Chapter 49

Ian, his stubbled face ashen, knocked on Sam’s door an hour before the workshop opened one Wednesday morning. Outside it was even more blustery than usual and bullets of rain pelted the windows of Sam’s drafty cottage.

“Mr. Lord, it’s Gavin.”

Ian tried and failed to light a cigarette. Sam’s steady hands lit it for him.

“Gowk numpty got blootered last night and fell and skelped his head on a rock down by the beach,” Ian said after taking a deep drag. Sam was surprised to see his shoulders shake with silent sobs. The men were bound together, but never dared show feelings toward one another besides anger and scorn.

Sam threw on his old Navy peacoat and raced outside, heading toward the water. Ian stopped him. “Too late, sir. He’d already bled to death by the time the beachcombers found him, about an hour ago. One of ‘em knew me and Gavin shared a room so he came and got me.”

“Do the others know?” Sam asked, wishing he too smoked so he could suck the heavy fog of loss into his lungs and let it permeate his body. Better thick air than emptiness.

“I thought it best if you told them,” Ian answered. “Gavin ain’t got no family so it’ll just be us dobbers at the funeral. Maybe you could say a few words? It’d be more fitting than some man of the cloth who didn’t know him talking mince over his corpse.”

Sam had already started on Gavin’s coffin when the others wandered in. He used his best oak and continued working when the men, curious but wary about what he was doing, gathered around awaiting an explanation. He kept his voice steady when he told them, relieved that his forced sense of calm nevertheless averted an eruption from the men, at least for the moment.

They watched Sam measure three times before he cut each board. “Looks like Gavin will own a piece of our furniture after all,” snarled Brody, “and the twally’s getting it for free too.”

“He paid a high price,” Sam said. “I thought I was done making coffins when the war ended. I don’t intend to sell or give away any more after this one. If I can’t stop you from getting drunk, then have the good sense not to walk home alone. Find yourselves a buddy.” The men surveyed one another warily until their eyes lit on the person they felt least uncomfortable with. Sam wondered if a few might actually make an attempt at friendship.

Three days later he wrote to Laird, telling him about Gavin’s death and the eulogy he’d delivered as the men stood, half of them drunk, the rest cold sober, listening in silence:

***

I wish you’d been here to speak instead of me. It was hard to say something meaningful about a life so wasted. I told the men, “Don’t let others define who you are. You’re not the war’s trash to be thrown away. The workshop is a way station, a temporary port. Take what you’ve learned and leave. If Gavin’s tragic end saves your lives, he won’t have died in vain.” I felt like a hypocrite, trying to inspire them to be better than what I knew I was. Then it hit me that I could leave too. I’m still not sure what I learned here, but I have to trust that the lesson will become clear on the long voyage home or soon after I arrive.

***

A week after mailing the letter, Sam visited the Stone of Destiny, a Scottish treasure taken by the British six hundred years ago and now in Westminster Abbey. It was a religious relic, said to be the pillar where Jacob, fleeing the wrath of his brother Esau, had prayed for God’s help to return safely. Many years later, God had fulfilled His promise. Sam, like Jacob, had sojourned for a long time, far from home. He’d accumulated a pile of dirty laundry. It was time to wash it, put it back in the drawer he’d painstakingly built, and find his way home to America.