By Stephen Tuttle.
On Beauty
We found blueberries in the baby’s crib, and this terrified us. How was she getting them? Had she put any in her mouth? Was she breathing? Only later did we pause to consider the neatness of the pile, the care suggested by that perfect pyramid. The next morning it was pinecones. These were thin, sticky things that leaned on each other like the ribs of a teepee. We found pine pitch on our daughter’s palms and some in her hair. The next day it was maple leaves arrayed as though they were paint samples, red to orange to yellow. The leaves were perfectly flat and dried, as though they had been pressed in the pages of a book. The next day it was river stones in a row. The day after, coins stacked by size. We didn’t know where she was getting these things, but we complimented ourselves on her pattern recognition. That’s some baby, we said to ourselves. We sometimes took her hands in ours and admired their delicate contours. If they seemed too small or too weak to carry stones or coins or anything else, neither of us said so. On the sixth day, we found a pile of shells in the crib. These had once been the homes of snails, but the snails were long gone. These shells were so light and delicate and pale we couldn’t help but marvel. How was it possible, we wondered, that these things came to exist and in such formidable numbers? The next morning, we found a pile of bones. These were small bones, almost certainly from mice. We ran our hands through the pile, and again felt awe for a world like ours—awe that it allowed for such things. Outside, in a tree someone must once have planted, birds carried on, and what could we do but let them.
Last Wishes
My wife wants her funeral to be a whole production. She wants a parade where at just the right moment the floats explode like fireworks, but instead of fiery ashes falling to earth it’s heaps of crêpe paper clogging the gutters. Then this big storm comes up, a monsoon, the rain so thick the streets become rivers, and all the men go to the kitchens to prepare dishes that take days to make, like chiles en nogada or Peking duck. When the rains have stopped, the men join the women on their balconies where they knit before the flooded world. For a week, no-one sleeps. Each night it’s ferocious dancing and noises the neighbors can’t stand, but when those neighbors come to complain no-one is bothered and everyone says, Come join us, and the party spreads that way, turning complainers into celebrants. The party goes on for so long and gets so loud that everyone’s ears ring. By then, all the women are pregnant, their bellies swelling with promise. They give birth on the same day, at the same hour, and every child is a girl. They grow up, these daughters, and take over governments and mandate celebrations throughout the year until the days blend together as a single event that becomes the way people live their lives, so that in the end there are only two jobs in the whole world: those who celebrate, marking every day as the day of my wife’s death, and those who endlessly toil in the sewers, clearing them of confetti.
Before You Build a Table
Think of the space the table will take. There are dimensions to consider. Sketch it out on a scrap of paper. The back of any receipt will do.
How much weight do you expect this table to bear? How high do you need it to be? How many chairs will fit around it?
Ask yourself: have you ever built anything? Do you trust yourself with power tools? Will this table even fit through the door? And if so, who will help you carry it?
Don’t think about the initials someone might etch by pocketknife on the underside.
Look at your sketch. Acknowledge that it is made of a fine, waxy paper that was once pulp that was once the fine sawdust of a fallen tree.
Burn the receipt. Consider its irretrievability.
What do you know about the northern spotted owl? Have you ever seen one? Take a second to find an image. Look at those licorice-black eyes.
Think about your grandfather in the lumberyards of the Pacific northwest. Or in his workshop. Or on his couch after both knees had worn out.
Studies show that the northern spotted owl is not negatively impacted by old-growth wildfires as some have argued as justification for more rigorous harvesting. The primary consequence of wildfires (vis-à-vis this near-threatened species) is that small rodents, now homeless, now on the run, become easier prey.
In all the years of your life, did you ever once ask your grandfather about the northern spotted owl? What else do you regret?
The table can wait. First, get yourself a balsa wood airplane. The cheaper the better. Fly it until it won’t fly.
But this table of yours, you’re sure about it? You don’t already have something that will scratch this itch? To begin, you’ll need to aim for pure abstraction. You’ll have to imagine a table that is all tables and no table. It’s your grandmother’s heirloom, lost in the fire. The nightstand stained by the fishbowl it once held. The two-dimensional representation you drew on that receipt. It’s the very saw, itself a table, one uses to make a table.
Climb beneath this abstract table. Consider its negative space. Consider the idea of it. This is what some will call the tableness of the table.
Don’t think too hard about the tables your grandfather built for your mother. The ones she sanded and finished when she was still just a girl. Specifically, avoid thinking about the one she brought with her into the first home you ever knew. That’s the table you sometimes hid under. The one you once took to with a knife.
The table you want to build is not like that table. It needs to be longer. For the meals you’ll serve. For the guests you’ll host. Imagine a table long enough for a man to lie on.
Check the garage. Do you have or know what to do with a planer? A dowling jig? Do you even own a saw? Have you considered taking a class or attending a workshop? Or just buying something from a furniture store?
It’s important to remember that what you call lumber others call timber and when you say timber, all you can think about is falling backward onto a pile of pillows the way you did as a child when your grandfather pretended his hand was an axe.
Have you considered giving your table walls and a lid? Have you considered making it a box just wide enough for the shoulders of a man?
The first thing you’ll need is a tree. Or part of a tree. The first thing you’ll need is an axe. The first thing you’ll need is pure abstraction.
Consider the idea of a funeral. Consider that wood, appropriately treated, will last a lifetime.
A table has legs, as everyone knows. This is what some will call a dead metaphor. A table is not a metaphor. A table is a table. If a table is to hold real things, it must be a real thing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen Tuttle’s fiction and prose poetry has appeared in The Nation, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He teaches courses in creative writing and American literature at Brigham Young University.
