Free Spider Lake by Gregg Hangebrauck

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;