The Carpenter

Eric knows this: there’s beauty in the rhythm of life.

It’s hot this morning, as it should be, for summer has come once again to the benches of this high mountain desert. With the summer comes heat, wailing like a malignant child throwing a monstrous fit as it races to catch up with the steaming back of its ancient mother. The hills flinch at the child’s livid caress, rippling in loathing as the sun climbs higher and higher into a pale and remorseless sky.

Eric is here, too, in the heat, climbing through the dense brush that covers the slanting brows of Old Indian Mountain like the tattered and uneven fragments of a coarse and mouldering blanket. The rocks clutch at him as he scrambles across the Old Indian’s talus. Their edges scrape at his tough denim jeans like the failing grip of a dying man trying to get his attention. They can’t. The rocks matter to him, but not enough for him to notice them where they lie. They’re important to him, but not as individuals. Individually they’re nothing. They’re important, but as a collective, as a community familiar with the echoes and purpose of silence. Eric loves the stones, but only as a collective, just as he loves and shares their purpose.

Eric sometimes makes use of that purpose. Eric believes in the necessity of purpose. He believes in the power of purpose.

Eric is like the stones; he sees this relationship, understands his connection to the crumbling hills on a level impossible to explain to those who have never heard the song calling him into the wilderness. Individually, Eric is nothing; individually, they’re nothing, the objects of his purpose. It’s only the collective that matters.

The song.

It’s a hymn of heat and sweat that he follows. It’s a melody of cleansing, an anthem of order to quell the twisting zephyrs of chaos. It’s well-known that heat is a purifier; it’s verifiable that flame is an antiseptic.

Eric listened when the rhythms of this song crept through the open windows of his conscience again. He’s heard this song before, this lovely tune wrapped in the anguish between light and the night; had heard it, and answered. Lately, he’s felt its irresistible tug of urgency on his toes beneath his blankets as he slept, urging him to wakefulness. Urging him to action. So, Eric arose and walked out into the night, drawn into the dormant world by the mutterings of his own, smoky sirens. Eric came here, to this place of hymns and heat and crumbling hills, and left all doubt behind him as he walked. He walked, with joy rising in his chest like a private sun over a landscape only he could see. He walked out into midnight pastures lit only by the staring pale of an astonished moon, and brought nothing with him other than his tools. He left everything else behind.

Everything else.

Eric is nothing if not obedient.

Even to himself, Eric acknowledges this. He’s always careful to acknowledge this, and would tell others if they seemed interested, if they inquired after the causes behind his curious smile-not-smile. But they’re never interested, neither in Eric nor in his curious nature. At least, they’re not interested until he has their undivided attention. By then, Eric no longer feels the need to explain anything to them.

In time, they’ll learn everything Eric was waiting to tell them if they asked. They’ll learn the things Eric has learned. Sadly, they’ll be forced to learn these things the hard way. And they will, given time. Given time, they’ll learn everything Eric has to teach them, and Eric will give them all the time they need.

It will be a lesson they never forget.

Behind Eric there’s only emptiness: an empty bed in an empty room of an empty house. It’s a well of emptiness long since drained of… everything… until only Eric remained to live in the heart of its emptiness; the lone inhabitant of an otherwise empty husk. The empty husk was not always empty, and was not always his to inhabit. Yet now it belongs to him, in whole and in part, and he stalks its unlit hallways without socks and without harm, a mobile heart pumping life through the shriveled veins of a torpid host. He feels the carpet well and spring beneath the hammers of his feet, between the bones of his grasping toes. He sinks his talons deep into the husk’s lifeless nape and squeezes it, testing the husk’s crumpled enclosures for signs of life, in search of its living marrow. Endlessly Eric searches, reading the answer in the vibration of his soles: the husk is dead, or would be if Eric would just leave it alone. Let it die.

Eric loves truth, and the truth is this: the husk’s only functioning organ is Eric’s own heart, beating serenely in the darkness. Eric embraces the darkness, cherishes it as a child born from an angel of his better nature.

Darkness is the perfect counterpoint to the heat’s chanting rhythms.

But darkness doesn’t bring comfort; it only brings darkness. The darkness isn’t comfortable, it’s just that Eric is comfortable in the dark. Eric looks forward to the day he can return to the empty embrace of his unlit, sunlit husk, and settle deep into its bosom again. There he will take root once more, heart pulsing, and live as only one familiar with emptiness and heat can live. But not now. Not today. Not until his purpose is achieved. Not until he’s accomplished what he’s been called here to accomplish.

Eric is nothing if not faithful; He’s loyal to his sirens.

So, Eric is here now, toiling and heaving and inhaling the chalky detritus disturbed by his awkward, upward lungings. Although it’s early, the sun stares down on his efforts, driving the nail of her will into the center of his spine in imitation of the spear that pierced the flank of the Paragon. Eric’s shirt darkens with sweat around his neckline, beneath his arms, down the center of his back as he huffs and jerks his way through the stern glare of early morning. Yet even in the sunlight his eyes are in shadow. His jaw is a cliff beneath which no celestial body can penetrate. Eric tightens his grip on the satchel trapped in the sun-browned vise of his left hand, strangling it. He strangles it, and climbs.

To where he knows not: Eric knows only that he will know he has found his destination once he’s found it, and not before.

There are trails near at hand for him to use if he wants them, but he refuses. They’re clearly marked: ‘For Public Use as Designated by the Department of Recreation,’ scribed in letters the color of stiff blood on over-used white bandages. These trails make hiking easy for the weak-limbed or lazy. Eric is neither. Besides, Eric has come here with a purpose, carving a path few others would care to follow, and these trails are an affront to him. Eric is here on business: what he does now he does not do for fun; this is not recreation. Only a madman would think it so. Also, these trails are an abomination to his sensibilities: they’re vicious and ugly. They’re scars hacked into the side of the Old Indian’s face with unthinking hands and heavy machinery. There’s no art to this scarring, no subtlety to its achievement. There’s only a wicked cross-section of dirty ribbons left behind by men without eyes to see the beauty they so carefully, carelessly maim.

The heat rises; Eric rises with it, knifing his own trail through the dry scrub and thorns that carpet the Old Indian’s face. Below Eric, the world is a pale thing and flat, pinned to its own crust and already quivering in the heat. The sun doesn’t understand mercy, and today there are no clouds to comfort the earth after another lean and thirsty night.

Instead, there’s only heat, and the promise of more heat in the afternoon: a heat to melt the heart of God’s furnace; a heat that is a thing alive in itself. Alive, and implacable: a living thing without conscience and without remorse, and ambivalent to its own cruelty. But the heat isn’t evil: it’s cruel simply because it was made to be cruel. Its purpose is cruelty; it accomplishes this purpose by scorching mortal things too weak to defend themselves from its persistent hunger. No, the heat isn’t wicked. It simply does what it was made to do: to feed and to feed and to endlessly feed on the things caught in the glare of its bloodlust.

This is the First Law: all living things must eat. Eric loves laws and obeys them all, save one.

Then, Eric finds it: a small clearing tucked neatly into the hindward fold of a slanting ridge, surrounded by a feeble stand of trembling spruce. A sudden, westerly wind brushes the top layer of dust from the rocks just as the sun finally scrambles clear of the peaks behind him. Eric squints into the breeze, shading his eyes with a hand toughened by constant labor, and smiles. To the west, the horizon’s lip is a dark bruise stretching across the face of the earth. Eric nods; his smile deepens. The summer wind, as thin and skittish as a starveling kitten, rasps him with its tongue. The kitten’s caress lingers unexpectedly on his cheeks; for a single heart’s beat it cools his sun-ravaged skin.

Eric’s eyes dance like the twin cores of a midnight sun as he takes in the view. Eric drops his satchel with a contented groan, stretching his back as he takes another satisfied look around. Humming along to a tune only he can hear, Eric opens his satchel. He’s ready to work, and he’s got to get to it.

He has plenty of time.

Now it’s time to dig, so Eric digs. Diligently, urgently he digs, despite the weight of the flexing sun. Up and down flashes the dull metal of Eric’s pick, a hard tool of Man he’s forced to wield to satisfy his duty. The hard spike of his purpose drives deep into the rocky soil even as the sun floats toward noon, dragging the millstone of its heat behind it. The earth steams as the day waxes: it steams and it screams and it thrashes, until even the shadows flee to the shelter of the scarred underbrush to escape the sun’s notice.

The heat is suffocating. Because he is sometimes weak, Eric removes his sweaty shirt and folds it neatly, setting it aside on a large block of granite shaped like an malformed altar beneath a crooked spruce and gets back to work. Sweat glistens on his skin, pools itself in the valleys on his body. His skeleton is fetching in its exertions: the bars of his frame are brilliant and glistening as the sun crawls to its apex. The dust dances in tiny whirls around the edge of his blade as he toils, carving a hole in the mountainside deep enough to tap into the Old Indian’s memories, driving the nail of his purpose deeper and deeper and wider into the Old Indian’s temple.

While Eric works, the wind tempts him. It promises him relief from misery if only he would drop his tools and rest. This is a lie, and Eric knows it. He’s merely suffering; He isn’t miserable. Suffering is God’s tool, a means to teach His children how better to understand joy; how better to serve one another; how better to understand compassion. Misery is an invention of Man: a means to deceive him into ignoring joy, the necessity of service. Misery is a tool forged by hands caught up in the tempest of their own self-loathing. Misery is the handmaiden of doubt, the trembling bride of uncertainty: too frightened to flee but unwilling to fight for the preservation of its innocence.

Eric knows nothing of doubt or uncertainty. The sirens sing a better tune.

Eric ignores the temptations of the westering wind and wields his pick instead, chewing relentlessly at the crumbling soil too old and too astonished to move away. Thirst rises in Eric’s mouth like a river gone irretrievably dry as he works, but that doesn’t matter. Thirst is only thirst until it kills. Until then, thirst is only suffering, and Eric is familiar with suffering. He’s comfortable with it. He can work through it.

Up goes the pick; down slams the nail. Up goes the pick; down slams the nail. Up goes the pick; down slams the nail.

The muscles in Eric’s back and shoulders flex in the heat, bunching and stretching beneath the canopy of his flesh like hidden wings longing to break free. They’re a joy to Eric. He revels in their power as he reshapes the land to suit his needs.

Up goes the pick; down slams the nail; up goes the pick; down slams the nail; up goes the pick; down slams the nail. Again and again and again until even the sun grows weary of the spectacle and abdicates the heavens, trailing dusk in its wake like a molten squid showering the earth with its ink.

But the waning of daylight doesn’t bring an end to effort, and Eric is relentless.

It will rain tonight.

It’s evening now, but still it’s hot, for the sun has done its work well. Below him, the valley shimmers like a lover lost behind translucent veils, the plainness of her features distorted by the gossamer gatherings of a rising humidity. On a rock near his alcove Eric waits, a patient ambassador sent from the foundations of the day’s staggering heat. His preparations are finished, but his work isn’t done. While he waits, the breeze freshens in tantalizing gusts. Tiny devils whirl and flirt and caper near his folded legs, touching him gently. They swish and sway their dusty skirts about his ready limbs in heady circles, exciting his imagination.

But Eric is no fool: there’s more here than meets the eye. These tiny devils are messengers unfaithful to any cause but their own. They’re temptresses, heralds of misdirection. Deceitful. Eric sees their dance for the falsehood it implies, and remembers: comfort cannot be found in the cool of the dark. Yet this deceit must be endured, for there’s no victory without opposition, no glory without trial. Eric knows this. His purity must be tested in the cauldron of obedience, and warmed by the flames of true diligence until it comes to a rising boil, seething with virtue.

Only then will Eric be permitted to drink of it. Only then will Eric be permitted to share it with others.

So, Eric waits. He waits for the zephyrs to tempt him, to sing songs of fruitless whimsy to his ready ears. Their breath tickles the hairs on the back of his neck. He gives them their chance, offers himself up fully and without blemish. He’s willing to heed their calls should they prove stronger than the sirens of his husk. He listens to the devils, breaths their dusty scent through nostrils familiar with empty spaces, and waits.

He waits for them to fail, for they have always failed, and never once has Eric turned aside.

Therefore Eric waits, sitting loose-limbed atop a rock near his alcove. He waits as the light fades, dripping away from the western horizon like blood from a stiffening corpse until darkness comes. Overhead, stars multiply across a sky the color of a vast and throbbing sea. Their light pierces the deepening oceans, swirl across the velveteen carapace like the palsied stabbings of an half-mad seamstress working by candlelight. The zephyrs are emboldened by the onrushing night: they lick continuously at the sweat on Eric’s flesh, tugging the oxygen free from his cooling tissues, enticing him. His skin comes alive to the possibilities of temptation.

Eric’s smile deepens. They’re too late. The devils have missed their chance.

There’s a town down there, over which Eric floats in the dark like an owl over field mice. It’s an habitation of people too numerous to be few yet too many to be discounted. They’re an industrious folk, prosperous in the way only the insignificant can appreciate, and desperate to be something grander. They’re humble, as are their means, as is their town, and proud of their daily labors. Of their labors they’re very proud, and this pride has bred in them a coarseness which has nothing to do with the desert grit they sweep away from their lintels in the sunlight.

It’s this pride which first caught Eric’s attention. It’s this pride of which his sirens sing.

Despite himself, Eric quivers in anticipation, but he doesn’t move. Time stretches itself like the heaving inhalation of the lungs before a scream, and still Eric waits.

The night chews on the light surrounding Eric’s covert, consuming it utterly.

The earth’s lungs thicken.

A sudden gust rattles the cowering spruces. Eric’s eyes flash in the darkness like stars exploding at midnight in an empty sky. He rises to his feet and retrieves his satchel. This smile he cannot control slices a gorge across the front of his skull. The earth’s scream is silenced before it even starts. There will be no warning.

There’s never a warning.

Eric’s footing is sure in the darkness as he slips down the side of the Old Indian’s head, moving quickly, wrapped in the comforting shroud of the enveloping night. He has a long walk ahead of him, but Eric has always enjoyed walking.

Tonight there’s a breeze, unexpected and welcome and westerly, breathing life into the town held awkwardly in the wrinkled arms of Old Indian Mountain. Old and young, hale and ill, mad and sane, this evening they have all turned their heads to the West with shining eyes and breathed deeply and long of this accidental blessing. The desert inhabitants stayed indoors whilst the sun glared at the earth, forsaking the world and their responsibility for it. Now, in the airy blusterings they’ve returned to the streets. They’re simply delighted to see one another. They greet the other survivors with shimmering eyes, pleased to see their companions alive and abroad and fit to fight another day.

Eric is also here, disguised. He’s just another survivor in their sun-flogged ranks. He’s clean now and close-shaven, wreathed in an aura of fresh soap and dedicated scrubbing. Quietly he walks the streets with them, gliding past, sometimes even passing through them as they bundle together in pleasant knots on the sidewalks. Eric nods politely as he passes each stranger. They nod politely in return, because Eric is ordinary. He isn’t dangerous, or unusual: he’s simply a man in a short-sleeved, white dress shirt who chooses to wear khaki slacks and a tie after business hours. A skinny tie, which brings an air of tidy sensibility to this man they don’t know. The people smile at Eric; Eric smiles back.

Clearly he’s not dangerous: they just don’t know him.

They don’t even see the satchel in Eric’s hand.

The moon crawls over a notch in the side of the Old Indian’s shoulder. The mountain’s grieving shadow stretches out to brush him, stroking his cheeks with trembling fingers meant to be tender. It’s the touch of a supplicant. Eric stares up at the granite face hidden by shadows, acknowledging the Old Indian’s sorrow. The earth isn’t to blame for its misunderstanding; it simply doesn’t know any better.

Eric knows it will be soon.

There’s a blast of hot laughter on his cheek. Eric turns to face it. Blue eyes, brown hair, white blouse… white blouse! The smell of liquor and cigarettes swamps the smell of the street, waters his eyes. “Whatcher name, honey?”

Eric smiles kindly through his tears at the harlot leering crudely and snapping her hips at him. “Eric,” he answers.

“Eric. I like that,” the harlot says, chewing gum and smiling suggestively at him. “Good strong name for a man. You looking for somebody?”

“Yes.” Eric’s smile is bound to his face like an unwitting sacrifice on a bloodstained altar.

The harlot’s wrinkled lips pull hard on an half-dead cigarette. “My name’s Shirleen, since you bothered to ask,” she adds, turning her head and blowing a long plume of smoke into the gathering wind.

“Hello, Shirleen,” says smiling Eric. “I’m very glad to meet you.”

Another gust of whisky laughter. “You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve heard that one, before,” the harlot giggles. Her painted eyes flash in the streetlight.

Eric smiles. He doubts that very much.

“Well, since you ain’t gonna talk a lot, why dontcha buy me a drink or two,” the harlot says, nodding her head toward a weary looking bar across the street. “Maybe we’ll find who you’re looking for in there.”

Eric’s smile deepens, and he nods. Thy will be done.

“I’m always willing to make a new friend, especially one that’s willing to stand me a couple rounds, know what I mean?” she asks Eric, tucking her arm into his as they cross the street.

Eric nods again. “I know exactly what you mean,” he answers as they step through the tavern’s neon-darkened doorway.

“What’s that?” she asks as they walk inside, pointing at his satchel.

“Tools,” Eric replies.

“What do you do?” she asks.

“I’m a carpenter,” Eric answers and smiles, because sometimes he is. Tonight, he will be.

The wind blows stronger as they take a seat at the bar, rattling the windows.

Time passes; Shirleen drinks. Eric waits patiently, listening to every word she says. Eric is nothing if not a good listener, and Shirleen has a lot to say.

In the morning, a mist will arise in answer to the breeze, crafted from cooler winds heavy with memories of the Flood. It will be here, this mist, and the nape of the Earth will lie covered beneath it: a wispy vapor hugging the ground, molding itself to the ragged landscape. Softly will it swallow up the shivering land, draping it in a hazy gauze like the knowledgeable hands of an unfamiliar healer. Gently will it flow into the gulping mouths of the canyons, snaking inward and downward like a sweet glass of cool lemonade hitting the back of a parched and jumping throat.

Eric will be here, too, just before sunrise, in that twilight mix of mist and moonlight. He will be here because he was called to be here. The harlot will be with him. Together they’ll drink in the pearly atmosphere and revel in the smoldering glow of another beautiful day. And all will be right with the world, for Eric knows this: he’s a citizen of the Earth, and it belongs to him, all of it. It’s all for him, if only he has the courage to answer for its failings. But he must care for it, too, because he alone has been given the eyes to see what must be seen, and He’s responsible for the earth’s outcome.

Just now, though, the night has waxed to coolness and the heat has crept away to recover its strength in the secret places of its birth. Eric sits calmly on a bench outside the bar just as the first, fat raindrops of a soft summer rain begin falling. Calmly he sits, and quietly, listening to the raving harlot drunkenly justify herself against her own choices.

“We should go inside, get these wet clothes off, “ she exhales after a while. She favors him with a wink and leans in, brushing his forearms with her fingertips. Eric glances over her left shoulder, looking into the gleaming darkness beyond, and smiles.

Tonight, the mountains reach up; the heavens reach down. In between, there’s the desert, and the broken soils of Old Indian Mountain are ready. Given time, the mountains will echo in harmony with the smoky sirens of Eric’s darkness. Given time, the harlot will understand what she needs to understand.

Eric is patient. He will give her all the time she needs.