Good Wood (10 page)

A few weeks later, she came back with the plan. The building with the shop was too far in the red to be a viable option for sale. Even though the truck was a classic it was unrestored, it wasn’t worth enough to bother with and the cost of replacing it offset any profits. So that left the house. I told her to get rid of everything left inside and sell it. Within a month it was over. She sold it to some yuppie bitch that had been to the house before. At least she bled the buyers for enough money to pay off a good chunk of my bills. Between that and working my ass of for the past two years for any contractor that would have me, I’d clawed my way back into the black and the only bill I had these days was the mortgage for my building.

Part of me was glad I got to keep the building with the shop. At the time, I was just relieved I wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of moving-or paying rent. I went back to construction, working as a framer and carpenter. I kept turning down carving jobs and eventually people took the hint. My woodworking business on the ground floor of the commercial space sat abandoned under dust clothes. Tools that I used to keep shiny and sharpened were now dull with rust. There wasn’t much left on the workbenches but scraps and broken bits of wood.

I hadn’t been in there since before the accident. The urge to create hadn’t been on my agenda. Destroying myself one drink at a time had been my full time job. Get drunk, pick a fight, get arrested. Add to that screwing my way through the state capital and you started to get the big picture. I was a suicidal man afraid to complete the task. I couldn’t actually bring myself to do that to the people that loved me. I may be a lot of things, but I would
not
be a burden. I could never let my father be right when he said that I would end up being a penniless loser surrounded by penniless losers. All this decreed from his throne, behind a carved wooden desk.

It was just another Thursday afternoon at the jobsite, when I heard Mac talking about Molly’s upcoming birthday. After work, I found myself on a stool in my long dormant workshop, twirling a pencil back and forth between my fingers. My feet had inexplicably taken me from my normal path up the stairs to my long abandoned workbench.
God, this place looks like shit. What kind of man doesn’t even take care of his tools?

This chastisement rang in my head in Graham’s voice and it got me moving. I’d been planning on exercising anyway. What was the difference between working out and working? Not much the way I do it. Hours later, I had the workshop back in shape. Tools gleamed without a trace of rust. It was surprising how peaceful that simple act made me feel. I gathered up the remaining supplies and before I realized what I was doing, I’d started gathering scraps of wood.

In my mind’s eye, the plan for what they would become took shape-a spice box. One built for bigger spices to be stored below with two wooden trays above to hold the smaller jars. A hollowed out block would serve as a solid one-piece lid. I had two heavy cast iron hinges left over from a salvage job that would suit it perfectly. A metal hook clasp from an old iron gate could be repurposed to keep the box shut.

Thinking back to the brief glimpse I had of the interior of Molly’s food truck, I made my calculations for size and started building. The box was crafted from almost every type of wood imaginable. Soft wood joined with hard wood. Supple was sandwiched to brittle. The difficulty of merging them together consumed me and for a short time I was able to forget everything else. I had started out building things like that. Something quite similar had caused my shop teacher to recommend me as an apprentice to a woodworker he knew.

“Any fool can make something out of true lumber,” Mr. Gasey, the woodworker that I had apprenticed to informed me. “It’s the sign of a true artisan when he can create something beautiful from what others consider trash. It takes heart to take the most twisted bit of scrap and make something from it as if it were good wood.”

The box took less than half an hour to complete but once it was together my hands quickly found my carving tools. Inside the lid, I carved the stretching lines of the tattoos I’d observed on her shapely arms. The carvings flowed to the exterior of the box and wrapped around the letters of her first name. When I was done, I rubbed a mixture of mineral oil and beeswax into the box. By that time, it was really late, or really early depending on your point of view.

Only when I was finished did I sit back and wonder at what I had done. Running my hands along the perfect lines of the box I felt a thrill run through me. I hadn’t been able to even look at my tools since that night. And yet now, sitting before me, was proof that my gift wasn’t gone. Tears blurred my vision and part of my soul shifted inside my chest. Something had been awoken inside me that had been sleeping. And I had missed it more than I had realized.

Opening and closing the lid gently, I turned the box around. The carvings maintained smooth lines as they passed between the softer and harder woods. There was more detail than I remembered ever putting into a piece. Wrapping the box in soft cloth I left it on the table near the door. I crashed for a few hours and woke up feeling surprisingly refreshed. Showered and dressed, I retrieved the box and was out the door well before my usual departure time.

I wonder if she’ll like it.
The thought rang in my head and brought me to a complete stop.
It’s just a birthday present. If she doesn’t like it, she can sell it or something
. Shrugging, I began to turn the key then hesitated. Twisting to the side I put a seat belt around the box to hold it in place before heading towards the site.

I hoped to give it to her before everyone showed up. Luck was with me and I was the first person to arrive. Molly pulled up with her minions a few minutes later. I took the cloth wrapped box and placed it under my arm. Suddenly, I started to wonder if this gift was a good idea.
A spice rack is a stupid gift. If she wanted one, she’d have one. She is a pro, after all. It probably won’t even fit. I built it off a five second glance into the truck.
Before I had a chance to retreat, Molly looked up and caught sight of me.

“Hey there, Joe! What do you know?” Her smile lit the darkness in me like a full moon on a cloudless night. Helpless to resist her charismatic charm, my mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile. Those muscles hadn’t been used in a long time, and I was caught off guard when the expression hurt a little. She looked at me expectantly, but the memory of her lips so close to mine left me speechless. Pulling the box out from under my arm, I slid it carefully onto the counter. I finally found my voice.

“Hey there, little girl. Somebody let it slip that it’s your birthday today. I wanted to give you a present. So…I made you something. It’s not much.” Suddenly feeling idiotic, I decided to make a quick exit. I backed away from the window with a quick wave. “Happy birthday!”

“Joe, wait!” I heard her call, but I didn’t have the nerve to look back. Part of me questioned my motives, but I tried hard to lose that part of me in work that day. I chose an outdoor task, deciding it would be the right day to fix the upper balcony. It would be a lot of solo labor. The work was monotonous, and instead of serving as the distraction I was hoping for, it afforded me way too much time to obsess over Molly’s reaction to my gift. The outside work in the sun gave me hope that if I worked hard enough I could get heat stroke and they’d take me away in an ambulance. At least then, I wouldn’t need to walk past her crack wagon. No such luck. And on my way to my truck, Mason caught up with me.

“Dude. Come out with us tonight. We’re fixin to do a pub crawl. You can troll for ass while we toast the kid’s birthday.”

“I’m sure she’ll have a better time without me tagging along, Mason.” I opened my truck door and tossed my hard hat onto the passenger seat.

“Huh…well, she’s the one who sent me over to invite you. Come on, Man. You haven’t been out with us in forever.”

I paused. I knew it was a bad idea. Hiding my interest in Molly from Mason and Mac would be a chore, especially after a couple of pitchers of beer. My brain told me to politely decline, but my inner caveman beat that nerdy little bitch down.

“Fine. When and where?”

“Holy shit.” Mac pulled off his cowboy hat and with a mile-wide grin, wiped some sweat from his brow. “The hermit Joseph Jensen fraternizing with his buddies twice in two weeks? Un-fucking-believable.

“Well…the bars are my regular hunting grounds.” I mused, aware that this comment would throw him off my scent. No stranger to thinking with the wrong part of my anatomy, I figured I’d tag along and pick someone up to get the pent up frustration out of my system. Self-destructive as I was, even I wouldn’t throw away a decade of friendship for a one-nighter. Besides, she’d ditched me at Mason’s daughter’s party, so odds were she had already written me off. Someone (most likely Mac) had probably leaked my reputation to her. The weather was still good, and downtown Austin was thick with uninhibited women. Abstinence was turning me into a total pussy, and I obviously needed to get laid. It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination that I’d end up in some hotel room with some stranger tonight after all. Mac slapped me heartily on the back.

“Right. You’d better stop by the drug store and stock up on Trojans. And rubber bands so they don’t fall off.” He turned and walked off laughing hard at his own joke. I laughed along with him, but my eyes drifted back to the food truck, hungrily searching for a glimpse of Molly.

WE HAD A pretty good sized group turn out for my impromptu birthday drink-fest, and lord knows they were all in a partying mood. I was in fairly high spirits for an old maid with a fledgling business. The atmosphere on South Congress was fittingly festive. The SoCo neighborhood had always enchanted me. It was a trippy cultural district famous for its eclectic small retailers, restaurants, music and art venues and, more recently, food trucks. Street musicians peppered the sidewalks amongst the neon signs, mural covered buildings and my aluminum-sided culinary competition. I quickly realized that when I was ready to add a second truck, I’d need to do it here. With the post-college crowd flocking in this direction versus Sixth Street, it seemed like the perfect night time location for what Wrapgasmic had to offer.