The Big Why by Michael Winter Read Free Book Online

birch was fragile under the axe. The cracking echoed off the hills. I am the only one on this side and I wanted them to know I was at it.
    We know youre at it when there’s smoke coming out of your chimney.
    From here you can see the cup of the cove, but they can see me too. The landscape changed depending on the snowfall.
    The axe over Tom’s head, hovering. Then whipping it down on the junk. Sometimes he’d lay the wood on its belly, to split in through the stomach.
    It was hot work, and Tom stopped to take off his jersey. He pulled the jersey and shirt and undershirt all over his head and down to his wrists. And he stood there, a boy of sixteen, letting the sweat on his kidneys evaporate in the cold February air, his wrists chained by the bulk of the shirt and jersey.
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    As Tom and I rebuilt the house I had time to think of Jenny Starling. I like to ruminate on past lives when I work, to see how my life could have been different. I had known Jenny before Kathleen. I’d lived with her for six months. She had this angled forehead and she spoke quickly. I was going to marry her, but she was already married. Jenny was getting a divorce from her husband, Luis Starling. But did I ever truly think I’d marry her? I thought about this as I hammered home a ten-inch nail. I enjoyed looking at Jenny’s eyebrows. You wonder how much talent and mystery a person needs in order for you to want to live the rest of your life with her. And Jenny had a nervous tension. She had no children with Luis. Luis, of course, hated my guts. He wanted her back. Everyone wanted her to return to Luis. Jenny’s father, George Crocker, disowned her.
    We lived in Monhegan. I taught at the artists’ colony there. I built a house, a house a bit like this one. But I was not convinced by Jenny. There was something unruly about her, something in her I couldnt contain, and it worried me. So when I met Kathleen Whiting in New York, I decided to leave Jenny Starling.
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    Tom Dobie had this manner. Of holding the back of his head when he talked, and he spoke to the floor. When he came by in the morning, my greeting to him was one word: Coffee?
    I wouldnt mind, he said, checking the soundness of the windows, a coffee.
    He would, occasionally, cast out a brightness. He was bright. He was honest. He was shy. He was oblivious to how he projected himself in the world. And this is very attractive. Tom Dobie was strong but seemed to motor around in first gear: it was the potential for strength. But in moments of panic, when I needed force, he would exert himself. There were flashes of power, and then he was marked by power. Tom Dobie possessed it yet it rarely surfaced. And this was true of both the muscle and the temper of the young man.
    Thought the boo-darbies got you.
    Me: Pardon?
    The fairies. Heard your flute last night. Came right over the water. Awful nice.
    Occasionally, when the wind came up, I stayed at the Bartletts’. I had dinner with Rupert, his parents and sisters. Once, Rose Foley came over. And she sang afterwards. She was a big woman, full of life, and her breasts rose as she belted it out. Can I walk you home, Rose. Of course, Mr Kent. She was my age, a widow with two children.
    They said Bob was on his way any day now, the collier iced in at Holyrood. Tom would meet me at the Bartlett gate, Emily Edwards waved to him, and we’d walk over and I’d put on the coffee. I loved the sounds of ritual. The coffee pot clunking onto the cast iron, the sizzle of water droplets evaporating on the hob. I loved that more than the coffee. It was early March now, calm and pleasant.
    It’s strange to be over here so much, Tom said.
    And looking at the cottage, Boy, youre roughing it.
    When we entered to put on the coffee he’d stamp his feet and say, every morning, She’s all a chunk of ice!
    There was enough sun and the work was hard, so you did not want it warm. But when you stopped it was freezing. I put in the stove. There was some dry wood, so dry it