The Carpenter
The carpenter tightened the last screw. He rocked back on his knees and wiped the brow of sweat. The Carolina heat could screw the devil, he always said. It was satisfaction that shown in his eyes as they reflected the light brown back. He had spent months on unwavering labor and pride into his work. His wife thought he was plum crazy, but he knew. He knew.
The clouds above were telling signs of rain and you could smell the moisture in the air. The earth was cracked from the heat. Not a drop of water in weeks. The carpenter reckoned that this one would bring the flood.
He gripped on the rail as he hauled his body up. He had old hands for being so young. The doctor told him that 40 was the new 25. The carpenter figured that 2 more years to the 40 couldn't make him but so old. His skin was dry, his checks unshaven whiskers and gray began to touch the tops of his head. He heard his knee pop. Damn.
His wife and he had met a long time ago. He was up to no good, she was drunk. The cops came and he offered her his 'get-away car'. He met her two hours previous. She kindly declined, so he held her in the backyard as people jumped the fence behind them. He felt a new bravery and damnit, he'd fight for her.
Nothing was really logical back then. Not really. He tried to reason all the things he thought back then, but in the end, chalked it up to zeal. There was a real need to live and do what you could. Take life by the reigns and curve her to do your bidding. It was the next summer he stood up to his step-mother. It was that summer that she said she loved him. It was the next summer, that despite the summer's heat, he felt cold.
All that was a distant memory for him. He found her again, sometime later. They had drifted…seen people, but in a coin flip of fate, found out what they had been missing all along. Each other.
The years had passed, indeed. And he found a watering hole. The carpenter and Rasha, his husky, would visit as often as they could. Much to his chagrin, the old puppy had made friends of the fish and frogs. Too bad they didn't seem to like her.
What the carpenter joking referred to as the homestead had been bought and remodeled by the couple, some years after their union. Despite the years apart, she still remained as hard headed about what they would and would not do. Where they would live and how it all had to be done. Heaven help him if she ever heard him call her "the old cougar". A whooping in the bedroom, he'd receive.
As the carpenter entered the house, he took inventory of his furniture that he had bought or restored or made. He felt a sense of accomplishment whenever he looked around and saw his earthly treasures. Each a value of its own. Cherry woods, oak and spruce for the 'rougher' stuff.
The man settled in his chair and happened to glance at a true summer's treasure. A junebug the size of his upper thumb was crawling along the window pane. The beetle took no inventory of the man looking fondly upon it. Its white sided speckles and green shell glimmered. Raising it's wings, it took flight out the screen less window.
The carpenter smiled for a moment before closing his eyes for a well needed rest.
Outside, the trees swayed, branches broke and the skies ripped open to a color of blue jean, blue. The late summers rain began to fall and he laid there, dreaming of her eyes..
..looking into his.