Garage

Our daughters both were grown, moved away. I quit work—retired—in April, did nothing, not a thing, for about a year before I got the garage cleaned out, bikes up in the rafters, so I had space on one side.

Ted Wynn sold me his old table saw. I borrowed a lathe and a belt sander from Carol’s brother Paul. First thing I started was a table—square, four foot across—then I scrapped it and did one rectangular, four foot by six, with a beveled edge that wasn’t too bad and a bench to slide in underneath. Then picture frames, stools, bookshelves, a free-standing cabinet-type thing with glass framed in the door, but the glass would rattle in it just if you walked by.

Come winter I got interested in birdhouses—the regular four walls, with a floor, sloped roof, hole in the front. I let the boy when I went to buy lumber ramble on for a while.

“You need to be careful,” he starts in. “These woods aren’t all the same. Even these here. You don’t ever want that treated stuff for a birdhouse.”

“Is that right?”

“Stick with cedar,” he says, real slow. “All those treated woods have chemicals.”

“Cedar. Huh.”

“That’s right.”

“And that’s what this is?” I grabbed hold of a two-by-four.

“No, sir. That’s—”

“This one?” I pointed again. “This here?”

“Sir, that whole rack’s all plywood.”

*

Later, after all this went on for some months, the birdhouses, all through the summer, my wife stops one day. In the kitchen. She says to me, “You’re depressed.”

“Oh,” I say. “Wow. Shit. Is that it?” I sat down there at the table. “Thank you, dear. Thank you for solving this great mystery.” 

Then she’s gone, down the hall a minute. Comes back and starts pulling dishes off the rack, wiping with a towel so long one end’s on the floor, a bath towel. “Get a dog,” she says. “Go outside. Go for a walk. Exercise. Get some air. Something.”

I thought for a minute. I sat there and considered. I said, “We don’t need a dog.”

“Fine.” She looked at me then—serious. “Then find a hobby, I don’t care what it is. Just act like you’re alive.”

“A hobby?” I said. “What do you think this is?” Just where I sat, I could see birdhouses stacked in the hall, two on the mantle, another few in the corner by the door. I kicked one under the table. Pull out the chair to my left—two more. Out in the garage was a bigger one I built about like our own house, or I’d started to—ranch style, with a block cut slant to fit the roof for a chimney. I painted windows, a door with a little brass tack for a knob, fine lines for bricks. I got a shingle from James up the road, the roofer, cut it to pieces, down to scale, and fixed each piece with a nail about like a needle. I tried adding a porch—that was the first time. Tried cutting a thin square post to prop up the porch roof and sliced my left middle finger down into the bone. I let the blood puddle on the workbench, just watching it, then down on the floor, my shoe, more blood than you’d think, before I got a rag around it and squeezed.

The second time was a month later, month and a half—October. Late morning. Wife in the bath. I’d gave it some thought, after the finger. Went out and found a pint bottle—rum—down in an old work boot, where I’d put it back when the girls still were home. Spread a tarp on the floor. Drank the bottle. Let’s just see, I thought. Got the blade spinning—the old table saw. Leaned in there, got my arm in close. Simple as that. Held my breath. A little farther, finish the job. Let’s see if this’ll do it.