Tobi Alfier

Tobi Alfier

Mortise and Tenon

Early dawn, and the only sounds are soft clinking noises through the walls from the soup kitchen around the corner. There’s a dampness that hasn’t ceased since last night, when Josh reached his shoreline destination, found a kindly church and snuggled up in his jacket across an empty, narrow pew.

After a blessing of a bowl of hot oats he’ll explore, hopefully find a cheap room with sounds of the sea and some work to help him pay his own way before he returns home as promised to the woman who holds his heart. Some people need to drift into another life and never come back. Not Josh.

Josh loves to accomplish with wood what chefs are called to do with tastes—change lives from dreary to magnificent. His hands bear scars from the work, but not enough callouses to tell anyone’s story. He’ll find that experience here, in this city he’s never before stepped foot in, along the beach he’ll call home for a while.

Josh watches the shoreline as barges fix the edge of the world to the sea, the way a neat mortise joins securely—he knows someone will be grateful for this knowledge as their weary arms rest after a humble workday. He catalogs these for future— a woman stopping mid-stride to perfect lipstick a deep shade of mahogany, sweet dark music in a polished bar and the stories

heard within, the symmetrical indent of a boilermaker, glass inside glass. Most important—how these make Josh feel so he can bring them home with him. He promised he’d leave before winter because the snow here falls bitter, and white is merely the color of pine without luxury. The apprentice will leave the last room he’ll ever rent—return to his destinies.