Chapter 8 - The Splitting of the Oak
An eight-pound splitting maul is an honest instrument.
It has no gears, no hydraulics, and no interest in your family pedigree. If you swing it with your arms instead of your hips, it will jar your teeth until your gums ache. If you hit the log off-center, the hickory handle will sting your palms with the fury of an electric fence. And if you hesitate at the top of the stroke, the wedge will simply bounce off the heartwood with a dull, mocking thud, leaving only a pale dent in the bark.
By three o'clock that Sunday, the backyard smelled of split oak—that sharp, tannic, vinegar smell that comes out of the green wood when the grain tears apart under steel.
I sat on the bottom step of the back porch with my coffee mug, my elbows resting on my knees, watching my son work.
Michael had taken off the Carhartt jacket an hour ago. He was wearing an old gray undershirt that was plastered to the small of his back with sweat. His palms had blistered through his work gloves twenty minutes into the first cord; I could see the dark spots of blood soaking through the yellow cowhide near the thumbs, but he hadn't stopped.
He set a two-foot round of swamp oak onto the chopping block. It was gnarly, twisted with knots where a limb had died back thirty years ago.
He raised the maul.
He didn't have the rhythm yet. His back was too stiff, his shoulders doing the work that his legs should have been taking, but he didn't quit. He brought the steel down with a grunt that came from the bottom of his belly.
Crack.
The wedge sank three inches into the grain, stuck fast.
Michael didn't curse. Six months ago, he would have kicked the block, thrown the maul into the weeds, and complained that the tool was dull or the wood was wet.
Now, he simply reached for the five-pound sledge lying in the dirt, swung it with his left hand, and drove the wedge through the knot until the round split in two with a sound like a rifle shot across water.
He picked up the two halves, carried them to the woodpile along the property line, and stacked them bark-side up so the rain wouldn't rot the grain.
Ellen came out onto the porch with a white porcelain pitcher and two jelly glasses.
She didn't bring out the silver tray. She didn't bring out napkins.
She poured the water—cold well water from the outside spigot that still tasted of lime and deep stone—and handed one glass to me.
Then she walked down the three steps, across the gravel path, and stopped five feet from the chopping block.
"Michael," she said.
He dropped the sledge into the pine straw. He took off his gloves, his hands red, swollen, and raw where the skin had peeled away from the blisters.
He took the glass she offered.
"Thank you, Mom," he said.
He drank it all in three long, desperate swallows, his throat working like a pump handle. A drop of water ran down his chin, cutting a pale track through the wood dust on his neck.
"Your father says the tide is right for spottail bass on Saturday morning," Ellen said, looking over his shoulder at the woodpile, which was now four feet high and twenty feet long, straight as a string line along the fence. "He needs somebody who knows how to keep the oars in the locks while he works the marsh grass."
Michael looked from his mother back to where I was sitting on the porch steps.
I didn't smile. I didn't wave. I raised my coffee mug an inch off my knee, held it there for two seconds, and took a drink.
Michael set the empty jelly glass on the chopping block. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, his shoulders dropping down into that quiet, settled posture I hadn't seen on him since he was fourteen years old and we painted the bottom of the skiff together in the yard.
"I can do that," Michael said.
"Six o'clock," I called out across the yard, my voice carrying over the sound of the wind in the live oaks. "And don't wear those city sneakers. The mud down by the cut will pull them right off your feet."
May you like
"Yes, sir," he said.
He picked up the maul again. He didn't wait for us to go back inside. He set another round of oak on the block, centered his feet in the sawdust, and raised the steel into the clear, cold light of the afternoon.
