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Member
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Woodstock, NY
Posts: 10
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Working title: "One Fabulous Wicker Chair".
-“One Fabulous Wicker Chair” by Jessy Dougherty-
Refinishing old furniture. That’s what he did best. He refinished old furniture, took old broken down wicker chairs and brought them to life with a touch of whatever tools people who refinish furniture use. That’s another thing you saw when you walked up that dusty driveway towards his old workshop. Wicker chairs. Always something wicker. And there was always at least one chair out there, in the tepid climate of the Catskills, that was nearly finished, or should I say refinished, and it was beautiful. It was magnificent. All shiny, on account of the mass amounts of oils he put on. And you couldn’t tear your eyes off of it. Not because of its splendor; no, he wasn’t that good. It was because there was always at least three newly arrived chairs, or couches, and these junky broken piles of wood would diminish the one shining piece of furniture in the bunch, would make it seem like nothing special. One might think it would make the good piece seem even better, but that was not the case. And that was a pity.
It was like a scene from an old movie, a spaghetti western perhaps. Imagine it for a second...seriously imagine. As the reader this is what you do, place yourselves in the setting. Do this as a favor to me. Close you eyes, or one eye, so you can still read, and picture this: You are walking up dusty gravel drive way. To your right there is a motley of different colored barns, one of which at the time is occupied by a band, a group of teenagers who have nothing better to do than make original music with each other. You pass by the barn and, trying to shield yourself from the loud, grungy rock music that comes from the door perhaps, look to your left. There lies a grass field, with an old, rusty, 1900’s gas tank at the edge. There is a family of deer grazing in the distance, and you can see beyond them, even, towards the Catskills.
The Catskills, for your information, is a region of New York state, inhabited by people who wish they lived upstate, and tell people they live upstate, but they don’t. They are just in the middle. If they say they live upstate, the people from Buffalo laugh at them. But if they say they live more downstate, the city people, denizens of darkness and smog and cell phones and road rage, they stare at the Catskill people with a murderous look in their eyes. So Catskill people say they live upstate, lose their dignity and keep their lives.
Back to the story. You examine the gas tank further. It’s quite large, quite old, quite rusty. And it is very appealing to the eye, though there never has been any scientific explanation as to why this old relic draws so much attention. Probably because it is an old relic. Antique stores, however boring and dull and depressing they may be, always draw crowds. Strange people are in those crowds, but there are crowds nonetheless.
This teenage noise phenomenon is starting to irritate you, so you seek shelter. You run towards the nearest building, an old faded brick building with a rusty roof. You are nearly there, too, before something stops you. Out of the corner of your eye, you swear you can see something shining, but the only thing that was there was a literally heel deep pile pf cigarettes and a bunch of wicker chairs. Then you see it. This chair…It’s beautiful. It’s magnificent. Whatever was glowing must have been connected to this thing. Maybe it was an aura. You don’t care, you just stare on.
You hear a noise from in front of you, a sort of grunting. You notice for the first time a rascally, grungy, sloppily dressed man sitting in one of the dirty wicker couches, smoking. His beard is dirty and white, though there are remnants of blond in there. He hasn’t appeared to have shaved in days, and his glasses are fogged up and extremely scratched. He is dressed in a material sort of like canvas, though the name eludes me. Hesitantly, you approach him and say something along the lines of “Are you the owner of…that?” and you point towards the one fabulous wicker chair. But his only answer is a request, though it seems more like a demand, for some food, money and/or smokes.
Let us break out of that scenario for a second. Unfortunately, if you are a persistent, patient, curious or stupid person, you would have continued questioning the man. I hate to tell you, but that demanding statement would be the only thing you hear out of his mouth. He used to be a coherent man, as well as having the ability to make chairs like the one you saw, but that left him a long time ago. That chair is the last one he refinished, around five years ago. Five years ago the tragedy occurred.
Yes, there was a tragedy. And yes, it was tragic. The man, this carpenter, he had a daughter. I never met her, don’t know her name, cannot describe her for you, the reader. This nonspecific nonentity, his daughter, comes into the story only once, when she dies. See, she decides to go and get herself murdered. Shot, by a complete stranger who just happened to be in her house late into the night. Or early in the morning. Doesn’t matter, really. She died, and he was obliterated.
I knew him before the incident, though I was only a young boy then. I remember one time, when I was hanging out in his work shop while he created a masterpiece. I did that a lot back then. He was talking about how he was trying to quit smoking, and at that time I saw a full pack of cigarettes lying on the table near his hand. Well, being the Good Samaritan I always have been, I decided to help his plans of quitting along. I quickly pocketed the cigarettes, walked outside and threw them into the field. I proudly walked back to my house. Ten minutes later a thoroughly embarrassed me and a thoroughly exasperated him were out in the fields looking. To this day we haven’t found them.
He smokes a lot more now than he did back then. I do believe you saw the heel deep pile of cigarettes? That is what he does nowadays; he smokes, begs, and hitchhikes. Oh yes, and blesses people. He seems to think that God blesses only those who help HIM, as in the carpenter. And he takes it upon himself to administer a blessing to any soul whose kindness is directed towards him. He hitchhikes from his house in nearby Woodstock to his old workshop at least four times a day, and begs for food and money all the time. Anyone who will give him a ride, food, money, or smokes gets a “God bless you”. If it is an amount of twenty dollars or greater, one might also expect a “Thank you”.
There was another incident, a short time before the tragedy, involving a local redneck kid, Jason, the carpenter’s nephew, Mikey, and my friend John. We were all standing next to this little ditch in the field. It was about five feet deep and filled to the brim with rain water from the night before. Mikey and Jason, who didn’t get along well, were arguing about something, and Jason threatened to push Mikey into the ditch. Now Mikey was a small kid, barely four and a half feet tall, but he was brave, and said something along the lines of “I dare ya!” And Jason, who wasn’t very smart, did. As John pulled Mikey out of the ditch, I ran to get the carpenter. When I told him, for the first time I saw human emotion in that man. And I had known him for most of my life. As he ran off to this nephew, I hung back, astonished.
I fear I must now interject this story with what I would call “breaking news”. Something has happened, another tragedy, though I wouldn’t call it tragic…or is it the other way around? Anyway, the old man seems to have reached the peak of his insanity. At least that’s what other people say. I think if this is a peak, than he cannot be truly insane. He didn’t do much bad things in his lifetime. But you want to know what happened, right? Right.
First off, I have never seen his house. I know, or think I know, that he lives in the Bearsville Flats, a crummy place where people with no money and no future live. I picture his house to be dirty, messy, but have a certain something about it, an air quite similar to his one wicker chair.
Well, at around six in the morning one morning ,he sees his neighbors are still asleep. He doesn’t know these neighbors, but he doesn’t care. He opens the door…unlocked. He walks inside. There is no guard dog, no alarm system. He walks into the kitchen. He sits there. He sits there for a long time, until the actual occupant of the house comes in, scared and confused. He demands to know what the carpenter is doing. And the carpenter replies him in a slow drawl.
“I’m making breakfast, of course.”
The man is currently in police custody.
Let us imagine that spaghetti western scene again; you are once again walking up the gravel driveway, and I seems the same, but there are some differences. The band has broken up; musical differences. You find yourself missing the incoherent scream of distorted guitar and the crash of the drummer going crazy, and resolve to go out and buy a Nirvana CD right away. The gas tank is still there, but it is older, slightly rustier, slightly less appealing. There aren’t any deer today, and the cigarettes are gone. There is a nice expensive Jeep near the workshop, and a couple of young men with crowbars who look quite familiar to you are standing around chatting. You see the familiarity is their odd resembelence to the old carpenter. You wonder where he is and if they are related when you are suddenly snapped back into reality by a sight of the one thing that has stayed the same; the wicker chair is still there. All the chairs are. His life can be described perfectly by those chair: Something beautiful, something magnificent, hidden behind those old unfinished chairs. And you cannot get to this one fabulous wicker chair. So it goes. Oh and before I forget. His name, by the way, is Richard.
END
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