Free Gravity by Scot Gardner

and eventually billowed so much smoke that Harry waved for me to stop.
    The blade rattled from side to side like a bearing had fainted. Harry swore under his breath.
    â€˜Are there any more saws? We could get one from power tools,’ I suggested.
    â€˜Tony will kill me.’
    â€˜Come on.’
    He shook his head. ‘There’s a chainsaw.’
    â€˜Now you’re talking.’
    I followed him to the racks of sleepers and big posts.
    â€˜It hardly gets used. We cut things that are too big for theradial. Or sometimes when we can’t be stuffed carting things over to the bench.’
    It was a little Stihl, like my friend Cecil at the mill.
    I was fourteen when I met Cecil. Mick Fenton had given me a half-hour safety lecture and demonstration then sent me to work docking logs to length before they were rolled on the skids to the breaking-down saw. For me, chainsaws had come to represent responsibility and power. As a fourteen-year-old, it’s possible to fall in love with a machine.
    The chainsaw at The Hardware House could have been the son of Cecil and it was in good nick. Plenty of fuel and oil and a nice sharp chain.
    â€˜Have you used one of these before?’ Harry asked.
    â€˜Once or twice.’
    I started the saw and got Harry to stack the lengths of timber so I could cut a few at a time. Our corner of the timber shed rang and clouded with burnt two-stroke.
    Harry dusted the end of the last length and shook his head.
    â€˜Amazing,’ he said. ‘I can’t cut them that neat with the radial. I think we have a new name for you, Mr Prince. From now on you’ll be known as Chainsaw. Chainsaw Prince. Where did you learn how to do that?’
    I told Harry the story of my former life while we stacked the timber we’d cut into a courtesy trailer. I told him about sleeping uncomfortably on the couch at Mum’s place and how my life was very much up in the air at that moment.
    â€˜Do you like woodwork?’ he asked.
    â€˜Yeah. Love it,’ I replied, without thinking, and realised it was true.
    As true as sunshine.
    â€˜You should come over for a drink tonight and check out my shed. Maybe meet Gordon next door. He’s an absolute artist with wood. He doesn’t just make tables and chairs, he makes works of art. He’s a genius. He has these ideas in three dimensions and sets about bringing them into the world. Brilliant. He’s been trying to teach me, but I’m a bit slow.’
    I could feel myself getting fired up as he talked. For a minute, my head was swimming with feelings of destiny.
    Any of my teachers could tell you that I was an average student. Painfully average in maths, science, English and everything else. Except woodwork. Mr Davidson, my year ten woodwork teacher, wrote a report that was a poem of praise for my woodworking skills. A natural, he’d said. More innate ability working timber than his teacher, he’d said. My weekend and holiday job at the mill was working with wood, but it wasn’t woodwork. It was shoving around the icy carcases of big manna gums, their skinless flanks blotched with tree-blood where they’d been resting against each other in the stockpile. It was three lengths of four-point-two and the heady mix of two-stroke exhaust and ferment. No dovetail joints and no dowel. No coping saws or burnishing oil.
    It was an epiphany. A bookmark moment. It crept up on me in the timber shed at the back of The Hardware House like a swell of orchestral music. I realised my internal compass wasn’t pulling me north; it was dragging me inexorably to woodwork. Timber had been my friend; right then I realised it was bigger than that. It was something I could learn. Something tangible that made absolute sense to me.

    Harry and I were still raving when work finished that night. He was quick-witted and sophisticated in a way that didn’t exist in Splitters Creek. He couldn’t have been much older than