If I Had a Hammer

This short story by Bob Vander Lugt won our “America Is…” Show Off Contest. Bob writes short fic­tion and lives in Michigan. Enjoy!

Photo by Chang Liu

Every Sunday Ray watches the cars parade into East Presbyterian’s park­ing lot.  Usually he sits on the small, screened porch, cof­fee propped on his knee.  On hot morn­ings, like this one, Ray wears a thread­bare t-shirt and grey box­ers.  He assures Grace no one can see him through the screen.  She smiles and shakes her head.

He knows the cars, their order of arrival. The old folks come first, park­ing near the doors and grip­ping the iron rail­ing as they nav­i­gate the steps.  The young fam­i­lies pull in next, assem­bling car seats and dia­per bags, herd­ing tod­dlers through the door.  Then Grace walks out on the porch and stops beside him.  Often she brings him breakfast—toast topped with a shiny egg.  Sometimes she just stands qui­etly until he turns.  “I’m going now.” She says.  She holds her small black purse tight against her trim waist.  She still looks so good, Ray thinks.  “Wish you’d come,” she says.  Ray nods and smiles.  She leans to kiss him.

“Maybe next week.” Ray receives her kiss.  He runs his big hand lightly around her back.  “I’ll make din­ner.”  He watches her push the screen door open, descend the steps, and cross the street.  She stops out­side the heavy arched doors of the church and turns.  He knows she can’t see him, but she waves any­way.  Then she swings the big door open and disappears.

When they first moved here, thirty-four years ago, Ray went too, slip­ping into the back pew, stand­ing and singing and always fol­low­ing Grace’s lead.  He shook hands and endured intro­duc­tions, wait­ing while she made con­ver­sa­tion, learn­ing those strange peo­ple with their flat vow­els and stern faces.  Back then, it was a church of car­pen­ters and trades­men.  New in town and out of work, Ray hedged about his past, unsure of their view of the long and now ended war.  Most lis­tened with­out judg­ment.  Some offered sug­ges­tions about who might be hiring.

A few days later, the black rotary phone on the wall of their tiny kitchen rang.  Grace handed the receiver to Ray and rested her hand soft on his shoul­der.  Ray lis­tened, said yes two or three times, stood, and hung the phone back in place. “One of the old men from the church.” he said. “Asked me to help fix up a house for some Vietnamese refugees.”  Grace nod­ded.  “No pay, mind you.  All vol­un­teer.”  Grace smiled and left the room.  “Now don’t go get­ting your hopes all up,” he called after her.  After a few min­utes, he went to the garage.  He shuf­fled through stacks of unpacked boxes, until he found his car­pen­ter belt.  Saw dust sifted from the empty nail pouches.  The ham­mer still nested in its loop.

Ray worked along­side the men for two weeks.  A big, bald­ing car­pen­ter with a fad­ing Semper Fi tat­too on his fore­arm ran things, hand­ing out assign­ments, check­ing work, scowl­ing often.  Ray watched the church folks, skilled and oth­er­wise, patch walls and hang doors, scrub sinks and update wiring.  Each night the house crowded with vol­un­teers, so many that the hall­ways clogged like stopped drain pipes.  Eager par­ents equipped their chil­dren with scrub brushes and brooms.  Once Ray watched a mother slap her teenage son’s face so hard, Ray winced.  Just before, Ray heard the boy mut­ter some­thing about clean­ing a house for a bunch of gooks.

One evening the father of the refugee fam­ily toured the house.  He was led around by the big car­pen­ter and a trans­la­tor, smil­ing and bow­ing, some­how stand­ing proud among all those tow­er­ing Dutch folk.  Ray retreated to the back­yard.  Shaking, he lit a cig­a­rette and squat­ted, squint­ing at the house.  His right hand formed a fist.  He forced it open and pressed it flat against his leg.

Over the next six years, three fam­i­lies occu­pied the house, found jobs, learned halt­ing but suf­fi­cient English, and moved on.  They politely attended ser­vices with their spon­sors and then slowly returned to their own reli­gious affil­i­a­tions.  They were Catholics and Buddhists and unbe­liev­ers.  Ray found per­ma­nent work with the big car­pen­ter.  A refugee him­self, Ray hung at the edges of the church.  Then, like the smil­ing peo­ple with their strange cus­toms, he qui­etly drifted away.

Ray waits until he hears music carry from the church.  He lis­tens, then rises and car­ries his cup to the kitchen.  He tugs on a pair of bat­tered jeans and strolls through the porch and down the steps.  The Sunday paper lays rolled in its plas­tic skin.  He peels it free and sits. The front page is clut­tered with war and rumors of more.  Promises of troop with­drawal. Warnings of new con­flict.  He snorts, shak­ing his head at the U.N.’s strongly worded warn­ing to Syria.  Locally, the city police declare war on street gangs.  Ray ignores the rest, then tosses it through the screen door. The music from the church stops and Ray imag­ines the preacher read­ing the scrip­ture before the ser­mon.  Above, the sun nears its peak in the steel blue sky.  He begins to walk.

Two blocks from their house, a two-story build­ing stands sur­rounded by scaf­fold­ing.  Ray stops to watch a crew of vol­un­teers, dark-haired men, some bearded, scrab­bling up lad­ders, mix mor­tar, pass con­crete blocks from gloved hand to gloved hand.  Cars crowd the dusty lot.  There is not a pick up truck in sight.
Ray had marked their progress for months.  The build­ing sat quiet for weeks at a time, then burst upward in spasms A painted ply­wood sign dis­plays the fin­ished build­ing. Its strange char­ac­ters are prob­a­bly Arabic, but to Ray they may as well be Vietnamese.  Grace has often men­tioned the church’s puz­zle­ment over this new neigh­bor.  They’ve held prayer meet­ings and invited experts on Islam to speak.  Finally, Grace and few oth­ers formed a wel­com­ing del­e­ga­tion.  “Well?”  Ray asked when she returned, “Did you build any bridges?”  Grace shrugged. “Build?”  She said, “No, but maybe we chipped away at some walls.”

A group of men assem­bles around a bunk of two-by-fours.  They begin car­ry­ing stacks of lum­ber through the arched open­ing that will be the front door.  Ray lis­tens as a saw whines, the famil­iar clat­ter of cut offs hit­ting the floor.  Then the com­pe­tent rhythm of ham­mer blows.  They’re doing all right, Ray thinks.  He stands in the shade of a big maple and watches, pat­ting his pock­ets for a phan­tom pack of cig­a­rettes.  He quit years ago, but the mem­ory lingers.

Ray crosses the street and wan­ders back.  When the first tower came down, he was at work, argu­ing with a plumber about the clumsy holes he’d just drilled through a joist.  The news from New York trick­led from the painter’s radio, but they were too busy to under­stand.  Who could make sense of planes crash­ing into sky­scrap­ers any­way?  But as the enor­mity descended, they all gath­ered around the paint-splattered radio and lis­tened, curs­ing softly, glanc­ing at the sky.  Some broke the cir­cle, sat in their trucks and called their wives.  Finally, Ray sent every­one home.

Ray stops just short of the church.  The last time he went inside, except to com­plete some repair Grace vol­un­teered him for, was the night of September 11.  People arrived through­out the after­noon, bewil­dered, in need of each other.  The pas­tor opened the doors, and by 7:00 p.m. a packed church gath­ered for prayer.  Ray walked beside Grace through those big, sun-grayed doors and stood with head bowed.  Grace wept.  The pas­tor prayed mercy on an unknown enemy and com­fort for all.  Grace reminded him of that later, when the nation roiled for vengeance and the machines of war clattered.

The music begins again, a tri­umphant hymn send­ing them out.  Ray crosses the street, angling toward the house.  Inside, he fixes a light lunch, eats his por­tion and leaves Grace’s in the fridge. Then he laces his work boots.

When Grace steps out­side, she sees Ray—carpenter’s bag slung from his shoul­der, ham­mer swinging—walking toward the mosque.

by Joe Bunting |