Added£0.99Add to basket(A long short story of 12394 words)
The Haiku Master
Literary
by James Roderick Burns.jpg)
Life and all its daily pleasures, hopes, frustrations - and poetry - as the years pass in a small New York state community.
1
It was ten thirty in the morning, time for coffee and donuts, but Dustin Roberts had other things on his mind. He had slipped out of the prefabricated office unit and onto the shop floor twenty minutes ago, putting up the small satin ‘Java-time!’ banner beside his computer like a friendly mailbox flag, and locking out the screen. Now a cartoon Japanese gentleman in a bamboo-print kimono alternately smiled and frowned at the empty office. Wanda was out for the morning and Steve, the techie geek in charge of the processing software, away at a conference. Dustin wouldn’t be missed.
2
By the smallest of six wood saws on the shop floor he paused, looking around. The clock he carried in his head was ringing insistently. Time to be back at the desk, Dustin. Work calling. But he stood next to the silent machine anyway.
They had shut down production till lunchtime and the saw beneath his fingers had cooled in the morning air. It felt solid and slightly oily, damp where sawdust had stuck to the metal guides. He rubbed some in his palm.
While he typed, they sliced tree trunks into precise slabs and square sections like outsize matchsticks.
3
Though he couldn’t get out on the floor when they were in production, he would sometimes slip up onto the observation platform to watch the logs rattle in from the yard, their great blunt cigar-like shapes naked as pencils in a sharpener’s mouth, then the grip of the rollers guiding each under the blade, extractors sucking away sawdust. By the time they had ground through the process there was a stack of uniform timber in the holding bin. He smiled – nature into art – and sighed, turned back to the office.
‘What is your command, my master?’ asked the Japanese gentleman.
4
As the tree fell, miles away in the centre of town, Bobbie switched on the TV for the evening carols show. She was an early riser, so were the children, but it should be finished by midnight and – well, it wouldn’t seem like Christmas without the Mormons.
She took eggnog from the refrigerator. Bobbie didn’t drink much but holidays always seemed to make them act a bit out of character. Toni had been asleep for an hour, Adam for two, and Weemie since seven o’clock, but still she could feel something bubbling under the surface. Excitement, most likely. Just that.
5
Toni was full of candy and sweet dreams of the boy next door. She never worried about gaining weight, or blemishes, as her body seemed to magically extract what it needed from the food she ate. Twizzlers, pizza, even those weird hotdogs, all sticky with sweated onion, she snuck out of 7-11 with a Super Big Gulp to go; nothing affected her. She ran through life burning calories like a spelunker’s flare. He liked that, Tommy next door, caving – pushing himself through tiny little eyeholes in an upstate cave system every weekend. She smiled and turned over in her sleep.
6
Under the covers, Adam unfolded his legs to make them come back to life. His dad had approved this particular book – not that it would have stopped him, Adam working for neighbours to fund the things that really mattered – on the grounds that it was ‘educational’, about history and whatnot, and better than reading straight comic books. That was how he talked: ‘On the grounds that …’
Adam hated his dad sometimes but loved him, too, especially when he wasn’t with those idiot poetry groupies. He found a cool spot in his blanket and sighed. The torch blinked back on...
1
It was ten thirty in the morning, time for coffee and donuts, but Dustin Roberts had other things on his mind. He had slipped out of the prefabricated office unit and onto the shop floor twenty minutes ago, putting up the small satin ‘Java-time!’ banner beside his computer like a friendly mailbox flag, and locking out the screen. Now a cartoon Japanese gentleman in a bamboo-print kimono alternately smiled and frowned at the empty office. Wanda was out for the morning and Steve, the techie geek in charge of the processing software, away at a conference. Dustin wouldn’t be missed.
2
By the smallest of six wood saws on the shop floor he paused, looking around. The clock he carried in his head was ringing insistently. Time to be back at the desk, Dustin. Work calling. But he stood next to the silent machine anyway.
They had shut down production till lunchtime and the saw beneath his fingers had cooled in the morning air. It felt solid and slightly oily, damp where sawdust had stuck to the metal guides. He rubbed some in his palm.
While he typed, they sliced tree trunks into precise slabs and square sections like outsize matchsticks.
3
Though he couldn’t get out on the floor when they were in production, he would sometimes slip up onto the observation platform to watch the logs rattle in from the yard, their great blunt cigar-like shapes naked as pencils in a sharpener’s mouth, then the grip of the rollers guiding each under the blade, extractors sucking away sawdust. By the time they had ground through the process there was a stack of uniform timber in the holding bin. He smiled – nature into art – and sighed, turned back to the office.
‘What is your command, my master?’ asked the Japanese gentleman.
4
As the tree fell, miles away in the centre of town, Bobbie switched on the TV for the evening carols show. She was an early riser, so were the children, but it should be finished by midnight and – well, it wouldn’t seem like Christmas without the Mormons.
She took eggnog from the refrigerator. Bobbie didn’t drink much but holidays always seemed to make them act a bit out of character. Toni had been asleep for an hour, Adam for two, and Weemie since seven o’clock, but still she could feel something bubbling under the surface. Excitement, most likely. Just that.
5
Toni was full of candy and sweet dreams of the boy next door. She never worried about gaining weight, or blemishes, as her body seemed to magically extract what it needed from the food she ate. Twizzlers, pizza, even those weird hotdogs, all sticky with sweated onion, she snuck out of 7-11 with a Super Big Gulp to go; nothing affected her. She ran through life burning calories like a spelunker’s flare. He liked that, Tommy next door, caving – pushing himself through tiny little eyeholes in an upstate cave system every weekend. She smiled and turned over in her sleep.
6
Under the covers, Adam unfolded his legs to make them come back to life. His dad had approved this particular book – not that it would have stopped him, Adam working for neighbours to fund the things that really mattered – on the grounds that it was ‘educational’, about history and whatnot, and better than reading straight comic books. That was how he talked: ‘On the grounds that …’
Adam hated his dad sometimes but loved him, too, especially when he wasn’t with those idiot poetry groupies. He found a cool spot in his blanket and sighed. The torch blinked back on...