Spider Lake (8 page)

en sat at his desk in his upstairs bedroom listening to the Beatles singing Fool on the Hill, and penciling away at a drawing he was doing of the Rat Fink rat riding on a motorcycle. He was adding a Nazi helmet to the rodent’s head with a swastika and in creature’s right hand an unusually large suicide shifter. Ben liked to draw. His extensive library of Cracked and Mad magazines had given him many a laugh as well as a keen interest in cartooning. He had hundreds of trading cards of the humorous Silly Cycles and Odd Rods, many of which remained unopened with the powder coated sticks of bubble gum still petrifying in their packages.

He didn’t often draw in the summer months, but since Mr. Regola the organ grinder had been occupying cabin six, bringing the old man meals was added to his list of chores. This meant that he had to stick around until his mom had prepared lunch, a time when he was normally free to be hanging around with Matt. Ben’s mom and dad had kind of adopted the old guy, both feeling that he could use some extra pounds. Ben didn’t mind carrying the food to cabin six for the monkey man, but he already had a real dislike for the fur-ball. There was something off about that monkey. It sat like a sentinel on the cabin roof, watching with a malicious look on it’s creepy little face.

“Ben, could you please come down and bring Mr. Regola his lunch? Afterward you may go out and play until dinner time.”

Ben didn’t like when his mother used the word play. It made him feel like a little kid. He resisted the urge to correct her vocabulary faux pas and made some finishing touches on his drawing. He was putting the hair on the Rat Fink’s muscular forearm.

“Ben, Mr. Regola’s lunch isn’t going to carry itself to cabin six.”

“I’m coming!”

Ben leaped down the stairs two and three steps at a time and ran into the kitchen. Bringing Sam’s lunch meant he had six hours of freedom, and when his mother made the call, he was more than motivated to beat his feet to the appointed task. When he reached the kitchen he noticed the contents of Mr. Regola’s plate. It contained a meat loaf sandwich, chips, pickle, and a huge slice of apple pie. He thought about the baloney sandwich and apple which graced his own lunch plate, and he had to ask the question.

“Wow Mom, the old guy gets the royal treatment and I get a baloney sandwich?”

“Now Ben, is that the way a Christian boy should think? Do you suggest that we should give our guest your baloney sandwich and keep the apple pie to ourselves? If you wish you may switch the meals but do you think poor old skinny Sam would be as enthusiastic about eating your lunch or his?”

Ben’s mother looked him in the eye and waited for an answer to come. Ben knew she was right and he began to shuffle one foot back and forth across the linoleum. His chin had dropped to his chest. “I know.” Was all he could say.

Ben’s mom crouched down to eye level of her son. She put a soft hand on each of his shoulders and said; “Benny, you know I love you. If I thought you could sit still for a lunch like this, I would have given you the same thing as Mister Regola. I give you baloney and an apple so you can run with it. God knows I have watched you fidget so many times at this table. You will have your apple pie after your dinner. Now run along and bring that poor old man his lunch before he wastes away to nothing.”

Then came the hug. Ben looked around to see if anyone could see it and noticed the coast was clear. He hugged her back only when no one else was looking.

He left the main house and made his way along the row of cabins to number six where the old man was staying. To his surprise the old guy was sitting in the shade at the number six picnic table. It seemed to Ben that the man was deep in thought. He was looking out at the lake in an almost meditative state. Ben looked around for the monkey. It was on the roof eating what looked to be a grass hopper, or perhaps a moth. The old man dropped his gaze and turned his head towards Ben.

“You won’t find your footing looking up at the sky young man. I would hate to be picking pine needles out of my lunch!” The old man gave Ben a smile and a wink.

Ben put the plate down on the picnic table while keeping one eye on the monkey. It was now running along the rain gutter of the cabin chasing another bug. “Here is your lunch mister Regola. My mom says you are to eat it all. I will be back later to collect the plate and silverware.”

“Well bless her heart. Would you look at that. You tell your dear mother that I would be a fool if I didn’t eat each and every crumb on this plate, and what’s more you tell her that she has my sincerest gratitude for such a fine home cooked meal.”

“I will mister Regola.”

“Ben, would you do me one more favor?”

“Sure, what can I do for you mister Regola?”

“Well for starters you can call me Sam. I am wondering son, if you have any woodworking tools in the tool shed that I may borrow. I am getting a bit stir crazy and I would like to busy myself a bit.”

Ben wasn’t sure if he could lend out his father’s tools without asking first. “Sir, uh Mr. Sam, I would have to ask my dad first. What sort of tools are you looking for?”

“Well I guess I would need a cross-cut saw and a mitre box and maybe a hand drill and a chisel for starters. I would also need to use a few of those weathered boards behind the tool shed if that’s alright.”

“I’ll go ask my Dad if you can borrow his tools. I’m sure you can have the wood. What are you going to make?”

“Well son, it’s sort of a surprise. If I told you what I was up to, you might slip and spoil the surprise for me.”

Ben was more than curious about the unusual request from the occupant of cabin six. Generally people asked for things such as nets, or Coleman fuel, or recipes for beer battering fish, not woodworking tools. He was not entirely sure what to make of the old guy. He wasn’t even sure if he trusted him. Maybe it was the trick with the coins which planted the seed of doubt in Ben, or perhaps it was the secretive woodworking project that raised his doubts.
 

Later, after securing the permission he needed, Ben led Sam to the tool shed where the tools were kept. Sam looked the shed over. He studied all of the hand tools which hung from the peg-board above the work bench. He looked right past the newer electric tools such as drills and circular saws. The band saw did not interest him. And then, the old man’s face lit up. In the corner of the tool shed, on a low shelf, a dusty old hand-made wooden box lay mostly obscured by an old quilted moving tarp.

“Well well Ben, what do we have here? I haven’t seen one of these since I was a young man.”

“All I see is a dusty old wooden box.”

The old man smiled as he moved the tarp aside, and lifted the box to the work bench by it’s two hand-made leather handles at each long end of the box.

“Do you know what this is Ben? This is an old carpenter’s box. Back in the day a carpenter utilized all his skills and took great care in the making of his tool box. A skilled carpenter with a fine box such as this would use it as a kind of calling card. It was the visible proof of his abilities. The better the box, the better the craftsman. A potential customer or general contractor would see that the man carrying it was worth his salt.”

Ben’s interest was piqued. He began to really look at the box in a different way. Sam took a rag soaked with turpentine and wiped the old box. Now visible were the cherry wood-inlaid initials; B. R. F.

“Those are my initials! This is my grandfather’s box! He had the same initials as me. I was named after him. He died before I was born.”

“Let’s take a look inside my boy! Hopefully your grandpa’s tools are still there. They don’t make tools like the old days any more.”

Sam prompted Ben to unlatch the brass hasp on the front middle of the box just below the initials. Ben opened the box as if he was opening up a treasure chest. Once opened, to his great surprise, Ben was delighted to find in a felt-lined tray atop the box, a row of meticulously carved peach-pits in the shape of monkeys. They were holding their tails with hands and feet, and sucking on their tails. Their little blue eyes were made of beads carefully inset into their tiny little heads.

“Well, I’ll be!” Exclaimed Sam.

“In all my days I have never seen such a thing!
 
A passel of Morris’s all in a row, carved out of peach pits! What a marvel of carving your grandfather had! I have heard of peach-pit carvings Ben. They say that the wood is very dense, and extremely difficult to carve. There must be twenty of them here!”

Beneath the tray of beautifully carved monkeys, there were all kinds of antique tools of various types. There were saws, hammers, mallets, hand augers for drilling holes, hand-made wood planes for putting decorative edges on boards. The box was a window into the past. A past which described Ben’s grandfather in ways that words and old photos never had.

“Ben, would it be okay with you if I used these hand tools? My own father had a box such as this when I was about your age. His was not nearly as finely made, but the tools are familiar to me. I promise to put every tool back in its proper place, just as we see them now. Think about it son. I would understand if you said no.”

Ben thought about how he would feel about this old stranger using the tools his grandfather had used before he was born. He asked himself would his grandfather mind? In the end he decided that without Sam pointing out the box, he may never have seen what was inside. The box could have sat there for years without him ever having opened it. He thought about putting one of the carved peach-pit monkeys in his pocket, but he decided they should all remain together, side-by-side in the felt-lined tray. He would ask his father if he could bring the box upstairs and keep it in his room just as soon as Sam was finished with it.

“I guess it would be alright Mr.— Sam. Please replace everything just as you said you would. I think my grandpa would like his tools to be used. And Sam, please be careful not to touch the monkeys. I don’t want them moved. They are special.”

Ben left the old man in the tool shed. He looked back just once, and he saw Sam pulling out a small flat saw, and heard him say; “Well, I’ll be, a dove-tail saw just like the one my own father used to use!”

That night, at the dinner table, Ben brought up the box, and the carved peach-pit monkeys. “Dad, today Mister Regola and I were in the tool shed and we found grandpa’s tool box. Inside the box were all of grandpa’s old hand tools, and a tray full of carved peach-pit monkeys.”

Ben’s dad raised an eyebrow. “Did you say peach-pit monkeys?

“Yeah Dad, They are holding their tails with their hands and feet and they are sucking on their tails; and they have beads for eyes.”

“Ben, do me a favor, go get the box and bring it here.”

Normally, Ben would not be excused from the dinner table right in the middle of the evening meal, But Ben’s Dad was obviously interested in seeing the carvings. Ben hurried out the screen porch door. Ben’s mother looked at her husband with a bewildered expression.

“Allie, I have never looked into Dad’s tool box. When I was a boy I was not allowed to open it, and after his death, it never occurred to me to look inside.”

“Now John, you mean to tell me you never in all your life once looked into that tool box?

”Dad kept it locked Allie.”

Ben opened the tool shed door. There on the low shelf where it sat originally, was the tool box. Sam had even replaced the moving blanket back to its place on top of the box. The box looked newer, not the old dusty box of this morning. Now it seemed to glow with a rich patina that made it look like a valued antique. Ben
 
noticed as he removed the tarp, that Sam had given the entire box a thorough cleaning. Ben lifted the box. It was heavy. This was a box for a grown man not a boy; and Ben wondered how old Sam could have hoisted it.

As he left the shed, he looked over to cabin six. There was no sign of Mister Regola or his monkey. Making his way across the clearing, Ben’s arm and back muscles burned with the weight of the heavy box, and he was relieved to see his father making his way down the steps from the screen porch towards him.

“Looks a little heavy Ben. Do you want me to carry it?”

“No Sir, I can manage.”

“Well, how about I take it up the stairs Ben. You can open the doors for me.”

John took the box from his boy and carried it into the kitchen. He set it on the side-board which was cleared by Allie. John and Allie looked at the box, with it’s inlaid initials and it’s brass fittings and leather handles and both commented on its beauty. It was no longer the dusty old box in the corner of the tool shed, but rather an heirloom to be brought into their home.

Allie wanted very badly to open the box, but she waited for her husband to unlatch the hasp. “John Fisher, are you going to open that box or are you just going to stand there!”

John reached down, unlatched the brass hasp, and he very slowly opened the box. He was smiling, partly because of the off-limits, do-not-enter memories he had of the case, but mostly because he knew it was driving his wife nuts. When the case was finally opened, and revealed the beautifully carved monkeys, Ben seen something change in his father, and for the first time in Ben’s young life, he seen his father tear up. Ben looked up at his mother, not knowing what to say, and he noticed that she was just as moved to tears as his father.