Tulipwood - Barry Rachin (free books to read .txt) 📗

blue cape."
"The Lomax place?" His parents still referred to it as the Lomax place even though the owner was long dead.
"She does fancy woodworking… said I could come back and visit as long as I got your permission." Before his mother could respond, Frankie jumped up from the table and ran out of the room. He returned a moment later holding the slender length of tulipwood and the sandpaper. "Here, smell this." He rubbed the sandpaper over the surface briefly and held it up to his mother.
"What a delicious scent!" Mrs. Dexter grabbed a whisk and stirred the batter to a frothy consistency.
Frankie told his mother how Kendra took over the woodworking business after Edgar took sick. "She said I had to get you permission," Frankie repeated.
"Well, I don't know," his mother wavered. "A woman living by herself and…"
"For God's sakes, she's older than Aunt Helen!" Aunt Helen was Mrs. Dexter's younger sister.
"I'll think about it," his mother replied evasively, "and let you know later tonight." Spraying the waffle iron, she poured the batter onto the griddle and lowered the lid.
Frankie was about to argue the issue but held his tongue. His mother wasn't being contentious and seemed genuinely pleased with the fragrant tulipwood and the notion of a woman building ornate boxes. "Well, that lays one mystery to rest."
"Which is?"
"Many times when I passed the Lomax place coming home from market," his mother remarked, "I heard the sound of heavy machinery and wondered what they were doing. Now we know."
Frankie went upstairs and lay down on his bed. An older woman had held him tight up against her wiry body. This was unfamiliar territory. He had to think it through. Not that there was anything much to think about. Kendra had pulled him close in the darkness out of pity not lust. The 'poor baby' was clearly meant as an expression of sympathy and maternal affection. The way she held him, Frankie could feel every crevice, fleshy bulge and contour of her body.
"Aw, shit!" It suddenly dawned on him what changed when Kendra ran off to the bedroom, slamming the door shut. She had slipped on a bra. Even alone in his own bedroom, the stolid, middle-aged woman's sense of modesty and decorum caused the boy to blush self-consciously.
The Lomax place resembled a safe haven, a protective womb. The several hours spent there was like a dream - unfortunately, a dream that, like most pleasant fictions, didn't last. Before leaving the basement, Kendra had shown him a crate full of finished boxes. The artwork was meticulous. Marquetry - the handicraft dated back to the Middle Ages - was the name of the technique she used to puzzle the tiny slivers of wood into intricate design patterns.
After the glue dried, Kendra sanded through eight, increasingly finer grades of sandpaper ranging from two-twenty to fifteen hundred before applying Danish oil. "Chatoyance," she spoke softly rubbing a thumb lovingly over a glassy wooden surface. "From the French ½il de chat, meaning cat's eye." "You sand the wood until it's so smooth that, when the finish is applied, the surface flings the light back at you in shimmery brilliance." She held the box up to the light and the decorative surface exuded a luminous glow that caused Frankie's breath to catch in his throat.


In the early afternoon, Mrs. Dexter went off somewhere and didn't return until late in the afternoon. "Did you know the police were called over to the McElroys' place last night?"
"How do you know?"
"The Hispanic lady who lives diagonally across from them works behind the deli counter in the market. She says the two brothers got plastered and started beating on each other. They're out on bail now."
"What about Kendra, the lady who makes the fancy boxes?"
"Oh, yes," Mrs. Baxter replied almost as an afterthought. "You can spend time over there but don't go near the machinery. Now I've got to make supper." Frankie's mother shifted the several bags she was balancing in her arms and headed in the direction of the kitchen.
Later that night while he was lying in bed, Mrs. Baxter came into the room. "Kendra goes to church Sunday mornings over at Saint Stevens, and she also volunteers stocking shelves at the library Wednesday afternoons." After a brief pause, she added, "Ryder… her last name is Ryder. Kendra Ryder."
"How do you know this?"
"If you go to visit and hear machines running down in the basement," she sidestepped his question, "don't set foot in the house until the electricity is turned off and the noise dies away."
"Okay."
"I'm doing laundry in the morning. Do you need any clothes washed?" Frankie had a bad habit of burying dirty laundry under the bed.
"No, I'm fine," the boy replied. Mrs. Baxter went away.

* * * * *

"Your mother came to visit," Kendra said the next time Frankie stopped by. It was a Thursday afternoon. The black sky had been spitting warm rain off and on all day. Rain was the kiss of death to crafters. The previous Saturday, Kendra had set up her ten-by-ten foot canopy at the Stonington Craft Fair only to see her business literally washed away by a torrential downpour. Eighty-seven soggy exhibitors spent the day staring bleakly at one another in an otherwise empty field. Only a small handful of diehard customers, sporting rain gear and umbrellas, visited the fair. They didn't linger and nobody was in a buying mood. Luckily, the fair extended straight through the weekend, and Sunday Kendra was able to recoup the loss and turn a small profit.
"I gotta cut slots for the brass hinges," Kendra said. "Sit over there," she pointed at a folding chair a good thirty feet away from the drill press and don't belch, fart or pick your nose."
As she explained it, the razor-sharp slot cutter, which measured a meager three inches in diameter, was, far and away, the most dangerous tool in her arsenal. The Delta, ten-inch table saw made a god-awful racket and ripped through rock maple with lethal indifference. But the stock could be guided safely along a metal fence or navigated across the carbide tipped blade with a miter gauge. The tiny slot cutter afforded no such luxury. Kendra fashioned a right-angle brace from scrap lumber and clamped the lids onto the brace before cutting slots. Reducing the speed on the drill press to a sloth-like six hundred rpm's, she inched the wood across the table until the horizontal blade barely kissed the grain. Then she locked her elbows rigidly against her sides and eased the wood forward in tiny increments. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. When the blade cut to a depth of half an inch, she pulled back, freeing the stock from the whirring blade.
"What's that for?" Frankie gestured at a can of silicone spray that Kendra waved over the slot saw.
"The slippery silicone lubricates the metal teeth so there's less chance of the wood seizing up in the middle of a cut."
"What if the blade grabs the wood?"
Kendra cracked a gritty smile. Rummaging around on the floor under the workbench, she located a badly shattered box with an amboyna burl lid. "If the slot cutter blade seizes up, you concede defeat and let go."
She handed him the ruined box. The orangey wood was speckled with reddish-brown, black and gold highlights. "Amboyna burl is imported from the jungles of Cambodia. The sheet of veneer that came from set me back a pretty penny."
Later that night at home Frankie could still picture the willowy woman hunched over the drill press, her elbows straight-jacketed against her slender waist. Just before she pressed the wood up against the slot cutter, Kendra filled her lungs with air. Listening to the mute language of the slot cutter blade as it blindly wormed its way through the black walnut casing, she didn't breathe again until the cut was complete. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck.

* * * * *

In September, Frankie returned to school. He dropped by the Lomax place a couple days after school. One afternoon as the boy was approaching the slate blue house, the front door opened and a middle-aged man bustled past him. Climbing into a Buick convertible, he slammed the door and drove off in a rage.
Kendra was in the kitchen. A rather imposing tea box fashioned from red birch was resting on the counter alongside several sheets of flamboyant handmade paper. "I found these beauties," she said as soon as Frankie entered the room. "at the Rode Island School of Design."
"Nice stuff!" Frankie gazed at a velvety, cream-colored sheets.
"A slurry of twigs, leaves and flower petals are added to the moist pulp so that, when it dries, the paper has an organic, three-dimensional quality." She transferred a piece she had already cut to the top of the unfinished tea box. "I'm thinking of using the paper as the medallion to showcase the wood."
Kendra had told Frankie on more than one occasion that 'presentation' was everything. The artisan needed some central theme or unique feature to draw the consumer in. "Yeah, I get it. The mint green and dark purple…that’s swell!"
She lay the paper aside. "Of course, we can't use wood glue... too brittle" She was thinking out loud. "Maybe an acid-neutralized PVA."
"What's that?"
"Water-based white glue with a vinyl additive." She turned and smiled at the boy, a conspiratorial gesture. "Did you get a chance to meet Edgar's brother as he was leaving?"
"He almost knocked me over."
"Yes, well, the man was a bit upset." Kendra rolled the exotic, handmade papers in a bundle and fastened them with a pair of elastic bands. "He wants to put the house on the market… gave me thirty days to pack up my belongings and clear off the property." She sipped from a cup of coffee. "After he took sick, Edgar warned me that his family was a bunch of greedy bastards, and they might try some funny stuff. That's why he went to an attorney and redid his will; signed the property over to me, free and clear."
"So the family can't kick you out?"
Kendra raised her hands, palms up, and smirked impudently. "Not in thirty days, not in thirty years."
For the second time since he met the hardscrabble woman with the unlovely features, the boy burst into tears. Kendra reached out and pulled him close. "I ain't going anywhere, so don't you worry."
Only when he had gotten his emotions back under control, did she gently pull away. "The Boxboro juried art festival is coming up next month."
"Yeah, you already told me." Frankie blew his nose and dabbed his cheek with the back of a hand.
"Well, I sure could use an extra pair of hands and I'm willing to pay."
"Okay."
"I'll need someone to sand and finish, while I get the rest of the inventory together. Can't afford to pay you much better than minimum wage, but - "
"Yeah, I'll do it. When can I start?"
"Unless you're planning another emotional meltdown," Kendra tucked the red birch tea box under her arm and headed for the basement, "you can get to work now."

* * * * *

Later that night, Frankie told his mother about his new, working relationship with Kendra Ryder. "So everything's going good over there."
"Yeah, real good."
"You staying away from the power tools?"
"She lets me use the stationery belt sander but that's pretty safe."
"Good." His mother wet her lips. "Your father called from the office. He won't be coming home tonight."
"Okay."
Frankie turned to go, but his mother brought him up short. "I suppose he's