Kris (6 page)

Jonas nicked his finger with a knife and let out a whimper. I glanced over to see what had happened. Josef grabbed me by the chin with his rough, scarred hands and glared directly into my eyes. “Focus!” he commanded.

I looked down at the wood I was about to cut. The saw blade was resting on my thumb. Had I started to cut the wood, I would have
injured myself, delaying the plan that was taking shape in my head. Shaken, I lifted the blade off my finger and reset it upon the mark I had made in the wood. As I began to saw, Josef took hold of my elbow, moving it to a steady pace. At first I fought what seemed an awkward action. But once I caught the natural flow, I felt the blade move more smoothly through the wood and the effort lessened for the muscles in my shoulder.

“When you are out of tune or out of rhythm, the teeth will skip and catch on the wood,” Josef said to me. “There is a place where the saw works with your arm. With proper practice, tools will do their job cleanly; with mastery they will obey your thoughts.”

“You will have repaid your debt once I have two sets of quality chairs,” Josef said as he walked away.

“How will I know they are good enough?” I asked.

“When I can't tell the difference between the chairs you have made and the ones I have made with my own hands.”

I threw my focus into measuring and remeasuring, cutting and trimming.

Later that week, several men from the village approached the carpentry in an old and battered wagon. Josef greeted them outside. I listened as one of the men told him of a body found along the roadside on his journey back from trading at the coast. The woman seemed a victim of illness and the recent storm. They wanted Josef's help in collecting the remains and tending to their disposition.

The other boys were filled with morbid curiosity, for they were not experienced in death. I remained quiet, pretending to be focused on my work.

Josef instructed all of us to continue our tasks and hastened to add that he would not accept any misbehavior. Then he ventured off to help the other men tend to the body they had discovered. For me there was no doubt who they were intending to bury, and I was thankful.

These are good men, I thought. But I could not reveal to them the awful road I had traveled. “Never let them know where you are from,” my mother had told Garin. Was she right? Would I find myself cast out again into the cold relentless winter? I decided to practice silence. It was a habit that I came to rely on.

In the evening, I was sitting alone at a small table in the carpentry eating a hearty soup and bread when Josef returned. From the darkness I listened closely as he told Gabriella what had transpired.

They had found the woman, frozen by the roadside. They knew she had been looked after in some fashion since she was laid in a sleeping position with her arms crossed about her breast, and with her head supported by a pillow of snow and ice. Her suffering and struggles were revealed by the look upon her face and the evidence of illness left upon her body.

“It seems to me she may have died before her body froze,” Josef told Gabriella. “She was laid to rest there, no doubt, because the building storm and bitter cold made it too difficult to take her any farther.”

“And, what became of her body?” Gabriella asked.

“We found the ground too hard and solidly frozen to bury her with dignity,” Josef said. “Since the others were fearful of the disease, we built
a large fire and placed her body upon it, until it was fully consumed by the flames.”

Gabriella comforted Josef, “May the Lord bless her soul and those who loved her.”

I watched the flames leaping and raging in the furnace of the carpentry. I thought of how many times over the past year I had seen such fires consume the memories of friends and neighbors. My mother's departure in this way gave me final assurance that she would not be further abused and that my duty to her was finished. I was finally and fortunately released from her control over my life and of my destiny, I told myself. I was free to do what I thought best.

A plan had taken hold in my mind, and I was committed. In a year's time I would reunite my family. I mentally retraced my steps, creating a picture in my head of the journey back to find my scattered siblings. I would be fourteen years old, a full-grown man, no matter what she had said, ready to take care of all of us.

May our mothers forgive the arrogance and insults of our youth. There are some of us to whom telling is just not enough; we must learn through the pains of experience.

That night, when I returned to my bed, the little toy wooden bear that my brother had left behind was resting on a table near my bedside.

I did not know when Josef placed it there or how he understood what it could have meant to me. Though we never spoke of it, I knew he had discovered at least a portion of my secret story. I laid the wooden bear near my pillow as I went to sleep and tried to cry. I had cried for the abuse endured by our horse, Gerda. I had cried and cried in unstoppable
rivers of tears that overflowed their banks and streamed in burning channels down my cheeks until I could not cry another tear, until my breath had been sucked from my lungs. But when I thought of the weight of suffering and misery my father and my mother, my brothers and my sisters and I had been crushed and splintered by, I could not summon a tear.

Gerda healed well, and on off days I would spend long hours brushing her and grooming her or simply sitting in her stall splitting hay. My work, my focus, my dedication to carpentry, to Josef and to Gabriella, carried me forward hour after hour, day after day, week after week, as I slowly increased my skill and confidence.

Sometime during that year, my fourteenth birthday came and went. At the carpentry shop, I experienced generous growth and built myself up from the scrap of a boy that I had once been to a young man of greater strength and value—and girth due to the glorious pastries plied on me by Gabriella. Stocky, well, even hefty, I may have been, but I could lift more than all three boys together, even Marcus.

I worked by Josef's side whenever he would allow and captured lessons regarding his techniques, which were by now instinctual to him. When I measured and cut piece after piece of raw wood, he would stand nearby to lend a helping hand, a watchful eye, or a terse direction. When I missed a mark or hesitated to complete a difficult task, he was beside me to help me rethink my approach and regain a solid footing.

Josef created finely formed and durable carpentry in great measure, each piece bearing a special accent or signature that gave it uniqueness and meaning. He would delicately carve these rich-grained woods with
geometric patterns or elaborate flourishes and dust the pieces with a soft-bristled brush to survey every groove and cut. He would fit these pieces together into glorious church pews, benches, chairs, and other valued furniture that he would create on commission or sell to those who encountered him at the market.

I helped by applying fine finishes and oils to pieces once assembled or by building simple tables and doors, which became increasingly sophisticated as my skills improved.

One afternoon as I raised a nearly finished door to a standing position and was blowing sawdust from its panels, Sarah breezed through the carpentry. The dust swirled around her vibrant green dress and framed her like a living work of art. She stole my attention. I knew she had been in the carpentry often during the many weeks of my training, but I was so consumed with my work I could not remember actually seeing her. So beautiful she was that I knew if I gave myself opportunity, I would fall victim to distraction each time she came into a room. At some point I realized I was staring.

Though polite in her greeting and ever so friendly, touching my arm as she walked by, she didn't look directly at me or notice my attentions.

But Markus, Noel, and Jonas did. Their jealousy was obvious when they saw how Sarah affected me. And I knew they would do their best to make me look the fool and embarrass me before her. Noel glared at me from behind a stack of boards and tossed a chunk of wood onto a scrap pile in the corner.

Over the coming months, I would continue with my tasks as Sarah came and went each day to steal a glance at projects I was struggling to
master. She tried so hard to appear detached, as if she did not care what I was doing, but when I would look away or return to my work, she would sometimes sneak behind me to lightly tap me on the shoulder or brush past me when she left for home. Her playfulness made her all the more beautiful to me, but I could not easily release my guard and speak with her freely. I thought her so kind to take an interest in a broken soul like me. But she didn't know the horrible things I had done. I was sure if she looked into my eyes she would discover the truth, so I maintained a distance, telling myself that any distraction would keep me from attaining my goals. But she kept coming, and, in secret, I took comfort in her presence.

Gabriella, too, would watch us work from time to time, and on special days might bring us muffins or a plate of cookies to reward us for our efforts. The other boys would race to snatch as many cookies as they might, but I refused to fight them for the crumbs and pieces they would squabble over and stayed focused on my duties.