Written in 2016, this piece was first published in Small Farmer’s Journal
There is a pause as you squeeze the trigger and you wonder — it is broken? Did you press hard enough?
And then the skill saw is skipping along, chasing fine bits of sawdust at a pace that makes you forget its first cut. Your mind will recall the sudden, shattering crank of noise and the inch-long gap now found in the pine, but struggle to maintain that moment of in-between action. Sticky sap, a bit of knot — the skill saw halts and wobbles as you work to wiggle the blade past the point of a kickback. (Your second biggest fear in this task. Your first is the desire to follow a wild urge and let the buzzing machine fly. Like the impulse to jump off a cliff edge, a skill saw’s danger is accompanied by an adrenaline rush and a note of caution.)
The board drops.
“Perfect,” he says, but you know better. You are berating yourself as your father picks up the saw, places it against the unevenly angled corner. He’s just trimming, and you attempt a convincing mental argument about the beauty of imperfection, but still.
Then Aaron stops by, the neighbor boy who, at 26, will never be anything but that to you. Having already shown up twice, he returns to finally receive your father’s permission to brush hog on the land. He works as a corrections officer, misses his art and gets outdoors as much as he can; you still can’t help shaking your head. Born in the North Country, he holds less respect for a woman than he does his truck. Both your mother and yourself gave him the go-ahead last week, and so while you admire the way he holds the attention of your father, a simultaneous snort arises in your chest. Welcome to the North Country, you guess, where a female with a Stihl had better’ve bought it pink.
Perhaps, you consider, willy-nilly brush hogging is not the way to go. You don’t want the front path mown…be nice if he could take out some buckthorn…
You pride shines through, though, when your father stops mid-sentence, turns and calls to you, “We’re gonna need, oh, about…find us two-dozen six-penny sinkers.” No one calls ’em sinkers (c’mon, they’re six-pennies, not twenty) but you sort the nails and are prepared. And despite any misgivings about you abilities, any concerns that the rest of you generation is doing something better, you tap that lumber into place.
The board fits snugly.
