Page 11 of Coach
I leaned into the cut—steady, deliberate. The grain fought me a little—walnut always did—but there was a kind of peace in the resistance, in the feel of good steel sliding through stubborn wood.
Out here, in the shop, with the old ceiling fan rattling above and the smell of oil and sawdust thick in the air, nothing needed explaining.
I just worked, kept my head down, and made something that hadn’t existed before . . . or fixed something that once held beauty and function but needed a little TLC before it could offer those things again.
When I worked with wood,reallyworked—not just banging nails or sanding until my arms went numb—it felt like the rest of the world disappeared.All the noise, the people, their worries and complaints and mindless cares . . . all of it slipped away.
It was just me and the grain, just me and the stubbornness in the wood daring me to be patient enough to find what lay hidden underneath.
I liked creating things, but I loved repairing old pieces even more.
There was something honest about them. They didn’t pretend to be perfect. They didn’t try to hide their cracks or warps or the parts that didn’t fit together like they used to.
I understood that kind of broken.
When I had a piece in front of me—some battered sideboard, a cracked chair, a dresser missing half its guts—I didn’t have to talk, or explain, or be anything more than a pair of steady hands. I didn’t have to fill the space with words that never came easily to me anyway.
And I liked the way old wood felt under my hands. It felt solid, even when it was falling apart, heavy with years and mistakes and stories no one dared speak aloud.
When I worked, the sun would come up, move across the windows, dip behind the hills, and I’d still be at my bench, hands tracing curves and faults and finding where the broken parts could come together again.
Out here, I didn’t have to perform, to smile or say the right thing, or guess what someone else wanted from me.
Wood didn’t expect anything except what I already knew how to give: time, care, patience.
Wood made sense.
Far more than people ever did.
Out here, in the quiet, even broken things still had a chance.
I wiped the back of my wrist across my forehead, smearing sweat and dust together, and scowled down at the piece on the bench.
At the piece.
Thedamn piece.
I’d started it years ago, back when I thought I could wrestle beauty out of solid walnut with little more than my bare hands and sweat. Back then it was supposed to be a chair . . . then a sculpture . . . then something else when both those ideas felt wrong.
Now, I didn’t even know what it was anymore, just something I couldn’t finish, couldn’t leave alone either. I ran a hand over a curve I still couldn’t get right and grunted under my breath.
Grabbing a file, I went back to it, gritting my teeth and dragging the rasp across a stubborn spot until my wrist ached.
Another pass.
Another growl.
Another few grains of progress, maybe.
I tossed the file onto the bench and grabbed a finer piece of sandpaper, rolling it between my fingers to soften it up.
That’s when it happened.
Right on cue, like a hammer to the damn thumb.
The hot Italian from the fair popped into my mind’s eye.
I cursed low, the sound vibrating against the inside of my ribs, and scrubbed the sandpaper across the wood harder than necessary.
