Marginalia

Standing in line outside of the venue, Annabelle silently thanked the weather gods for one of the first true warm afternoons of spring. She thought back to a different, late winter, show Terrence dragged her out to the Iron Horse to see - maybe a year or two after they started dating. His insistence on always being early, at least for general admission shows, landed her in the uncomfortable position of shivering for forty-five minutes or so as they stood on the sidewalk waiting for the doors to open. She remembered gazing longingly at the sun shining on the other side of the street as she tried to tuck her whole body into a nook in the wall, desperate for even a little break in the wind; and wishing this hole-in-the-wall club had been located in a sunnier spot. She also recalled how this cold beginning adversely affected her entire experience of the evening, never letting her settle into the music as she struggled to regain her body heat. Just thinking of it now made her shake a little.

But even as she recalled this uncomfortable experience, she recognized how much more important the location of this concert was than the performer himself - in terms of successfully enacting her plan. That same show where she practically froze to death waiting in the cold, Terrence brought a small notebook with him; and, after laying claim to a tiny table at the foot of the stage, forced her to accompany him on a tour of the perimeter walls. Publicity photos of almost everyone who ever played the club lined these walls, and on previous visits Terrence "oohed" and "aahed" over the ones nearest to their table - raving about them in almost reverential awe. On the cold-wait night he decided to compile a list of every artist hanging there whose music he still didn't personally know - and then look them all up. He only managed to diligently peruse one long wall before the show started, but created a list which took him almost all of the next six months to exhaust. And when he brought these diverse new-to-them recordings into their lives, it expanded their musical vocabulary exponentially. Previously, they listened to a wide variety of singer/songwriters and a lot of styles of rock and roll - and thought of themselves as both well rounded and extremely knowledgeable when it came to the subject of music. Now they ballooned out into the further reaches of folk, blues, bluegrass, jazz, zydeco, some African worldbeat, a touch of reggae, and all the different sub-genres created by wildly experimental musicians blending these forms together. Much of the new music integrated into their collection, and their lives, so easily, and so seamlessly, Annabelle forgot where their awareness of it originated - and sometimes even forgot a time ever existed when she didn't know these artists at all. But Terrence didn't. In matters such as these, he took great pride in acknowledging his sources. Because of this, the Iron Horse morphed into some sort of blend between a very holy church and a top-notch university to him. This placed it in an exalted territory, head and shoulders above all other venues - a territory which it seemed to occupy all on its own. So, if any one thing could entice Terrence out of their rut in New Hampshire and into a bright new future in western Massachusetts, proximity to this club would have to be it.

The pleasant coincidence of Greg Brown being the artist she now used to entice Terrence held relevance for her only. Greg Brown's music was not a shared treasure in their mutual collection, but more of a silent smile of her own whenever Terrence happened to play him. She never told Terrence about doing due diligence on his background before dating him, for obvious reasons; and this secretiveness reached out and grabbed her earlier, rather innocuous, reading of the Greg Brown piece and held it hostage too. This left her in the rather vague, undefined space of not only never having seen Mr. Brown perform live, but never having talked with Terrence about his songs or his background either. Aside from listening to her one CD many years earlier, she entered the evening a completely blank slate. And yet somehow she felt sure anyone who sang "just let me be in the dark with you" would aid her in her endeavor.

Due in part to this lack of familiarity with the performer, Annabelle found herself confused by the size of the man who walked out onto the stage and began playing guitar. An overgrown country farm boy didn't fit her internal image of the clever man she listened to singing on In The Dark With You. Was this really the same guy? It didn't seem possible. Adding to this initial discombobulation, the gruff-voiced singer opened with a few songs which seemed to indicate his marriage might be in trouble, or perhaps had already crashed and burned. In the first one, he addressed his wife in a funny, pleading way - something along the lines of "don't look at your suitcase that way" - which everyone laughed at, sure the couple were doing fine in spite of the difficulties humorously mentioned in the song. But by the third number he was claiming "I don't know that guy" as he listed all kinds of discouraging behavior seemingly exhibited by himself against his own will, or at least his better judgment. Listening, Annabelle began to worry this might not be the right show for putting Terrence into a good place for discussing their future. But then Mr. Brown changed direction and began talking about his childhood. It turned out he really was an overgrown farm boy from the Midwest. And he told the most charming stories of playing with his cousins in the summertime at his grandparents' farm - explaining the difference between 'kid light' and 'grownup light' when the stakes involved the children's playtime ending the moment the light was gone - and then sang the most beautiful homage to his grandmother imaginable - "taste a little of the summer, Grandma put it all in a jar". This tone carried through the rest of the night, with lots of talk about fishing and first loves mixed in with these childhood remembrances.

Annabelle left the show flying, dreaming of Terrence and herself as grandparents, with all of their brood returning in the summers to play in the fields.

I actually split this paragraph right in the middle for the segment used in The Whole Kitchen Sink - starting it with her 'surfacing' from this daydream to the sound of her own voice asking Terrence if she ever told him about reading his piece on Greg Brown in the student newspaper before she ever knew him.

Returning from the walk, Nicky found his older brother Nathan sitting on his woodpile waiting for him. His first thought was the same one he had on each of his brother's rare appearances in the woods: he looks like he belongs here. Part of this impression came from his brother's full beard, a rarity in this otherwise clean shaven town; and part of it came from his clothes: steel toed leather boots with a sole so thick you could step on a roofing nail directly and never have it penetrate your foot, workingman's overalls with deep side pockets, reinforced knees and a hammer strap, an oversized hooded sweatshirt with a kangaroo pouch in front for keeping your hands warm, and a tightly knitted wool cap - all of which looked well worn. But, again, the beard and the clothes were only part of the effect. The rest came from a sense of calm, or peace, radiating from the man as he sat - patiently waiting for his little brother to come back from his wanderings.

"Hey Nathan, what brings you out to the woods?"

"Work."

"Work?"

"Yeah, got a little job which calls for your expertise, if you're up for it."

Nicky looked at his brother quite closely, trying to read his body language for any extra information it might give him pertaining to this request. The two men were roughly the same height, both just shy of six feet. They looked quite alike in the face, with blue eyes, brown hair and round rosy cheeks. Their body shapes differed though, as each had developed more in line with their trades than their shared genetic lineage: his brother Popeye-strong in the arms and upper body from lifting boards and banging nails while Nicky's legs resembled tree trunks from so much hiking and building stone walls. Nicky looked at the casual crossing of his brother's arms, at the way he sat on the pile with such ease, like it was a park bench - designed for comfort. Then he looked up at his eyes, searching to see if they would give away something more. Mostly, he hoped to ascertain whether his brother truly needed help, and his help in particular, or if he had just been sent by the family to check up on him. Picking up his mail might have alerted them all to his presence, and he could so see his mother calling his brother and suggesting a visit - a visit laced with the added bonus of a chance to make a little money. But, as usual, his brother's body language told him nothing.

"Well, I do have a few things here I'm pretty busy with but... What kind of work is it?"

"A stone job."

This news piqued Nicky's interest.

"Oh yeah, what kind of stone job?"

Nathan smiled at him in a way he didn't particularly like. It seemed to say 'you think you hold your cards so close to your chest but really you are so transparent.' Even so, none of this entered his tone as he answered.

"You remember the Donahues?"

The Donahues were an older, retired couple who both used to teach at the university. Nicky helped out on a kitchen remodel his brother did at their house a few years back. He liked both of them. In fact, he liked both of them a lot.

"Yes, of course."

"Well, he passed away last year and she has now decided to make some pretty major changes to the place."

"Oh." Nicky let the news of Mr. Donahue's passing settle over him as he gazed off over his brother's shoulder. Eyes set high, he found himself staring at the naked top of a long dead oak tree, its branches sticking out above the stunted stand of live scrub oak surrounding it. It sort of captured his thoughts concerning Mr. Donahue, and the rest of humanity. He stood above them; and now he was dead, too. A chilly late afternoon wind accompanied this thought, but also brought him out of it and back to the present tense.

"What sort of changes?"

"Well, there are a bunch of things but the one which made me think of you is a huge stone patio she wants to put right outside her back door."

"What do you mean?" Nicky's mind stretched, attempting to picture a flat enough place in the Donahues' back yard for even a small patio, but failed to make one materialize. "How the hell would she do that?"

"She would like a large retaining wall on the west side which, when back filled, would create a flat enough surface to let her walk out of her living room directly onto the patio itself."

Nicky looked stunned.

"Through what door?"

"I will cut one in. In fact, I'll cut in a very fancy set of french doors."

"What about her basement windows?"

"I've already removed them. The holes are being patched with cement, probably as we speak."

"Do you realize how tall that wall is going to have to be? I'll bet it's a good seven feet or so at its highest, and another..."

"Eight foot three"

"Eight foot three? And then much of that yard slopes away to the south as well. I mean, the wall is going to have to retain a lot more than just the western corner. We're talking..."

His brother's hands were up in a posture somewhere between 'stop' and 'I surrender'.

"I know all this."

"But you didn't try to talk her out of it?"

"Of course I did. But she's insistent; and the only question is 'will I do it for her?', not 'will it be done?' Now, do you have any interest in helping me out?"

Occasionally, Nathan could hit just the right tone with his words and force Nicky's brain to cut through the garbage and address the pertinent point. For the first time, he asked himself 'do I want to build this wall and patio, or not?' On the plus side: he liked working with stone; and he liked Mrs. Donahue. His funds were also a little low from leaving the farm in the middle of the season, and probably needed a boost if he expected to live in the cabin for the whole winter, which he did. On the down side: he didn't like the idea of giving up any of his precious writing time. Of course, this begged the question of whether or not he was using any of this time productively anyways? Did last night open up a new run of good writing, or was it just another false start, like the one before Halloween? The next few days might give him a better sense of this but...

"Hey. When are you thinking of starting this anyways?"

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"Yeah. I mean, three weeks ago would have been better but unless you know of some way to spin the planet backwards..."

"So, you want to build an eight foot retaining wall and then cap it with a, what, twenty by twenty stone patio."

"More like twenty five feet along the house and then it's hard to say. The corners will be rounded but at full distance from the doors it'll be at least twenty five, maybe thirty..."

Nicky stopped his brother with his own hand gesture.

"The point is, you want this all done now, before the snow flies?"

"Well, I'm hoping to build the retaining wall and back fill it, even to the point of grading the patio area with stone dust. Then I'd like to let it all settle over the winter and build the patio on it in the spring. But I realize snow could fall any day now and knock us out before we even get a chance to get going. It's just, snow might not fall until Christmas and we could easily have all of the outside work done by then, including installing the new french doors, and all winter I could be working on the inside and eliminate the need of disrupting her twice by going back in the spring..."

"OK. I get it."

"So, are you in?"

"I don't know. It all seems crazy. I mean, I like Mrs. Donahue and ..."

"Listen, just walk back to my truck with me and take a ride over. After you look at it, you can make a much more informed decision. And, if you're not interested, you can at least give me a few tips on how to approach it myself."

Both men knew this second part contained no substance at all. If Nicky somehow passed on the work, his brother might hire someone else - or might decline to take the job - but under no circumstances would he try to build it himself. All the same, Nicky followed him out to his truck.

The Donahue house sat at the end of a small dirt road, far from neighbors of any sort. Part of this remoteness came from the area's less than ideal site conditions, at least in terms of building: hilly, with lots of ledge, and almost no flat ground to be found for miles in every direction. The Donahues had picked the best of a bad lot, placing their house on a knoll where the eastern side of their property momentarily flattened out before dropping away again to both the west and the south. This let one approach from the front comfortably enough but made the backyard, to the south, unusable. Nicky assumed they made this trade-off intentionally, preferring the solitude of their location over any sort of suburban ideal of yard; but made this assumption more from projecting his own tastes on to two people he enjoyed and respected than from anything either of them told him directly. As he approached now, he wondered if Mr. Donahue had chosen the location, and enjoyed the solitude, more than Mrs. Donahue; and if she only acquiesced to her husband's ideas about lifestyle, rather than shared them.

The two men walked around the house on the underside, to the west. A large pile of wall stone blocked their path, forcing them to climb over one edge in order to avoid falling off into the woods just below it. Nicky noted the high quality of the material, lots of good sized stones with nice flat surfaces, but also the age of it.

"Where did this come from?"

"You don't want to know." Nathan replied, trying to drag him past the pile to the actual site of the wall.

"Yes, I do." Nicky insisted. "It's beautiful stuff, but it certainly didn't come from a quarry. At least, not anytime recently." He looked at some of the stones more carefully. "Probably not ever."

His brother winced, then shrugged his shoulders in a gesture which seemed to be absolving himself from any fallout revealing this information might create.

"Cranwell Brothers are building a big subdivision on the other side of town. Sully is doing a bunch of their site work. These are the remnants of old walls they pulled out while putting in the new roads. I got the stone much cheaper than anything I could purchase from the quarry; and I think it will look much better when it is laid up." He paused for a moment before adding, "If you think it will contrast too much with the flagging on the patio I could buy in a little quarried material to help blend the two together."

His brother knew Nicky's objections would lay in the robbing of other people's beautiful, long standing walls, not in the contrast between quarried flagstone sitting on top of a field stone retaining wall, but he threw this second part out as a possible distraction - just in case Nicky didn't care all that much about the field stone's origin. Nicky frowned, thinking of the cookie-cutter houses the Cranwell Brothers would be throwing up; and their oblivious disdain for the infinitely more aesthetic craftsmanship which went into the walls they were callously sweeping out of their way to build these monstrosities. At the same time, he also thought how nice it would be to build with that beautiful pile of stone those mainstream morons discarded. After weighing these thoughts out, he looked up at his brother's anxious face and gave a shrug of his own.

"One man's trash..."

The rest of the job-site viewing became more of a formality than anything else. Nicky would build the wall and his brother knew it, but they both needed to go through the proper motions. They walked the backyard, discussing where the wall should start and end, how sharp the curve would be, and various other minor details, until Nicky asked,

"Is she here? Is she going to join us?"

"No, she's out of town until the day after tomorrow."

"Oh." A silence fell over the two men. "Can you proceed without her final approval?"

Nathan laughed, guessing the real reason for Nicky's sudden hesitation.

"I've been over it with her very precisely. You may be able to convince her to modify the design in some small fashion but basically what you see is what you get. The extra day of labor is well worth the tiny, tiny chance of you miraculously sweet-talking her into changing a major aspect of the project. Now, what do you need from me?"

Nicky kept all of his stone masonry tools in his brother's garage, tucked away in the back corner. He glanced around as he listed off the ones he thought he needed.

"My pick axe, a shovel of yours, my wheelbarrow, my bucket of hammers and chisels, all of the levels - including a line level if there isn't one in my bucket, both bars, and then... I don't know, do you think it's too uneven for the refrigerator dolly? A couple of those bigger ones might be nice to move with the dolly instead of trying to lift, or roll, but I'm not sure if it will even work on this slope."

His brother squirmed, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other, before finally looking up at an expectant Nicky.

"What?" Nicky asked.

"Didn't anyone tell you about the accident with Joaquin and the car?"

"What accident? No."

"Back in September, on the first day of kindergarten, he drove the Chevette into the back wall of the garage."

Nicky laughed, and his brother smiled a little at the remembrance in spite of himself.

"No way! How?"

"I was transporting him to his first day of school, and I had just buckled him into his booster seat when I realized I'd forgotten his backpack in the house. I left the car running while I ran inside to grab it. It took me longer to find it than I expected and in the meantime he unbuckled himself and climbed up into the front so he could play race car driver. You know, just to pass the time, Joaquin-style."

"That's awesome."

"Yeah, well." His brother smiled again, proud of his crazy son even though he knew he shouldn't be. "The noise of the crash pulled me out of the house pretty quick."

"Was he hurt?" Nicky asked, sobering somewhat to the story.

"No, not a scratch. The airbag scared the shit out of him but, luckily, it didn't hurt him in any way."

"How about the car, and the garage? What was the damage like for them?"

A hint of where the story might be leading began to cross Nicky's mind as he asked these questions.

"Pretty extensive on both parts. I had to fix some structural damage, and I had to do it without my table saw - as it had been stacked against the back wall and took the brunt of the crash." He stopped and looked directly at Nicky before reporting, "Your dolly happened to be standing next to the saw. It, too, was magically transformed into a twisted hunk of metal. I'm truly sorry."

Nicky just smiled, then laughed.

"I'm perfectly happy to sacrifice a little to the growing legend of Joaquin. We'll call it a storage fee for me keeping the rest of my tools in the corner. It doesn't much matter for this phase of the job anyways but I'll have to get another one before I begin moving the patio stones."

"Fair enough."

In the course of this exchange both men had shifted their backs to the job-site and were now looking out into the woods sloping away below them. Predominantly scrub oak and mountain laurel, much like Nicky's own section of woods, it stretched off into the distance idyllically. Almost all of the bigger trees had shed their leaves at this point but instead of making the woods feel barren, like it had around his cabin, it made them feel open and inviting. Neither man spoke as they gazed out over this landscape, savoring the last bit of sunlight filtering through, but Nicky felt sure his brother appreciated the ambiance of the natural world around them in a way at least somewhat similar to his own. He wondered vaguely about the parameters of this appreciation in Nathan's world view, about how much personal value this ambiance might hold for him. Did it influence his decision to take this job, or any of his other jobs? Did he actively endeavor to be surrounded by little slices of heaven like this, or did it not really matter to him? Was he fully aware of the natural world's presence in his life at all times, or did it only register at rare moments such as this - the pauses in an otherwise very busy schedule - with the rest of his energy focused solely on work and family? No platform existed between the two for him to ask so he broke the spell with about the closest he could come.

"Pretty awesome place to be working for the next few weeks, huh?"

Nathan nodded, then snapped back into contractor mode.

"You going to be able to meet me at the landing a little before seven? I don't want to have to hike in and wake you up."

"If I can borrow that cool watch you've got, the one with the button which lights up the face."

"Yeah, of course."

A look of mild concern crossed Nicky's face.

"The cold won't bother it any, will it?"

"I don't think so. How cold are you talking about?"

"Below freezing anyways. I've started sleeping out under the stars, and I'm hoping to continue if I can. But if you think it might damage the watch I'll switch back to the cabin for a spell."

Nathan looked at him as if he had three heads.

"You sure you don't want to come over and sleep in the spare bedroom for the duration of the job. I mean, how are you going to work after sleeping on the ground all night in this weather?"

Nicky just shrugged. He felt it wasn't worth the while to explain how wonderful a night of sleeping out under the stars made him feel. His brother could see something of this in his body language.

"Suit yourself. I'm pretty sure the watch will be fine, as long as you don't have it out in the rain, or the snow. You don't sleep outside if it's raining, do you?"

"Not intentionally."

"Good."