The Mercy Seat (45 page)

Might've been four o'clock or so, because it was already starting to frown up and get dark. What I mean, evenings was short. It was one of these overcast November gray spells, you knew it was going to be black as midnight under a iron skillet in about an hour, and the wind was fixing to whip up a little storm. Lodi was sitting there at the cold forge, working a piece of wood. He didn't have no ironwork to do, there wasn't nobody sitting around the shop waiting for him to finish up their go-devils or whatever they'd brought in for him to fix for them—now, this was highly unusual. They was always somebody in that shop. A blacksmith shop back in those days, it was pretty near like your barbershop would be in this time, or your cafe. Men just liked to gather around there, I don't know why. Well, you always had a few folks waiting for their ox team to get shod or something, but there'd be other men just happen by and set a spell around the stove where it was warm, or squat over yonder in the straw, gossiping and whatnot. They just gathered like that.

All right, see, now I'm going to have to sidetrack on this a little bit, I reckon. Y'all don't remember my dad's livery, but it was right down here yonder across the tracks—well, they was more Cedar south of the railroad in that time than north here on Main Street. The hotel and everything was down yonder, and my dad's livery was there. Well, now, when he built that place he built it for the stage stop. He didn't care to do more than shoe a few horses, and he'd stable your mule or your horse for you if you was to need to hole up at Cedar—started that for the outlaws some, though he told it he did it for the men laying the tracks—so what he put up mostly was more stable than blacksmith shop, though, sure, he had him a little handmade forge. When Lodi hired on to him, Dad had to knock out that whole north wall, and what he done, he built a new stable over yonder and opened the whole of the old part up for Lodi to have him a shop. Look here, John Lodi was about as good a woodworker as he was a ironworker —a good smith was in those days, because if you was working wagons, you was working wood—so he needed plenty room to drive them wagons in. Needed room for the big forge Daddy had hauled in from Saint Louis.

Oh, a good blacksmith was a well-respected man back in those times, he had as high a outlook as a doctor maybe, or a judge would right now. Well, you just had to have 'em, you couldn't get by without one, everything depended on him, your farming and livelihood and getting around. So, you look here at this irony a minute. John Lodi was maybe the most respected blacksmith in this whole part of the country, and they'd come from all over to have him do their work for them, wood or iron either one, they'd set around here same as they would at Hartshorne or Poteau, any good blacksmith and livery. But they never did warm to him one bit. They respected him, don't get me wrong—and the men flocked here, they hung around my dad's livery as good as any stable around, but they would settle theirselves mostly over in the barn part and watch Lodi work from there. They didn't try to pass the time of day with him nor nothing, they'd just lay out over yonder and watch. Now, Dad, he was a friendly man, always was, and they'd jaw with him and he was always glad to set a spell and talk. But it was nearly like there was a line drawn where that old barn wall used to've been. Them men wouldn't come over it hardly but just to tell Lodi what was needed, and then they'd back off. And then they called the man strange.

So anyway, this particular afternoon I'm speaking of, there wasn't no customers around and my dad wasn't around because he'd gone to Brown's Prairie for some kind of horse-trading business—now, I knew that already, I knew my dad wasn't going to be there and wouldn't likely get home before the next morning—and maybe that's how come me to go around. I don't know why there wasn't anybody else around, unless folks just knew my dad was gone and they reckoned they'd just wait to get their work done till they knew he'd got back. Well, Lodi didn't have any work he'd ought to do nor would get paid to do, and it was getting dark outside and raw—but do you think the man went on home before the snow come, like any normal man would? Not a chance of it. He was working day wages, and my daddy's day wages said a man worked till six o'clock, that's how Lodi'd worked it out with my dad. So even without him with a piece of work to do for nobody, he still set there in the shop. And he was working wood by the forge, and that forge was flat cold as ice. Wasn't nothing to heat that big old barn but the woodstove over yonder, you'd think he'd've gone over to sit by it, but his place was by the forge there at his bench, and that's where he set.

Well, I come in, see, and I don't know what-all I had on my young mind, I can't for the life of me remember that. Probably I just meant to watch him work a bit without my dad around to find me something useful to put myself to, I don't know. I did like to watch John Lodi work that iron; it was just like a miracle to me. I had the thought in those days that if I didn't turn out to be an outlaw I might learn me some blacksmithing, but of course I never really did. Oh, I can make you a good fitting for a mule shoe—I always did prefer shoeing a mule to a horse, even if they are ornery sonuvaguns. Their feet's just so little and neat, hardly any trimming to 'em, just give them a lick or two and that's it. You don't have no trouble with them if you know how to act—but I never did have any real skill for it. About like my dad. But you know, when you're little you'll think anything, so I thought I'd turn out to be an outlaw, but blacksmithing was my second choice.

So here I was. I blew in with that wind rising, bang! that old roughcut door slammed behind me, liked to whupped me in the butt. He looked at me, never missed a lick with the plane he was using on that piece of wood.

“Son,” he says, and nodded. Hands never stopped.

“Evening, Mr. Lodi,” I says.

He was bareheaded, and you didn't hardly ever see him like that. Well, it wasn't warm in there, not hardly, not with the forge blowed out, so I don't know why he was sitting there without a hat. He was pretty near a bald man, or he didn't have too much hair on top; you'd think he'd a been cold. I can see him just as well. Looked odd, you know, because he wasn't an old man but his forehead was near as smooth as glass, it slicked right back yonder, like what little hair he'd got was crawfishing back from his brows. His eyebrows was about as brushy as new wood. He near looked like two different men with his hat on and hat off. With it on, his eyes would go all shaded, and he'd look, in fact, if you can believe it, more like an old man than he did with that forehead shining, on account of how the shadows under his eyes would do. It was strange. Take the hat off, his eyes would lighten, he'd drop about twenty years. Isn't that something? He'd appear younger-looking with his hat off and that bald pate just a-shining than he looked with it on. Made him look . . . I don't know . . . easy. Soft, I almost want to say, though you knew good and well he wasn't a soft man—but that light forehead of his, it'd look nearly as soft as a little child's. That's how it was.

So I don't know, I felt easy with him, how he had his hat off, and—now, I don't know why, because it wasn't any too warm in there—I took mine off too, and took a step over toward him. Ordinarily I wouldn't. Ordinarily I'd do about like the rest of them, just hide and watch. Who can explain it? I just lay it off to him sitting there without a hat. But he didn't bite me or nothing, so I took another step. You know he was working by kerosene. They wasn't no electric lights in that blacksmith shop—no electric lights nowhere any closer than McAlester I reckon at that time. You just had your lanterns and your natural light from the big door, if you were in a position to stand it open, which not in that weather you were not, so the light was pure yellow yonder, sitting on top of the mounted post vise, throwing shadows, shining down on his hands. His hands were something else again. They were that big—and stubby? Looked about like they belonged to an old sawmiller, cottonpicker or something. Cracked and fissured all through, his fingers blunt as a square. He was missing the nail entirely on one finger, and the little tip was was gone off of one thumb. You wouldn't think, couldn't imagine, how he did what he did with them hands. They looked like bearpaws nearly, just big old awkward things, and he could do what he did with them. It was something. Well, his hands never paused an iota, and you know he was looking at me. He wasn't looking down at what he was doing, and here these hands went, just smoothing, smoothing that wood.

Well, maybe that was it partly. I don't know how come me to ask him what he was doing, but I did. It was strange then. He blinked, looked down at that piece of wood, and it was nearly like he just then found it sitting there. Like he never even knowed he was working it. Well, I blinked too then, looked down, got a good look at it. I seen it then. Clear as a bell. Cut-out piece of red oak, and the long end of it stuck way under the bench. Gun stock. That's what he was making. Most precisely, a rifle stock, and it was the old-fashioned kind, a muzzle loader—what you used to call your Kentucky rifle or your longrifle—and it went from here to yonder, but I didn't know it then. I couldn't see it, ever bit of it, from where I was standing, but I could see enough to recognize it. I didn't think nothing but them two words—gun stock—and I didn't know what else to think.

“What are you making, Mr. Lodi?” I asked him again, like a fool, but I couldn't think of nothing.

Still sitting there, looking down at his hands, looks up at me, surprised, like he don't even know. Just looks at me quiet a minute, don't say nothing. Then, like he's waking up from something, he shakes his head. Like a horse, you know, trying to shake loose the bit. Looks down again, starts turning that piece of red oak over and over across his lap between his hands. Says, looks up at me, says, “Why, son, I'm making you a gun.”

Well, I liked to swallowed my breath. Oh, you know I'd been after my daddy and been after him, ever night nearly. I was good and growed up ten. I believed I was due a rifle for Christmas and I believed I was going to get me a rifle for Christmas—I'd just sucked down my pistol wishing, sucked down the fact I'd be done turned eleven by then—but now, people, I had my mind set on a pretty little Winchester. I'd seen one up at Lolly's was just what I meant to have. I didn't know nothing about gunsmithing, can't say I could tell you to this day much about it and I watched him start to finish, but I knew one thing in that minute: I didn't want no damn homemade gun.

I wasn't even sure but what he meant to give me a toy wooden gun, even if I could see that that stock was as long as I was tall. Looked about like a toy, somehow, the way it was cut out flat and square, like a outline or an idea of a gun. I was just heartsick. I guess I had a face on pretty bad. I don't guess I knew how to hide it if ever I'd cared to, and I just stared at the man. He leaned over right quick then, picked his hat off the bench and put it on his head. Well, Lord, that changed him, liked to scared me to death. Whatever face I'd pulled, I reckon I put back on another'n. Lodi looked at me fierce.

He says, “Come over here a minute, son.”

What are you going to do? I's ten, and here he was, about my master as far as I knew, a big old growed-up man. Every inch of my skin was aching backwards to that door yonder where I'd come in at, but I did like he told me. Edged up to where he's sitting on that old nail keg, he gets aholt of my arm. I had this old bunchy brown coat on, I'll never forget that. It was my brother DewMan's before me and I reckon Clyde's before him. I hadn't growed into it yet, had to shove the sleeves up to get my hands out—well, that old cotton batting didn't want to shove up, it was bunched all around my elbow and arm. Lodi picks my arm up. I might've been trembling a little bit. He says, “Hold still a minute,” kindly growls at me, “He-e-ere, now,” stretches that arm out, bends it, sticks the butt of that stock up there in the crook. Well, my hand couldn't reach to the comb even, much less the place the trigger went, and Lodi eyeballs it, jerks it away, and now he just went jessie on it with the big rasp. Knocked, I don't know what, three inches and more off the butt, just laid it out the same woman shape, but shorter, near about like a half stock, and it didn't take no time. Half an hour maybe, I don't know. I was watching him close. He jerks my elbow up again, tucks the butt in there, wraps my hand around the rifle wrist. Lays my thumb on the comb. Well, you can believe it or not, people, but it was just a fit. He'd measured that stock out about like your mama'd measure you a new suit of clothes, and when he laid it back in there, it fit me like a skin.

Now, I'll tell you something, that little act turned a screw in me, and I can't explain it any better than this: I went from where I wouldn't've had a homemade gun laid out on a silver platter to where I felt it and seen it my own, same as if it was finished and cradled in my arms. Felt the heel snugged up there like I was born with it, plumb through that old heavy brown coat. I tried to lift it, sight along it, I couldn't do it—and it wasn't nothing but a stock blank, just the wood shape and nothing else to it, but I couldn't hold the sonuvagun up. Lodi had to help me. Now then, I'd had a half-dozen guns under my arm before that time—my dad's shotgun and Uncle Jack's and whatall—and I've probably had a flat hundred since, and I never in my life felt anything like it. I just changed toward it. I can't tell you how.

Well, you know what he done then, he went and fired up that forge. He did so, nearly five o'clock of an evening, he laid a load of coke in, shoveled it, went to work with the bellows. Now, you didn't do like that neither. Forges was just like anything: you didn't fire it up for a little while, you did it for the whole day's work and then you let it quit. Fuel was expensive, and it took a long time to get it hot enough where you'd want it, but you couldn't let it get too hot, you had to know just where you was at. But Lodi set that stock down, stood up and turned to shoveling a load of coal. Next thing I know he's over yonder at the iron pile, scraping and shoving things around. His back was to me then. I just had to do it, I reached out there on the bench and touched that piece of wood. That oak was as warm as a woman's belly, you'll pardon the expression, but, now, it was. It was just the very living wood. I reckon if I wasn't in love already, I sure was from that minute, and I just stroked it. Couldn't keep my hands off it. Here come Lodi, I jerked back, but he didn't even act like he seen me. He'd found him a long old piece of wrought iron, and he got them tongs cracking and put that bar in, laid on them bellows a minute. Like he's got a clock in his head or some kind of gauge, he knows just when to take it out. Goes to work with the big sledge on that heated barrel stock, he didn't have no mandrel or nothing, just laid it out on the anvil and pounded it around a broken piece of a brake rod. Just went to town.