“Can I play with these, Grandpa?” Alex was dragging a wooden box with yellow rope handles into the den.
Tinker lifted the lid off it and released a whiff of cedar. Inside were variously shaped wooden blocks. “Where’d you find these old things?” He picked up an equilateral triangle and rubbed his thumb along the sanded sides, admiring the smooth finish.
“In Charlie’s closet. What are they?”
Tinker thought it self-evident, but checked himself before pointing out the obvious. “Exactly what you see. Wooden blocks.”
“What for?”
“They’re toys for building. I made them for your dad when he was a young boy like you. Your brother, Charlie, liked to play with them, too.”
“I thought toys came from the toy store.” Alex held two rectangular blocks and began tapping them against one another like drumsticks. Clack-clack-clackety-clack.
“The best toys are homemade. I made these from scraps of wood in my workshop. You can stack ’em into towers or even build castles. Why don’t you try?” Tinker was trying to redirect him so he’d stop that incessant tapping before it gave him a headache.
Alex dropped to the floor with the box, pulling out piece after piece. Tinker was home alone with Alex while Flo was at Sunday mass. Flo stopped asking Tinker to accompany her years ago, knowing it was pointless, and she wasn’t allowed to take Alex to church on Courtney’s orders. Tinker could’ve used the morning off from grandparenting. He wasn’t accustomed anymore to the energy of a child. It was many years since Charlie was a young boy and he didn’t have the energy now that he did even in his fifties. Full-time grandparenting wore him down. He could see that Alex tired out Flo, too, especially as she was the one getting up with him in the middle of the night when he woke, though she’d never complain.
Alex stacked the blocks into a tower as high as himself. When it crashed to the floor he turned to Tinker. “I wanna see your workshop, Grandpa.”
“It’s awfully dangerous there for a boy.” Couldn’t he just relax here with his tea for five more minutes? The boy had trouble sitting still and, since retiring, sitting still was one Tinker’s favourite pastimes. He saw that he’d miscalculated and his warning only made the workshop even more alluring.
Alex’s eyes lit up. “You’ll protect me. Let’s go.” Alex walked toward the basement stairs, turned and waved Tinker toward him. “C’mon!”
So much for his lazy Sunday morning in his armchair, drinking tea and looking out the window at the snow piles. Buddy MacMaster was playing on the radio, and Tinker had been tapping his right foot along with the fiddle music. A man his age had earned his armchair time. He sighed and stood up.
Tinker’s basement workshop was well stocked. On one wall he stored only nails, sorted by quarter-inch length, in neat cubbies. He had gleaming saws of various sizes hanging off S-hooks on another wall. A polished tree stump sat in the corner with several axes driven into the seat for winter storage. Neat pine boxes with rope handles that Tinker, Russell, and Charlie had built over the years held assorted hand tools, while on high shelves electric tools were safely stored with their cords wrapped tightly around them.
“Wow. This place is awesome-sauce!” Alex’s eyes were wide.
It had been years since Tinker had had anyone join him in his workshop. He gave Alex his lightest hammer and a small smooth plank and taught him how to drive nails into it without smashing his fingers. Tinker’s shoulder was throbbing today and he couldn’t help but wince. Plus being here with Alex brought bittersweet memories flooding back of times he’d spent here with Russell and Charlie. Under Tinker’s careful watch, his son and first grandson had likewise been taught to hammer nails and twist screws into boards before graduating to small woodworking assignments. Russell had approached any new project with gusto but grew restless with the tedium of precision work, and Tinker often had to finish what he started. He glanced down at Alex and felt sad for him that he was fatherless; he knew first-hand what growing up with a stern mother and no dad was like. Tinker would have traded his own life for Russell’s in a second if such a deal could have been struck. It should have been Russell here in the workshop with Alex today.
Charlie had been a more natural and patient learner. In his teens he’d become such a good builder that Tinker taught him to make door signs, cutting boards, step stools, and shelves. His creations were scattered throughout the house, many still in use.
“See that sign? Charlie made it.” He gestured above the workshop door where a wooden plank into which Charlie had burned Tinker’s Time Out hung.
“Haha. You have timeouts and you’re a grown-up.”
“Sometimes I am still a naughty boy.” Tinker mussed Alex’s hair.
“Let’s make something for Grandma. How about a ladder since she’s so short?” Alex asked.
Tinker pretended to consider it. “That’s pretty difficult for a beginner. Why don’t I teach you to make her a coaster for her teacup instead?”
“Why does a teacup need a roller-coaster? Won’t the tea splash out?”
“I mean the other kind of coaster. A small, round placemat you put under drinks.” Tinker figured a clean cut through a dry log with a bit of sanding would do the trick, and they’d be finished before they had to pick up Flo at church. He could teach Alex to count the rings to estimate how old the tree was. Alex nodded and the two got down to work.
Flo took communion, then returned to her pew and dropped slowly to her knees for a final few minutes of prayer in God’s house.
Please keep Charlie on the right track in Alberta. I’m scared he’s mixed up in something bad, she said without speaking out loud, squirming slightly to try to reduce her discomfort. The red vinyl cushioning on the kneeling bench wasn’t enough to keep her legs from cramping. Should I have sent money to that Alberta bank account? Charlie said if I didn’t a bad man would hurt him. I wouldn’t have been able to live with that. I had to send it, God.
Attendance at mass had been dwindling for many years, and the once at-capacity congregation now was spaced sometimes two or more pews apart. It looked to Flo like a bingo card early on in the game, when only a few dots were inked. There was no longer a choir and rarely a coffee service in the hall after mass anymore. Father Dunphy was old and semi-retired, his doddery pace prolonging the service. His sermons rambled these days, and Flo had trouble connecting them back to the scriptures. She sometimes got annoyed but didn’t dare complain to the diocese, knowing Falkirk Cove was lucky at this point to even have its own parish.
And dear God, if you could help us find a way to keep Alex in our lives without him feeling abandoned by his mother, well, that would just be the ultimate blessing. Flo couldn’t envision how this could come to pass, but God must have a plan, and she’d have to accept whatever it was. Though Flo was glad Courtney had left Alex with her and Tinker, she was at the same time mad at her for the hurt and confusion this had caused in Alex. She’d given none of them any indication of when she would return and it seemed selfish—but Flo didn’t want to be uncharitable and judgmental in church. She reached for her hymnal to prepare for the closing hymn and looked up at Father Dunphy, waiting for him to sit so she could do the same. His first name was Simon, and as a boy Charlie used to joke that mass was like a giant game of Simon Says. Back at home over Sunday lunch Charlie would re-enact the service for Tinker, casting himself in the role of Father Dunphy. “Simon says kneel. Simon says stand up. Simon says sing a hymn. Simon says pray. Stop praying. You stopped praying! You’re a bad Catholic. Simon didn’t say to stop praying.” Tinker would laugh at Charlie’s antics, but Flo would smack him gently with her missal.
Father Dunphy was still wiping the chalice. With a sigh so tiny no one would hear it, Flo set the hymnal back down and returned to praying. It occurred to her that all her prayers this week had been for her own family. She needed to think of others.
Also look over those poor souls involved in that war in Syria, please God. She lifted her right hand and with her index and middle finger touched her forehead, chest, and each shoulder in the sign of the cross, signalling the end of her prayer. She quietly said Amen and pulled herself up as Father Dunphy retreated to the presider’s chair, the hymn thankfully drowning out the loud cracking of her knees.
Tinker opened the back door and Alex climbed into the Buick and onto his booster seat. As Tinker scraped frost off the car’s windows, the interior began to reveal itself, and he saw Alex fastening his seat belt and then pulling the coaster out of his jacket pocket. Tinker had promised him they could stain it together later that afternoon after they showed Florence. He was glad they had a plan to fill the hours. Days spent entertaining a child often seemed long.
Tinker backed out of the driveway and drove down the road that would take them to Highway 19. The spring melt was not yet upon them, and the snow that had looked so pretty twinkling on the tree branches and barn roofs back in January was now a dreary, grey patina. It was a wearisome time of year, the end of winter, and Tinker had to fight to keep his spirits up in the weeks before Easter. He wondered what it was like in Alberta. He’d heard about their Chinooks bringing blasts of warm weather in the dead of winter and thought once again that Alberta seemed to get more than its fair share of lucky breaks.
Tinker kept driving. No cars passed driving in the opposite direction.
He drove past a property with a For Sale – Reduced sign on the lawn. They continued driving down Highway 19 past the Kwikmart, the only business left in town. When Tinker was a boy there’d been a large general store with a soda counter, a barbershop, a gas station, and a pharmacy here too. One by one they’d all closed.
“See that there? That’s where I went to school. My ma was the teacher.” Tinker pointed to the one-room schoolhouse. The black trim had faded and white paint was peeling off the clapboards. An old brass bell turned green still hung over the front door.
“Wow. Cool. Can I go to that school?” Alex asked.
“No, it’s boarded up,” Tinker said. “There aren’t enough kids here anymore to fill it up.”
“Oh. Where’d they go?” Alex asked.
“They grew up and moved away. The kids that live here now take buses to different towns with bigger schools.” Tinker pulled into the church parking lot as the doors opened and people started dripping out like water droplets from a leaky faucet.
“There she is,” Alex said, undoing his seat belt and hopping out of the car. “Hi, Grandma!” he shouted, running to greet her, his unfastened boots clomping on the slushy gravel and the coaster clutched in his outstretched hand.
“What’s this?” she asked, receiving her gift.
“It’s a roller-coaster for your teacup so it doesn’t leave rings on Grandpa’s good wood furniture.”
Flo raised her eyebrows at Tinker, nodding slightly to acknowledge him.
“Count the rings, Grandma. The tree is five like me. Me and Grandpa made it for you in Tinker’s Time Out workshop.”
“Thank you, dear. I love it.” Flo dragged her fingertips across its smooth surface like she was affectionately patting a cat. “I’ll use it every day.” She slipped it carefully into her purse as Bob, Elsie, and Catriona approached. “Alex, you know Bob, right? And his wife, Elsie, and this is their granddaughter Catriona, in case you forgot.”
Alex, suddenly shy, nodded and looked at the ground. He slid behind Tinker’s legs.
“I’ll call you about that meeting, Flo,” Bob said. “Better yet, why don’t you and Tinker and Alex come over for supper this week? Come Tuesday. I’ll make the famous Libbus family cabbage rolls—my mother’s recipe. No one knows cabbage rolls like the Lebanese.”
“Sounds delicious, thank you, Bob.” Flo replied for them all. “If there’s tabbouleh, too, we’ll be there for sure.” They all said goodbye.
“What are you and Bob meeting about now?” Tinker asked.
“We got talking about the Syrian crisis after mass. We might revitalize the old parish committee. See if there’s some way us here in Falkirk Cove can help.”
“For cripes’ sake, Florence, do you really need to take on this cause? Those people are not our problem—we have our hands full with our own.” Tinker gestured toward Alex with a small wave of the back of his hand.
“It’s him that got me thinking of the Syrians, Tink. There are kids there, too, you know.”
“Do you hear this nonsense, Alex? Your grandma thinks she can save the world.”
“Great plan, Grandma,” Alex said. “Can I help?”
“Of course.” Flo reached out her hand and further mussed up Alex’s red hair.
As they made their way back to the Buick, Tinker sighed.
“What is it now, Tinker?”
He knew that despite being half his size, Flo was the boss. If she said they were having supper at Bob and Elsie’s on Tuesday, then it was to be, but he didn’t have to like it.
“I hate foreign food—especially cabbage rolls.”
Flo swatted him with her purse. “You’ll come to Bob and Elsie’s and you’ll eat cabbage rolls and you’ll listen to our conversation and maybe even join in. And I’ll enjoy a night off from cooking.”
Tinker never knew Florence to complain about cooking before. She loved fixing him meals.
“Now take us home. I’ve got a new coaster in my purse that’s in need of a cup of hot tea to sit on it.” Flo winked at Alex.