Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith: A Diptych (10 page)

Today is the first of the month. If our father were alive he would go to deposit the heavy bag of money in the bank. My brother gave the heavy bag of money to the doctor. My brother has nothing to deposit in the bank. For as long as my brother can remember our father deposited money in the bank on the first of the month. This month my brother will have to take money out of the bank to buy the iron for the forge. As I work with my brother, I think about the hardware store. If my brother took just a little extra money from the bank to buy paint, I could carve handles for his axes and paint the handles. Our axes could compete with any axes sold in the hardware store.

I make more mistakes at the anvil than ever before. My brother throws down his hammer. He asks if I am thinking about a girl I saw in town. I am surprised. My brother does not throw his tools or speak about girls in town. He is in a peculiar mood. His face is pale despite the heat of the forge. His lips are dark. I tell my brother that I am thinking about the hardware store. My brother has not heard about the hardware store. He grabs my arms and shakes me while I tell him everything I remember. I do not remember the hours or the prices. I tell him about the different colored handles on the hammers. I tell him about my plan to paint different colored ax handles, bright ax handles in as many colors as the handles of the hammers. My brother shakes me hard so my teeth close on my tongue. Blood comes from between my lips. My brother rubs his shirtsleeve against my mouth. He brushes my hair from my forehead. He says it is not my fault. It is not my fault that no customers come to the forge.

The forge is not in a good location. It is strenuous to travel up the hill to the forge. The path is steep. There is no shade on the hill. Customers never minded traveling up the hill to the forge but now the town is prosperous. In a prosperous town, customers do not want to travel up the hill. By the wharves, the foreigners are building new storefronts. They have built a new district by the wharves, with stores and hotels. The foreigners stay in their district. They stay close to their ships. They do not like to walk through the town even as far as the bakery. Foreigners have been attacked on their walks to the bakery. Now the foreigners have their own bakeries in the district by the wharves. The town is not as safe as it once was. There is more theft in a prosperous town. There are more things to be thieved. The townspeople have begun to shop in the foreigner's district. The foreigners have hired soldiers to patrol their district. It is pleasant to shop without fearing the thieves.

My brother is certain that some of the new storefronts in the foreign district are still unoccupied. My brother could rent a storefront in the foreign district. If my brother could rent a storefront he could display his metalwork in a good location. Customers could purchase andirons at the storefront. They could drop off their tools for repair. I could pick up the tools each week and my brother could repair them at the forge. I could bring the repaired tools back to the storefront and collect the money from the locked box my brother would mount on a heavy piling by the storefront. The locked box and the heavy piling would be unnecessary precautions. Soldiers would protect the money we made at the storefront. Foreigners would pay the soldiers to protect my brother's investment.

My brother becomes excited by this idea. This is one way to expand, opening a storefront in the foreign district in the town. The location of the forge would no longer hinder my brother's success. My brother smiles at me and I smile at my brother. I smile with my lips closed to hide the blood on my teeth. My brother picks up his hammer. He says we can put my ax handles in the display window of the storefront. Maybe I will be good at painting handles. My brother looks thoughtful as he says this. He is wondering what I am good at. I am not a good striker. My brother does not say I am not a good striker. He spoke in a great rush uncommon for him and now he is done with speaking. He does not say anything more. Soon the sounds of hammer and sledge make conversation impossible. I know my brother is thinking I am not a good striker. My sledge hits off-center on the iron. I strike with the sledge again and again. My arms hurt. My back hurts. I cannot hit the right place. I have not grown. My improvement is too slow. I cannot strike the iron where my brother indicates. Now that business is slow my brother can fix my mistakes but when he expands the forge he will not have time to fix my mistakes. I need to improve more quickly. I am good at some things surely, but what does it matter if I am not a good striker, if I cannot do the thing my brother needs.

My brother has used up our father's bar iron and rods. My brother's metalwork is stacked against the inside walls of the forge. It is very impressive. I wish customers would come to the forge to praise my brother and buy high-quality tools for their homes and businesses. Now my brother has only scrap metal to work with. He cannot make high-quality tools from scrap iron. He must go to town to take out money from the bank. That way he will be able to purchase fresh bar iron for his high-quality products.

Without iron to work, we have nothing to do in the forge. My brother and I sit on the hill watching the ships. My brother says the ships come from the ports of distant cities. He says I cannot possibly imagine the foreigners' cities. There are many more girls in these cities and they are nothing like the girls in town. My brother asks me to describe the girls in town. When I was our father's helper, I went into town more often for the meat and the bread. I must have passed many girls. Girls must walk on the streets in town. They wear uniforms that are all one piece, like the monks. I do not remember if I saw girls or monks on my trips into town. Girls and monks wear their hair very long, but the monks have long beards. The uniforms of the girls are shorter than the uniforms of the monks. This is not the description that my brother wants to hear. I pluck at the grass with my fingers. The sun is hot and the ground buzzes with insects. The buzzing is almost like the vibrations that pass through the ground from the forge when my brother or our father is hard at work.

I tell my brother that I talked to girls in town. We talked many times. The girls were impressed to hear that I worked in the forge. They have great admiration for the blacksmith. The girls asked me to describe the blacksmith using physical detail. I told the girls every physical detail I could remember but the girls were not satisfied. They kept asking for more. My brother does not believe me. He knows I did not talk to any girls in town. He asks me to describe the girls using physical details. I try to think of physical details. My brother leans back on the hill with his hands folded behind his head. I could say that the girls have long hair like the monks. Their uniforms are too short. Girls must grow quickly. My brother has shut his eyes, waiting. I do not know what to say. I touch my brother through his pants but he rolls over. He tightens his buttocks and rubs himself on the earth. He gets on his knees and opens his pants. He opens his eyes and looks at me. He is angry that I am still there. I go into the house and sit on my bed but there is a bad smell so I sit in the doorway. I cannot see my brother or the bay. I look at the back of the forge. Mice live in the scrap metal piled behind the forge. They must be mice, gray flickers in the curving darkness between the prongs.

I do not know the physical details of the girls in town but I know the physical details of my brother. He is the same size as our father. Our father was shorter than my brother but our father had a great chest like a barrel. My brother is taller than our father but his chest is like a slab, flatter and not as big around as our father's. I think their slightly different shapes make them just the same size. My brother has the same swing as our father. The anvil is mounted at the perfect height for both our father and my brother. My brother has dark hair on his backside. His toenails grow in mounds. Everywhere on my brother's body there are red marks where the skin stretched because my brother grew so quickly. His big muscles made marks on his skin as they grew. My brother grew more quickly than the girls in town. Not one of them is big enough to bear his son. If my brother had had a son when my father died, that son would already be big enough to work as my brother's striker. My brother's son could replace me at the anvil. It would not take my brother's son years to grow. He would grow even more quickly than my brother. It would take no time at all for my brother's son to stand at the anvil. He would crawl from his mother's legs to the anvil and rise, holding the sledge in his hand.

My brother eats looking over our father's ledgers. He does not notice that I have not emptied my dish. I try to empty my dish but my throat has narrowed. Even the smallest bites of meat lodge in my throat. I leave the table and sit on my bed with my dish. I push the meat off my dish onto the floor. I pull the pallet over the meat. I slide the pallet beneath the bed. Now my dish is empty. I put the empty dish on the floor. I lie down on the bed. I am tired but I cannot fall asleep. I will go outside. I take the saltcellar from the table. My brother does not look up from the ledgers. I leave the house and walk around the hill in the moonlight. I sit down on the hill. The moon illuminates the ships in the bay. Dark figures are moving on the decks of the ships. The foreigners like to dance on the decks of their ships. Their ships are taller than any of the buildings in town. The foreigners are building hotels in their district that will be as tall as the ships. Soon the view of the bay will be blocked by hotels. Only the foreigners who stay at hotels will see the foreigners who dance on the ships.

I lie back. I balance the saltcellar on my stomach so it points up from my stomach at the moon. I rock from side to side by flexing each buttock. I want to see how far I can rock before the saltcellar topples. The saltcellar topples. Now I can flex each buttock with all of my strength. The burning I feel in my buttocks makes my legs tighten, my stomach tighten. I curl my fingers and toes. I relax my buttocks. I pick up the saltcellar and pour salt on the earth where my brother rubbed. I do not turn over like my brother. I stay on my back. I move my eyes toward the outside corners and look through the disc of the moon to see the bigger, brighter light it hides from my view.

This is the first time I have slept outside. I wake up when the sun is rising. The grass is wet. My body is wet. I feel cold. The bay is covered with mist. I have grown so much in the night that I cannot fit through the door of the house. I cannot fit through the double doors of the forge. I lift the roof off the forge and look inside. My brother is working in his leather apron. I see the bellows and the hearth and my brother at the anvil and the workbenches and the metalwork stacked against the walls. My brother passes up a sledge. He wants me to work at the anvil, but I am too large. I crush the sledge in my fist. Fragments fall. The head of the sledge cracks the brick of the hearth. I reach my arm into the forge. I take the horn of the anvil between my fingertips. I pluck anvil and post from the floor of the forge. I look at the bay. The mist is burning off and I see that the ships in the bay are anvils, gray anvils mounted on the muddy verge of the bay. Instead of civil ensigns, the anvils fly flags that bear the name of the forge. I shout down to my brother. I describe the anvils on the bay and their different colored flags. Each flag bears the same name. It is the proudest moment of my life. We have expanded the forge.

My buttocks tighten with joy. I rock. My buttocks burn. I feel hard irregularities beneath my buttocks. I am standing up, looking out at the bay, but I am also lying down, feeling hard irregularities with my buttocks. Suddenly I am dizzy, sensing myself upright, then supine, upright then supine. My breathing comes in gasps. I roll over and heave, but only air comes out of my throat. The air is hard as rock and hurts me as it pushes from my cavity. I push the rocks of air from my throat. When I am finished, I stumble to the house. The air is gray and damp. I hesitate at the door of the house because I remember having grown. I fit easily through the door. My brother is sitting at the table. He has been sitting there all through the night. I cannot tell if his eyes are opened or closed. As I climb into bed my heart hammers in threes, three quick hammers, the blacksmith's signal that the striker must stop. I realize I am holding a rock in my hand.

In case customers come while my brother is down at the bank, I stay at the forge. I do not mind. It is a good opportunity to repair the champion's knife. Often at night my brother leaves the fire alive in the hearth, banked under ashes. This morning the fire is out. I shovel coal on the old fire, two shovelfuls of the good wet coal my brother uses so sparingly. I mix pine twigs with the coal. I light the fire and pump the bellows. The fire is dark and big. The smell is strong. The fire is unwell. The smell fills the forge. I have forgotten the champion's knife. I run to the house. The door is closed, the windows are closed. The air inside the house smells bad.

The champion's knife is changed when I pull it from between the bed mat and frame. It is not a knife at all. It is a broken file. There is no cutting edge on the file. I am certain the champion's knife was a knife. It has changed. My brother must have taken the champion's knife and replaced it with a broken file. I should be able to make the file into the champion's knife. I have never been in the forge without my brother or our father. I like the way the fire smells, strong and unwell. I grind both sides of the file. I put the file in the fire. When the file is red, I take the file from the fire. I drop it in the tub. Maybe I should have bent the file over the horn of the anvil and hammered the file. The file is not shaped exactly like a knife. It is better than a knife because it does not have a handle. I will carve and paint the handle for the champion's knife. I will paint the handle yellow or blue.

Standing at the double doors of the forge, I see the doctor coming up the hill. The doctor moves quickly as though he is in a great hurry. The doctor is thin but he moves quickly. Doctors must be thin and quick. They are summoned in the early morning or late at night and they always respond quickly to the summons. The doctor is busier and busier in town. The town is prosperous and the doctor's practice is thriving. I remember leading the doctor to the forge. I remember following the doctor through the streets between the bakery and the doctor's office. I had difficulty keeping up. The doctor was almost running, his black doctor's bag in one hand, the white baker's bag of seeded rolls in the other.

The doctor's face is beaded with sweat. There is no shade on the hill and the path is steep. The doctor comes right up to the double doors. He wipes his face with a white cloth from his vest pocket. He is looking for my brother. He peers around me into the forge. The ground does not vibrate, the air does not vibrate, no sounds come from the forge, but the doctor expects to see my brother. He does not know my brother at all. Even using his medical equipment, the doctor will never know anything about my brother if he does not know to listen as he approaches the forge.

When I tell the doctor that my brother has gone to town to buy iron, the doctor shakes his head. My brother should not go to town without making an appointment to see the doctor. If my brother made an appointment, he could buy iron and also stop by the doctor's office for tests. Even though the doctor is thriving and has expanded his practice by opening a new office in the foreign district, he would most like to have my brother for a patient. Only then would he feel challenged, as though he were growing as a doctor. A doctor wants the best possible patients. That is how a doctor grows. The doctor lowers his voice so I step closer to the doctor. I cough. The doctor laughs. He has been cleaning his medical equipment with a powerful solvent. He tells me that the smell of the solvent makes some people cough. He sniffs at his wrists, nodding to indicate that he detects the smell of the solvent. I am happy that I am sensitive to the doctor's solvent and that the doctor has confirmed my sensitivity. He is looking at me with bright eyes. I cough again. My sensitivity is of interest to the doctor.

The doctor sets his black doctor's bag on the ground and opens the golden clasp. He takes a newspaper clipping from his bag. He has clipped our father's obituary for my brother. The doctor waves away my thanks as he hands me the clipping. I want the doctor to know that I will not burn the clipping on the hearth. I blow on the clipping with my lips to remove any powders and I press the clipping flat on my chest and smooth its creases. What else can I do to show the doctor that I cherish his clipping? The doctor does not seem satisfied. He paces just outside the double doors of the forge. He links his hands behind his back. I am impressed by the doctor's pacing. The sun is strong but he paces quickly. Sweat beads on the doctor's face. If the doctor will wait until sundown my brother will return from the town. I am certain he will bring the meat and the bread and we can prepare dinner for the doctor. I will give the doctor my portion. If the doctor takes an interest in me, it will not matter what I eat. I will become the doctor's patient. I will grow more quickly under his care.

The doctor cannot be persuaded to wait until sundown. He is disappointed in my brother. He is disappointed that my brother did not come to his office for the memorial service. It would have been right for my brother to hear the doctor eulogize our father. At the memorial service, the doctor said many kind things about our father. He shared anecdotes about our father that my brother should have heard. He talked about playing mumblety-peg with our father, about how our father always threw the knife skillfully. Every time the blade stuck deep in the mud. Our father was impressive to the woman the doctor loved. Our father took the woman from the doctor because he thought it would be amusing to have the woman. After our father made love to the woman the doctor could not satisfy her. No man could satisfy the woman but our father.

I want to know the physical details about the woman but I do not want to interrupt the doctor. The doctor talks on and on. He never pauses. He already knows everything he wants to say because he said it once before, at the memorial service. Finally I interrupt the doctor. I do not ask about the woman. I ask the doctor if he can help me to grow. I tell the doctor that I eat meat. I work hard in the forge. Nothing has improved me. My hands are still too small to grip the sledge efficiently. The doctor examines my hands. I have never been examined by a doctor. The doctor's hands are very cool and smooth. The doctor says my hands are not getting enough blood. There may be a blockage or there may be too much blood going somewhere else. He asks me if I masturbate. I know what the doctor means. I feel the blood move suddenly in my neck and face. I shake my head like I do not understand. It is believable that I do not understand. No one has ever said that word to me before, but I understand the word. I see the doctor's thin lips shape the word and I understand. I shake my head. The doctor comes closer. This time I do not cough. I hold my breath. The doctor squeezes me through my pants. He taps me through my pants with the tips of his fingers. He bends so that his ear, cheek, and jaw press against the front of my pants. I rest my weight against the doorframe but the doctor straightens up and takes me by the shoulders. I am almost as tall as the doctor. I must be stronger than the doctor, but I cannot break his grip on my shoulders. The doctor makes me stand up, supporting my own weight. He reaches into his black bag and takes out a jar. He smears the contents on his hands. He tells me to lower my pants. I lower my pants. The doctor tells me to walk into the forge and I turn and walk very slowly so I do not trip in my pants. I hear the doctor's brisk steps behind me then I feel him behind me. He pinches my wrists with his fingers and lifts my arms away from my sides. He puts my hands on the anvil. He moves his arm back and forth between my legs until I set my feet far apart. It is hotter by the anvil. The fire I made in the hearth is too big. Smoke makes my eyes tear. The fire is unwell. The air smells strong. I look at my small hands on the anvil. Sweat rolls down the insides of my arms. It is hard to breathe the smoke. I breathe. The doctor says there is no blockage.