Page 2 of Carver
“It’s weirdly sweltering out there. I have other groceries in the car. Can I take them up to the house for you?”
The house is basically nothing more than a shack. I never allowed Bronte to go in there until after my dad was dead and my uncles had vacated their single wide trailers and moved on. As bad as he was at fathering, my dad was the glue that held myso-called family together. After he was gone, my uncles wanted nothing to do with this place.
I cleaned it out after, taking all the trash to rot in the garbage pile out back. I would have preferred to burn the thing down, and even had plans on doing it, but then… the accident… and it wasn’t like I was going to be doing any building anytime soon.
I promised to give Bronte her dream house, put together with my own two hands.
It’s just another oath I broke.
“Yeah.” I duck my face like she’s not used to seeing the fucking mess of it. “I’ll help you.”
To her credit, she’s never made me feelless than. She’s taken the attitude that I can do whatever I want. If I can carve one-handed, then I can certainly carry boxes and bags of food. She hasn’t coddled me one bit. She’s never cried in front of me. She didn’t lose it the first time I shoved the wreckage of my face into hers, called myself a monster, and said that it didn’t need explaining as to why we couldn’t be together anymore.
The next day she brought a bunch of information on facial reconstruction surgery that she’d printed out. Doctors and clinics in Seattle.
She grasped my arms and tilted my face, so I had tolook at herand told me that having my jaw broken, my cheekbone and part of my temple crushed, and my ear fucked up mattered to her because my pain was her pain, but she’d never stop loving me. Not even when I stopped loving myself.
I told her to leave me the fuck alone.
She’s refused, coming every week to drop off groceries, even when I don’t call her about anything related to my work.
We leave the shop together.
Like the rest of the world, the sunlight loves Bronte. It paints her in gold from her ash blonde hair down to the sturdy leather work boots on her feet. Her freckles stand out in the daylight. They’re dusted all over her face, including her chin and her forehead, never clustered, all in random patterns. I tried counting them once. Tried kissing every single one. Her oversized sundress rustles gently in the breeze, highlighting her tall, trim figure.
She could be at home in California on the beach, but she also looks every inch the small town farm girl that she is.
I nearly miss my next step, I’m so busy watching her walk. She turns it into an artform, her hips swaying naturally with every step.
Uncharacteristically, it hasn’t rained in days, and her old pickup is coated in a layer of dust from the twenty-five minute drive from her family farm to my place.
She swings open the passenger door and grabs out a few cloth bags. She passes them to me and then gives me a small box. It doesn’t matter that I only have one good hand. I can easily shove it through the handles of the heavy bags and balance the box against my chest.
Even before carving, I was strong. I had to learn to look after myself, my mom left when I was five and it was just me and him. And my uncles.
It kills me to be an asshole, but I start walking towards the house ahead of Bronte. I force myself not to look over myshoulder to see if she needs help with the rest of what she brought.
People always expected that I’d be an uneducated, cussing redneck, good for nothing big old stupid son of a bitch just from the looks of me. That, and most of the people around here know my family history. I wanted to prove them wrong. Forget uphill, it was a straight vertical battle.
Is it fucked up that having half my face crushed freed me from caring what those people think? Some days, I want to use it like a tool. An ugly carving of rage, frustration, and misfortune.
A cruel tale as old as fucking time. Life likes to entrench people like me into a rut. No matter how hard we try, we’re not going to climb out of it. I tried. I tried so hard, for so long, but in the end, I got shoved right back down to the bottom again. This is what caring gets you.
No matter how much it hurts her, Bronte hasn’t given up the way I have. She still cares. Deeply. About me. About her family. About this place. About everything and everyone.
She walks through the door right behind me, closer than I thought she was.
I have to bite down on a wry, lopsided grin as I notice that she’s only got a few records in her hands. She gave everything else to me.
I did what I could with the old farmhouse, but there’s only so much that could be done. It leans more than it stands straight, and has more weathered splinters than paint. I’ve hung thrifted artwork chaotically all over the place, to cover as many holes in the lathe and plaster as I could. I patched the ones low to the ground, but they’re obviously newer than the rest. The bedroomsupstairs are plain as they come, the bathroom old and grimy no matter how much scrubbing it gets. The living room is full of sagging, ugly furniture, and the kitchen looks straight out of the fifties, and not in a good way.
I set the bags down on the nasty old linoleum, peeling in places, revealing a brown layer under the yellowed white. Bronte opens up the ugly fridge and starts putting in perishables. I wedge the box on the countertop.
“There’s meat in there. Beside the jars of jam. “Pork and beef. I just brought a few things, but there’s more coming once everything ages and cures.”
Bronte’s family farms land, but they also raise pigs, cows, and chickens. She removes a carton of eggs from the bag and pops it in the fridge. They’re farm eggs, set carefully inside one of those cardboard cartons they’ve saved from the store. She’s brought vegetables from their garden, milk, cream, and cheese from their cows, as well as store staples. Coffee, teabags, and a few boxes of cereal. The jam is homemade, and there are two bags of buns, and a container of chocolate chip cookies.
“Are you going to tell me what happened to the statues?” Bronte asks as she arranges and rearranges my fridge.
