Free Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon Page A

come from us. Do you know what I mean?”
    She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, cradling a mug of coffee in both hands. A small-framed, compact girl who hardly took up any space at all, yet she’d say these things with such fierce intensity in her eyes that they came out like the words of a giant.
    Henry nodded. Yes. He felt that way all the time. He was just a pair of hands—someone, something , else was doing the real work.
    Tess wore denim overalls splattered with paint and a charcoal-colored chunky wool cardigan with heavy wooden buttons. Her brown hair was twisted back in an untidy bun, held in place with a pencil.
    The painting building was next door to the sculpture building, connected by a tubelike suspended walkway. The Habitrail, they called it. Tess and Henry would often be the only two working there at night. The buildings were supposed to be locked and unoccupied after ten, but every now and then they’d share a joint or a beer with Duane, the security guard, and he’d let them stay as late as they wanted.
    There was a kitchenette in the painting building, and Tess had a copper pot for making Turkish coffee. She’d fill a thermos with it, then carry the hot, thick, sweet coffee through the tube to the sculpture building, and call out, “Break time!” Sometimes, Henry was too caught up in what he was doing to stop, and Tess would sit, sipping her coffee, watching him work.
    “When I watch you sculpt,” she told him, over a steaming cup, “I feel like there’s three of us in the room: you, me, and the piece. You make the wood come alive, Henry. That’s what I love about your art.”
    Sometimes, she’d come right up and caress the wood, running her fingers over whatever sharply angled face he was carving: wolf, bear, old man. He had this strange sense, in those moments, that the sculpture was more real to her than he was.
     

    T ESS BEGAN REFERRING TO the north side of the barn as his studio. Going to your studio tonight, Henry? or How’s the light in your studio?
    Even Emma started: “When can I come see you in your studio? I want to see if I can hear the tree.”
    “Soon,” he promised. “Soon.”
    Henry bought more bottles of wine. He sharpened his chisels, knives, and gouges. He walked around the tree. He waited for it to speak to him. On the radio, the Rolling Stones sang about getting no satisfaction, Aerosmith told him to dream on. He poured himself cup after cup of wine and prayed Tess and Emma wouldn’t show up at the door determined to see his progress.
    And then, one night, it came to him. Not inspiration exactly, but more a moment of desperation. He had to do something. Anything. So he grabbed a small hatchet and began the long process of bringing one of the ends of the log to a point, like whittling the end of a giant pencil. He worked for four days at this and then he saw it. A canoe. He was going to carve a canoe! He smiled to think how pleased Tess and Emma would be to see him taking sculpture to this whole new, practical level. He was making something they could all climb inside and take out on the water. If the land ever flooded, they’d be safe. They’d have Henry’s canoe, their own private DeForge family ark, to save them.
    He was so happy that he did a little canoe-building dance around the log, hatchet in one hand, mug in the other, sloshing wine onto the floor, staining the front of his old work khakis.
    “A canoe?” Tess’s brow was furrowed, her lips pursed. The sigh that came out from between them was a low, disappointed whistle. She had, he imagined, expected a person or an animal. A face she could caress. But this was the postcollege Henry, the grownup, fatherly, business-owner Henry. The practical Henry with tiny wrinkles around his eyes.
    “But what are you going to do with it?” she asked.
    “See if it floats, I guess. Maybe teach Emma to row?”
    Emma was dancing around the canoe. “I think it’s so cool, Dad!” she said. “Will you make paddles