A Space As Good As Mine

A Short Story by Brady Murphy

A band-aid was wrapped snugly around my left index finger, the offending jagged piece of wood tossed into a wheelbarrow nearby, to be burned with other odd or miscalculated lengths of wood after I finished up the sub-flooring. This morning I had been up since five thirty, pulling large, heavy boxes of the dark pine wood inside. I didn’t sleep well last night, and was having trouble falling back asleep despite my late night, so I thought I’d get a head start today. Now I was about a third done with the living room, and the sun had finally risen over the trees and was blazing in through the big, picture windows overlooking the lake below, giving this room a huge, airy feeling. A person could walk into this room and feel for all the world that they are floating on that river of sunlight streaming in.

I smiled wide and one of the nails I had been holding in my mouth fell out and clattered onto the floor with a tiny clinking sound. I retrieved it absentmindedly and continued my work. Lay out a long piece of the fine dark wood, making sure the end doesn’t meet up with the end of a piece from the row before it. It matched up a little too close to the plank behind it. I thought for a moment and decided to cut the end off by a few inches to use as the starter piece of the next row, which I would need to cut at an angle in order to fit in with the pointed walls, anyway. I pulled the piece up from the ground and laid it flat on my makeshift workbench, which I had placed on the now complete section of new dark wood floor. I marked the line to cut with a small, fat pencil I fished out from my back pocket and laid it flat on the saw’s platform. I held it tightly and propped up the rest of the bending length of the wood on a paint bucket, for stability.

I activated the whirlwind of noise and took hold of the handle, lowering the blurring, whirring blade down onto the little graphite line. In just a moment and a puff of sawdust I was left with the rich, almost chocolatey smell of sawed off lumber and two pieces of wood, one small, the other long. I no longer needed to measure the angle of the wall to get the pieces right; a sixty seven degree cut diagonally across the piece of wood. I sliced the wood just as I had so many other times and tossed the little triangle of excess material into the wheelbarrow. I took the larger piece of wood and laid it out on the floor again, this time much more complacent with the length. I fitted it tightly to the brace of wood behind it, and nailed the board in at its edges, securing it in place. And on it went.

The next day I woke up around the same time, knowing full well I was not getting enough sleep, but I couldn’t help it, anyway. I had made a pot of coffee as I did every morning, the hot, rich liquid nourishing my tired eyes and lethargic limbs. I kept moving so as to keep circulation and my body in motion. I wanted to stay in motion. After about a half hour of this I had finished two and a half cups of coffee, and the morning birds began to sing their songs. ‘Time to work!’ they called out in sweet tones, ‘time to work!’. I sighed and smiled and set about with the first job. I carried in a little bundle a crowbar, hammer, and screwdriver, and walked outside.

The morning air was cool, but not cold, with summer heat and humidity still permeating the air around me, creating an ample workspace. I very tactlessly used the hammer to remove the hinge pins, letting the old, drab door swing on its hinges, a lifeless shell of the former shelter it provided. I lifted it off its hinges and laid it out on the ground, unscrewing the door hinge along the way. Then, using a knife and screwdriver, I began removing everything it once was -- molding, caulking, and all. I went back inside and retrieved the other door. And it wasn’t even ten thirty yet.

Days began to feel trivial to me. It was no longer about how much light there was in the sky or how much longer I had until night, it all became how much I thought I could accomplish in a period of time that soon became independent of traditional calendars and time measurement. I found myself working one night at four in the morning, falling asleep, and waking up around ten later that same day. Perhaps in another time, I would have felt bad or even annoyed with myself for wasting so much daylight, but then, the projects I had moved onto were not ones that required an enormous amount of light. Besides, I had rewired the outlets yesterday, so if I needed it, I could always plug in a lamp. Time bled into time, but nothing ever felt wasted to me. Every second was a second I could enjoy the beauty of my surroundings, and create and craft with my own hands. Every nail being pounded into a wooden plank was special to me, every screw screwed into a hinge like a reminder of the work I had done.

By the end, I looked over everything. The new doors, the new floors. The new countertops, the new windows. I had acquired this place, and where others scoffed at it, I saw what I could do with it. This place was my treasure, my gem. I found it as if it had called to me, knowing that someone would see in it what I saw in it. I shook my head and smiled wide. Perhaps I’m a bit too romantic about the whole thing, but I know one thing is for certain. The place was blank, cold, and empty, but I’d transformed it, made it mine in nearly every square inch, tenderly brought all of it out into the forefront of what it can be, and what it was always able to be. I did a final sweep of the place, making sure every appliance worked, the water pressure was fine, the floors did not squeak, the carpets were even, and the doors did not resist opening. After I had double, then triple checked, I was certain everything was in order.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text message. I smiled and ignored it, walking to the door, looking back inside one last time. I flicked off the lights, locked the door behind me, got in my car, and drove off. There was a bittersweet pang in my chest as I watched it recede behind me, disappearing as I turned left, a bank of pine trees erasing all but the high triangular roof. The work was done, and I could enjoy the place, fully and completely whenever I returned, which I suspect would be often. But did I love what my work had made, or did I simply love the work?