“Fuc…”
The curse came out halfway, interrupted by the speaker’s throw of his hammer and drill. Lou stormed out of the shop, followed by unsurprised eyes of his co-workers. Some picked up the mess, others gathered to say a few words about the situation, before quickly returning to work. Everyone at Mike’s Carpentry knew Lou and his moods. Sometimes he was angry at a customer’s request, other times he just wanted an excuse to leave early and go drinking. And there was nothing anyone could do about it, Lou being the best carpenter Mike’s had for years. But that attitude was also the reason Mike’s only place that would have him.
Mike’s Carpentry was supposedly downtown shop, but its position between the rural and urban held it back from being anymore than medium-size. Plus, people were less and less into hand-made, woodwork. Mike’s also made boats, something which used to fly out of the shelf were now made to order, and barely an order would come in a 6-month period. The name itself, “Mike’s Carpentry,” was something the community came up with, since Mike himself, and whoever knew him, had been long been dead. The rumours were, you can say a lot about Mike, being clever with names was not one of them, because for awhile the shop was just “Carpentry.” Some said Mike wasn’t even his name, just something he came up for himself because he hated his family’s name. He used it so much, practically forcing the name on everyone, and soon he enough was Mike.
One of the stranger thing about Mike’s Carpentry was that the carpenters would work there for years. Something you hear on a regular basis at the shop was “youngsters nowadays ain’t into this kinda job no more. And a tradition at Mike’s is, we ain’t hiring no temp. If you’re here, you’re here for the long run.” Mike was said to be 97, and Adam was now 78. “The old folks ain’t here for the profit, and most are recommended. We ain’t got no money for adverts on the internet.” “Some are here just to not get in the way of their kids.”
Everyone has their own circumstances, but one thing in common among Mike’s carpenter was that they are above 50, the age when the job they pursued during youth failed to bring enough money. They all have a story of a glorious past, some you read about in books and see in movies. One of the more normal ones were Sung used to paint portraits on demand, some of his works still dawn the walls of the bars and stores in the neighborhood. But he couldn’t keep up, not with the time; Ms. Janet went to the same Art University with Sung. She was a bit younger, and saw a brighter future in drawing signs and stops and adverts… She suffered the same fate as her schoolmate, when modern printing came along; Will was an electrician, and his stories of the mountains and seas where he worked at captivated the community. Then there were Lou, an ex-FBI-spy, Connor, ex-chef at a famous restaurant, Doug, ex-crime-scene-cleaner…
This was also the strangest thing about Mike’s Carpentry: the carpenters would proudly talk about their past lives, but never a word was said about the job that was keeping food on their table right now. Maybe the word “carpenter” itself was a bit of an overexaggeration for these folks, because most of them, besides Lou and Adam, were in-training. Given their age, they started a very meticulous and labour-demanding line of work when their eyes could barely tell a nail from a screw. The youngest here was Kid, another name that came from the community, who was 50. He was supposedly an ex-con, served 20 years for murder, and drifted to Mike’s all the way from Indonesia. Adam, like Mike before him, was kindhearted, and he would take them all in, those he called “lost souls.” Life as it was, rumours couldn’t be helped, and people started calling the shop a charity, or worse an elderly care. If Adam felt sad about those comments, he never let it showed.
The busiest time in Mike’s was lunch, when everyone shared a big dining table and their food, a true international buffet. When they couldn’t finish, they left it for the Kid, who slept at the shop and acted as its guard. Sung, however, often eat alone, a tub of rice and meat, declining invitations of all sorts. “My food can’t really be pitched in with everyone. It would shame me to join” – he said once.
After lunch, they would find a corner to sleep, while Kid learned to read and write from whoever was available. Being closest with him geographically, Sung took up the role most often, teaching him both English and Chinese. Kid cried when he was able to read his mother’s letters.
In the afternoon, when the bell rang marking 6p.m., they would gather, men and women, at the local bar. Once the bartender dared asked why they didn’t go home to their wife and children, the almost-carpenters answered with silence. Beside Kid and Sung who never married, the rest either left their spouses, or themselves being left. The children were worse, some of them would say. Once, Adam kept crying about how he was “unlovable by anyone.”
Nothing much ever happened at that small shop. Recently, Adam passed the key to Kid for a few days and went on a “vacation.” Turned out, he went to the hospital with a cancer diagnosis. It was the type and stage that the doctors were no longer prescribing medicines and treatments, instead told him to eat whatever he wanted, and say whatever he wanted to say to whoever he wanted to tell it to. Lou apparently knew this, and had been visiting his boss everyday.
Adam died not long after.
Mike’s Carpentry was quieter, sadder that day. They were used to missing a person or two from time to time, but…