There is a stretch of road that he walks each day. The road
slopes gently to the sides where the stones are loose. It bends quietly to the
left, passing two houses that face each other, window to window. He
closes his eyes and his footsteps fall evenly and deliberately on the pale road. When he
opens them, nothing in his vision tells him it is the 21st century. He
wonders what could give it away, perhaps the shape of the hay bales, rounded
not square, perhaps the absence of hay stacks, but that is all. It could
be one hundred years before, and he could be there, walking down the road, on a
sunny day such as this, cool air, green fields with apples covering the ground.
The sweet smell as he passes them by.
His back aches from chopping wood that morning. He had
started early before the frost had disappeared, slipped out of the warm
bed, dressed in the uniform that winter brings and brushed his beard down
towards his chin, a habit he had recently come upon. He liked
growing it thick for the snow. The tradition of it appealed to him. The seasonal aspect too, he felt then that time was passing. So when the ground is
sodden with melted snow, in Spring, he thought, then I will shave it
off. But for now, and he self-consciously stroked it, it keeps me
warm.
Not hungry yet, he had stepped into the air, sharp on the inhale,
cold in his lungs. He imagined the air travelling his warm red throat, dropping
down into his expanding lungs, and stopping there, still frozen for a second. His
breath caught, but he breathed out again and bent for the axe. His fingers
stretched and flexed inside his mittens, enclosing the cold hickory handle, and he reached
for the first log and loaded it onto the stump. Swinging his
arms a long way back, his back arched as the underside of his forearm lengthened, and he came down smoothly
through the grain of the wood, two pieces falling to the side. He stacked
them to the left, to the pile that grew a little more each day. He kept
working, swing and fall, swing and fall, until the stack had risen to a
height where he stood admiringly and stroked his beard with
pleasure, and said to himself, 'One more and then I'll go in'.
He set the next piece up and came down again, but this
time the axe glanced off the side, and wedged in the old
stump. His swear came out in a warm cloud.
Breakfast was easy enough to prepare, he still had oats from yesterday. He stirred the congealed mass, breaking up the blobs of oats and water, until it burned and he spooned it out into a bowl and covered it with milk and brown sugar.
He sat at the table. He tried to focus on the warm, sweet
soft food entering his mouth, his hand holding the spoon, small
in his palm after the axe handle.
He would have to walk there again today. Although he pretends to
be angry, to snort with derision and frustration, in making the walk
for the tenth time in a month, he knows he enjoys it. Not at the beginning
when his legs are still stiff and his joints move in jolts, and his body
is cold, but at the end. At the end, when his arms swing by his side, when
his strides are long, and the road is quiet. It is then, after letting his
thoughts wander where they will as he forces his legs up the
mountain, it is on the flat where his thoughts come together, on the empty
road, where he is able to focus, to mend, to create, to be happy.
Pushing his chair back suddenly, silently making a decision,
he leaves the bowl in the sink and fills the pot to soak.
He slams the door behind him and walks across the grass, dull
now, after the first few frosts. Snow today maybe, he
thought, it always seems colder without snow, the wind seems sharper.
The trees are ready, their leaves gone, their body and soul gone into hibernation
and he knows he is also ready for snow as he glances at his woodpile.
He steps back as a
truck roars past him, the two flat beds full with
logs. Bigger ones than he has seen, traveling the highways. These ones are
old, perhaps one hundred years old, maybe more. He thinks how deep into the
forest those trucks must be going, deep where the animals would think
they would always be safe. But humans will come, they will always get there. He
imagines the skidsteers, the trucks, the old trees being trimmed, the
huge wheels slipping on the mud. The chains razing the trees. We all need our paper. He remembers a notepad he wrote
on the other day, 'Made in Brazil' printed on the back. And the
moment when he realised he was writing on the trees from the Amazon. He had
looked at the small meaningless notebook in his hand, one of an infinite number
on every shelf in every shop, one of something so useless created from
something so finite.
