A Peculiar Grace (8 page)

Hewitt’s own driving life ended a couple years after his breakup with Emily—those nigh mythic years of slow but determined destruction and absolute inability to see anything beyond his own flopping bruised heart. The final incident had been a winter afternoon when he’d been drinking since well before dawn the day before and without the least idea how he got there watched in bemused detachment as the old Volvo spun three accelerating circles on black ice up above Emmett Kirby’s, then at sharply defined greater speed went down the embankment to crash through the ice of Pearce Brook, shivering to a crunching grinding stop in the thick ice, boulders and frigid water, which while only two feet deep left Hewitt stranded with a broken femur, clavicle and cracked ribs. He sat placidly in the car and exchanged pleasantries with old Emmett who’d hitched down on his double canes to see what the Pearce boy was up to now, awaiting the official arrivals when the humor pretty much ended.

For most of a year after the accident he’d taken a sliding membership of painkillers but quit them all at once when he was astonished to realize he was a junkie. During the bad first month he’d thought his body couldn’t function without the pills but he set a deadline to go clean for six months even if the pain was so acute as to throw him off everything else. He could take the time. Three months along he still gimped and ached but owned his brain again. He’d been stoned as a loon during the final DUI hearing when he was still on crutches. Halfway through these proceedings he knew which way it was going to go and dug his license from his old wallet and so when the judge asked if he had anything to say on his own behalf, he’d tugged down by the coatsleeve the old family attorney who would reiterate all the arguments from the past which Hewitt knew held no water and hobbled up to the bench and said to the judge, “You’ve been more than fair
with me in the past. I expect you want this.” And laid the license down before the judge and turned and went back to his seat.

Everything after that was a formality. Except the conversation with Walter right after that final accident, which had been shock enough to take seriously. Of course it’d been easy to quit the death-by-whisky drinking when he’d been flying on unlimited Percocet. Walter was no fool and suggested Hewitt allow himself a couple of beers or wine if the occasion fit. Walter had said, “We all have something eats our ass. And nobody can tell another person when the time’s come to stop dancing in the dragon’s jaws. But you’ve gone past tragic to pathetic, Hewitt. I’m probably the only person who can tell you that. And I’m kinda sick of you just now.”

H
E WENT ALONG
to the forge. He had no definite plan to work but didn’t discount the possibility either. He had to sit there a while to see if it was a day for iron or not. This was the essence of what his customers perceived as a great problem—the fact he refused to state a deadline however vague. The customer could bring the most precise drawings of what he wanted and the finished product would often not resemble the drawing at all. Until installation Hewitt would visit the job site only once—to make his own measurements regardless of the precision of those already handed to him. This was now his reputation and he grumpily knew it added rather than subtracted from the value of his work. On the door to the forge was a sign, hand painted in black block letters against a plain piece of plank. The legend ran:

IF YOU WANT IT DONE YOUR WAY LEARN HOW TO DO IT
& MAKE IT YOURSELF.
YOUR COMMISSION IS NOT MY VISION
.

Beneath that in slightly larger letters:

NO ENTRY WITHOUT PERMISSION
.

Gordy Peeks had built the rough shell of bricks and the hearth and chimney but Hewitt had finished the rest himself. The brick
reached to shoulder height and above that were wooden walls and an open-raftered tin roof. The only windows were on the north side so sunlight never altered the precise reading of heat through color and therefore malleability of the metal. The floor was hardpack. A pair of anvils fastened with giant forged staples deep into chunks of upright log stood in the center of the floor along with a wooden tub of water for annealing. On the brick front of the forge pegs studded into the mortar held several dozen pairs of tongs. Behind him close to the anvils a workbench kept all the small tools within easy reach—the hardies and fullers and swages, holdfasts, chisels, punches, bicks and forks, rivet headers and nail headers and bolt headers, various plates and taps, clippers and shears, also somewhere close to twenty hammers each different in weight and size and function, files and rasps, calipers in diverse sizes and metal rules of varying length. The tools with wooden handles were a special joy, the wood so old and used the handles were smooth, almost soft in the hand, sweat-polished like wood butter.

Along the wall was a second workbench of heavy two-inch hemlock planks on hardwood foundation posts cut from abandoned beams. On this bench was the long post vise with its leg that reached clear to the floor, beside that a smaller bench vise for lesser work, a hand-cranked post drill he preferred because he didn’t burn up bits that way, a bench grinder with a foot-powered treadle; wads of steel wool in a wooden lard box stained through now with linseed oil, a dozen or so metal brushes of various shapes and widths, some with brass bristles for finish work and others with steel for rougher work. A good-sized vat filled with motor oil he could soak heavily rusted iron in. Above the bench on the wall hung a calendar from Sanborn & Sons Harness Shop, two months out of date.

In the far corner covered with a piece of canvas was the set of tanks and oxyacetylene torches, his welding helmet resting on top like a discarded fencing mask. The beauty of the acetylene weld was undeniable. And many of the finer steels he was forced to work with required it. It was almost impossible to find high-grade wrought iron
anymore—now mostly steel or steel alloys. But Hewitt was known to junkdealers from Machiasport to Troy, from lower Quebec to the Berkshires. Almost all who would call him when they came across true iron stock, so he had an ample supply resting on chocks in the barn. He saved this for special projects, although he could never predict when a project would became special, requiring that fine metallurgy. And the variety and consistency of the modern steels were not without their own merit. He knew much of what he did, seen through other eyes, was an unnecessary pain in his ass. But he did what he had to do to live with the work.

Resting against the double doors was his current project, a set of driveway gates for a summer home up in the Pomfret hills. When he took the job he told the owner not to construct the brick columns that were meant to hold the gates and meld them with the white board fencing. Because the gates would be too heavy to simply drill into mortar and he’d have to sink iron posts for anchors. Hewitt had leaned back against his own fencepost at this point and gone on to explain the gates he was building could not possibly be ready that fall. He advised the man to leave his driveway open for the winter—it would make it easier for the plow truck. Otherwise he could go to Agway and buy a cheap tube gate that should do the job.

The more they came prepared to deal with his difficult approach to the work, the more difficult he became. Some days he thought he should just quit. But there wasn’t enough money to do that. And there was the huge question of filling his time. He’d boxed himself into a corner by making a sincere effort to do the opposite. His work was good but he wasn’t so proud to not realize that it was the focus he brought to it more than some special gift. Nobody paid attention anymore, was what he thought. Mostly he stayed to himself. He belonged to no association or guild and disliked nothing more than being cornered by another smith eager to talk technique. Because too many people confuse technique with vision. You get to a certain point and then you can do it or should quit. Although, as with all rules there
was the exception—his long strange luscious friendship with a smith from northern Vermont, Julie Korplanski.

He studied the gates resting against the north wall. Heavy rectangles outlined with great straps of four-inch stock were the frames of the gates. The rest interweaving hammered straps that left perfect ten-inch squares throughout the gate, the straps both horizontal and vertical not single but paired with one slightly wider than the other, the pairings reversed every other time, the way patterns reverse in a tartan. The ten-inch squares framed delicate inner circles of round stock. Inside these circles he planned something that so far eluded him. So the work waited as did the man in Pomfret, who probably wouldn’t arrive for the summer until Independence Day weekend. Hewitt would hear from him.

For a moment he contemplated the possibility that the gates were done. Except for the mounting hardware they could go up and be beautiful. Wire brush them down and work them with steel wool and then warm the forge for a week running and apply coats of linseed oil as often as possible. He studied them, even intentionally blurring his vision to see them as if in passing. They were beautiful, but not done—he knew when a project was complete. So he would leave them a bit longer. The other option was to fire the forge and do small-job work, not the sort of things he sold but latches and hinges and such that he’d give to friends. Or use himself. There was a barn latch of forged iron that had broken that past winter.

Timothy Farrell had said, “Take a chain now. Which link is the strongest?”

The summer Hewitt was sixteen he’d been at a craft fair, tagging along with his mother, hoping to connect up with one of the freaks there and score some weed but found himself watching a fellow with a long ponytail over bib overalls with a portable forge and anvil pounding out the simplest of wall hooks. Hewitt stood watching until his mother had had enough of crocheted pot hangers and heavy pottery and dragged him away. But not until he’d seen the alchemy of the
forge and the red-hot iron and also realized the work he was seeing was badly done.

He asked around and found Albert Farrell. Albert was in his late eighties but happy to take Hewitt out to the forge behind his house and sit and talk with the boy. Albert had shod his share of horses and oxen in his day. But Albert was not a farrier. He was a smith. They worked together and by the end of three days Hewitt had beaten out a serviceable roasting fork, proud of the graceful curve of the handle down to the tines. Over the following weeks Albert taught by words as much as action and Hewitt learned the basics of the craft. How to evenly draw out a rod or bar, how to use the pritchel hole on the anvil to make a square right angle. How to put an even twist in a poker handle. How to mend his own tools.

Finally Albert said, “You’re welcome to putter around out here all you like, long’s you don’t set fire to nothing. Tell you what though. I got a nephew. My brother’s boy. Well by Jesus I guess he’s more a man than you be now. Anyway he got the good blood. It came down through Pop who worked the fireboats in New York City and that was a long time ago but ain’t it all? Anyway Pop was a true man, an ironworker before anything else. Hell’s fire he’d use the boiler in the boats to heat iron to fix whatever needed fixing. I tell you what. You write Timothy a letter. Tell him I said to work the bejesus right outa you and you’ll learn the trade. Work with him a year or two and then if you come back here and pound out something other than a oven fork or door hook, why, I’ll give you all this. The tools and such. Otherwise it’ll all end up in a scrap yard. There’s tools here not another man owns. You know why? I made em myself.”

The following spring he’d driven with his father to the Finger Lakes in western New York State, spent an afternoon and a long day talking and working with Timothy Farrell and arrangements were made. There was a sleeping loft in the forge. No money would change hands. Hewitt would earn his board by assisting Timothy with the simple work and in the process learn the details and techniques for
the complicated work. There would be a two-week trial during which either one could call it quits. But Hewitt knew that wouldn’t happen. They were already easy with each other. Timothy was wiry and lean with tightly curled black hair cropped close to his head and a slow smile that seemed to live in the corners of his mouth.

He said, “I’ll work you hard. If what you’re looking for’s here, you’ll find it.”

Hewitt nodded. “I think it’s going to be a good summer.”

Timothy said, “It’s a good life.”

H
E STOOD AND
stretched, looked again at the gates. And still had no answer for those circles. Then in ten steps he ran up out of the forge where he heard her calling his name. Jessica was in the dirt of the drive, not far from her car and not far from the entrance to the forge. She wore sneakers, long nylon shorts and a sweatshirt two sizes too large, her hair wet from a bath, her eyes serious, stunned upon him.

“I got scared. I didn’t know where you were.”

“What,” he asked. “You think maybe I hitchhiked out of here?”

She studied him, as if parsing his words. She said, “What do you want Hewitt? Me to hightail it out of here? You said you got gas.”

“There’s a tank in the shed. It’s my tractor gas. But you know, that little Bug needs an oil change bad.”

That darkling face. “You went through my car?”

“I popped the back and took a look at things. She’s in pretty good shape except you’ll want to change your plugs sometime not too far off. And the oil. The oil’s bad.”

“I know it is,” she said. “But I’ve kept it topped off. I been waiting to find a place to change it.”

“That so?”

“Hey,” she brightened. “Maybe I got the gas I could drive out and buy four quarts of oil and likely you got a place where I could
back her up and drain the old sludge. A little wash or ravine or someplace like that. They make you pay to take used oil now.”

Hewitt was thinking. “Well, that oil soaks on down until it finds a brook or river or into your spring water. It doesn’t just go away you know.”

“Save the whales,” she said.

“I keep old oil. I use a fair bit of it. So it’s no problem at all.”