told her, Helping John Lodi. She said, Helping him what? I said, Finish up a new set of brake rods for Tarleton Maye’s wagon; she said, My foot. She popped me a half-dozen times through that coat wadding, told me to get my hind end in the bed, but she never did tell my dad. My mama was partial to me, I know that. They all said it, and I’ll allow it for a fact.
I might not would’ve stayed at the livery till supper much less way past midnight if my dad hadn’t been gone to Brown’s Prairie. I never was one to cross my dad. But look here, I’ll tell you something. I don’t believe none of it would’ve happened if my daddy hadn’t been out of town. I’ve thought about it. I don’t for the life of me believe Lodi meant to make me a rifle. He didn’t have no sort of plan. It’s just how life is, how you couldn’t have one thing happen without what went before. Some of it’s accident and some of it’s intention, but one thing gets laid on another and it all keeps a-rolling from one thing to the next. But it’s all tied up together, see—you don’t just have this, and this, and this; you have this because this because this, even if you don’t know what the because is. That’s according to my reckoning, and I been watching it a long time. Like this, see: Lodi was working that wood on account of it wasn’t six yet and he didn’t have no regular work to get done. But see, he didn’t have no regular work because my dad was out of town. If daddy’d been there, I bet you a hunnerd dollars there would’ve been somebody sitting around waiting on John Lodi to finish them a hound plate or something, storm coming or not. And if there hadn’t been anybody waiting for work from him, why, my dad would’ve come in and told Lodi to knock off and go home. My dad wasn’t a hard man. But he wasn’t there to tell him, and Lodi wasn’t going to take it on himself to go home half a day early, and so he had free hands and time to do something and he just did what he did.
After that night, it just laid like a secret between us. We didn’t neither one need to tell it, but we was making that gun on the sly. Or anyhow, that’s how I thought about it, but my dad had to know. I never come in the house before nine or ten o’clock of an evening; he’d just tell me to stoke the fire before I come to bed. Now, I’m going to estimate it took us about three weeks to make that gun. I say “us,” and you know I didn’t have a fat lot to do with it, only just held the barrel tight in the rings when he was rifling it out or whatever little job he showed me how to do. I don’t think it would’ve took that long, even allowing we had to work on it after six or way up early in the morning, except he had to whittle him a rifling guide, and that was some job, I’ll tell you what. But he made every piece of it, tang bolt to cheek plate, and he knew what he was about. Of course, later I could see that the main reason he was working that slab of red oak when I come in, the truth of it, was because he knew how. That was the prettiest gun I nearly ever witnessed in my life, I don’t care if it was a muzzle loader. On top of that, it was the truest. I ain’t saying that just because it was mine. I learned to shoot with that gun, kept it for years and years, and I never had to freshen it out but once. Sold it to Bob Martin for forty dollars in Nineteen Thirty-six, and that was a lot of money in that time. I’d give more than that to have it back now, I can tell you. John Lodi was a powerful artist at gunmaking, same as he was at anything else. I reckon he had been nearly all his life. You don’t learn that business in a minute.
Okay, now this is something I didn’t know for a long time—well, half a century nearly. Mama said it when she was right near to passing over. She was sitting on the porch one morning—by that time she didn’t do much of anything but set around; Daddy’d been gone sixteen years—but Mama was sitting there rocking one morning, I was coming up the front steps. I don’t know where I’d been, to the post office or something, and Mama just pops up out of nowhere, she says, “Grady, you remember that gun John Lodi made you?”
Well, I did a little turn then, because I never knowed any of them knew he’d made it for me special. I thought at the time they all reckoned he’d give it to me because it wasn’t a manufactured Remington or Winchester, just an old homemade gun.
She says, “You remember that?”
I says, “Well, yes, Mama, sure I do.”
She says, “You know what your dad give for that?”
I said no. My heart grabbed up a little tighter. None of them had
ever mentioned anything about it. We made it. We had a secret. Me and Lodi. I never knew Dad gave him a dime.
She says, “Your dad give two dollars for that gun. John wouldn’t take no more than that. What you reckon that gun’d be worth today?”
I said I couldn’t imagine. I didn’t want to think about it. Nearly killed me to sell it when I did, I just hated it, but me and Dorcas didn’t have two red cents to rub together. You did what you had to back then. Told myself like this, said, Well, sir, you don’t have a son to pass it along to anyhow, you’d just might as well. I sold it to Bob Martin for his grandson, or that’s what he said.
“I bet it was worth twenty dollars,” Mama says, “if it was worth a nickel. Your dad tried to make him take ten for it, but two dollars is all he would take. Just pert near give it away, didn’t he?”