“Spring on the Brain”

below the words was an exact match of the other table laying on its side in the Johnsons’ driveway. Well, except for the broken leg. Cal huffed and shook his head in disdain. He could still remember the day when the young couple had bought that table last year in the middle of November. Four years of woodshop and his former student still thought buying Ikea furniture was a good idea. As though he could tell Cal was watching, Charlie looked up from the cheap table and gave Cal a sheepish wave. Cal waved back, grimacing a smile at the younger man until he turned back to his work.

“Young people,” he grumbled. “No one appreciates good furniture these days. It’s all this cheap crap that breaks in a couple of years. I made our dining table forty years ago and it’s still as sturdy as the day I made it.”

Cal turned to look at Leah, expecting to see the fond, exasperated smile she always got when he went on his tirades about modern-day furniture. A lump of hardened sap caught in his throat as he saw the empty rocking chair beside him. Leah had always said the red cherry wood gleamed like rubies in the sunset. It had been one of her favorite anniversary presents.

Cal ran a rough hand across his face, his eyes burning with tears that refused to fall. Leah would never sit in the chair again. Would never set the food out on their table again or complain about the sawdust he tracked into the house. His heart ached like hollowed-out wood, empty and lifeless. The EMTs told him it had been quick and painless. A heart attack in her sleep. Cal was glad her passing was easy, but he had never wanted to wake up to find his wife of fifty years lying next to him as stiff and cold as a piece of driftwood. 72 years old and he was a widower.

Dragging his hand away from his face, Cal finished off the can of lemonade and stood up.

It was time to head in. Cal kicked his boots off next to the front door out of habit. His wooden toes clacked against the hardwood floor, the only sound in the house as he made his way down the hall to the living room. His eyes caught on the picture hanging on the fireplace mantle. It was of him and Leah on their wedding day. His wife was caught midlaugh, her blonde curls thrown back and her face glowing with joy. He was standing next to her, smiling down at her with a look of awe in his eyes, like he couldn’t believe that such an amazing woman had decided to marry a lug like him.

Cal stumbled over to the picture, his hands trembling as he laid a hand on the frame. The good old days, back when he had mahogany brown hair and his days flourished with young love and adventure. His eyes trailed to the other pictures on the mantel, most of them scenes of him and Leah on their various vacations. The rest were pictures of him and his wife with some of their favorite students. To Leah, her students were like the children she could never have. Leah had always wanted to have a big family after growing up as an only child. Finding out she couldn’t have one had been devastating. Cal could still remember the utter helplessness he had felt while watching the hope in Leah’s eyes die when she heard the news. For a while he had feared it would

destroy their marriage. Leah had been ready to leave him, saying that he deserved someone who could give him children. He had held her to his chest countless times as she cried herself to sleep over it. Cal had cried with her, griefstricken to see her desolation as he reassured her that he loved her more than anything and that being unable to give him children didn’t change that fact.

Cal let his hand fall from the picture frame, a wry smile on his face. It had taken a while to convince his stubborn wife of that fact, but he had managed eventually. He had liked the idea of kids, little boys with Leah’s blond hair and little girls with his stubborn jaw, but at the same time, a small part of him was glad that they never had children. The Oakheart line and curse would end with him. He never dared tell Leah that. He couldn’t imagine ever living his life without Leah. Cal grimaced at the thought and turned away from the pictures. Afterall, he didn’t need to imagine life without Leah anymore, he was living it.

He staggered to the phone and dialed his lawyer with clumsy fingers. The man didn’t pick up, no surprise considering the time, so Cal left a message letting him know about Leah’s death and that he would need to enact the funeral arrangements they had discussed previously before hanging up.

Cal left the living room and went straight to the bedroom. He didn’t feel hungry, his stomach heavy and sore as though he had inhaled a bucket of sawdust. Springs creaked under his weight as he collapsed on the bed, still dressed and covered in sawdust. Cal rolled onto his side, pressing his nose into the pillows. He could barely make out the scent of the perfume that Leah had loved to wear through the smell of fresh-cut wood. Apples and apricots.

He was making a complete mess of the pristine white cotton, but Leah wasn’t there to scold him about getting the sheets dirty anymore. Cal stared at the empty space in the bed beside him, feeling the heavy ache of his old bones. He couldn’t feel his toes anymore, his feet numb blocks of wood. That same numbness was beginning to creep up his legs. His heart beat sluggishly in his ears like a timer slowly counting down. He wouldn’t need to worry about clean sheets for much longer.

……………………………………..

The morning sunlight danced across Cal’s face as he slowly opened his eyes and groaned.

His body ached and cracked as he struggled to sit up. A spark of fear filled Cal’s heart with the realization of how rigid his joints were. Had the change sped up during the night? He needed more time, he still had work to do. Slinging his legs over the side of the bed, Cal ignored the pain screaming through his nerves as he forced himself onto his feet. He staggered a few steps forward before catching himself on his dresser and slowly straightening all the way. His back cracked and snapped at the motion while his joints shrieked in protest. Cal moved stubbornly forward despite his body’s objections. He was running out of time.

Cal caught sight of his reflection in the mirror as he left the bedroom. The sawdust

from the day before had dried and hardened, turning his skin stiff and hard like the cocobolo he was working with and his white hair muddy brown. He looked like a living version of one of his wood sculptures. Cal didn’t have time to care.

Hobbling out to his shop, Cal was relieved to find that his limbs moved better the more he used them. The stiffness had been from all the hard work yesterday. He still had time.

He ran his hands across every corner of the carved lid, smoothing out sharp edges until the wood was as soft as velvet. Brushing away the leftover sawdust, Cal pulled out a jar of polyurethane and a few brushes. Dipping a brush into the can, Cal began to paint the wood with long smooth strokes. It gave the rich red and orange of the Cocobolo a gleaming shine. It took him most of the morning as he struggled to wriggle the brush into each and every dip of the lid’s wood carvings. His fingertips were as glossy as the wood by the time he finished, and his back ached from being hunched over for so long.

Leaving the lid to dry, Cal trekked to the other end of his workshop where the rest of the casket lay. It wasn’t the first time he had made a casket for someone, people occasionally commissioned them from him over the years. Cal didn’t charge nearly as much as the mortuary did and federal law required funeral homes to accept caskets purchased from outside sources no matter how much they complained about the lost profit. After she got over the oddity of his wedding gift, Leah said she liked the idea of being laid to rest in a casket he had made for her. A final piece of his craft to accompany her for the rest of her eternal sleep. Death had been a thing they talked about more and more as the years passed and they grew wrinkled and whitehaired. He had always pushed it off, laughing about how they still had a few more decades left. Now he didn’t have any time at all.

Turning his attention to the box of the casket, Cal worked it over with the same care he had the lid. It went quickly, the body lacking the intricate curves and angles that his brush had struggled to fill in on the lid. The old man could feel himself starting to slow down, his heartbeat dragging in his ears. His joints were growing more and more rigid as time passed and it hurt to move them. Cal ignored the pain as best he could, his hands growing as stiff and steady as the wood he polished. Rubbing his wooden fingers together, Cal let more of his power seep into the wood. The polyurethane dried instantly.

The wood gleamed in the bright lights of the shop. It looked almost like blood, as though he was pouring out his blood as well as his life into the one final piece of work. It was dark outside. Had it really taken him so long? Cal forced his stiff fingers to curl around the edges of the lid and heaved it into the air with a groan.

Swinging the casket closed, Cal stepped back to examine his work. He stared at it, the wood glowing in the artificial light of his shop. It was a masterpiece, one of the finest things he had ever made. A weary, satisfied smile cracked through the stiff skin of his sawdustcovered face. He was done. The mortuary would

be there tomorrow morning to pick it up. They would take care of lining the inside with blue velvet before getting his wife’s body ready for the funeral the following day. He wasn’t sure who would show up. It would be a small affair, both his and Leah’s parents were already long dead, and they didn’t have any other family. Charlie and Claire would be there, along with a few old friends who were able to make the journey. Maybe even a few more old students of his and Leah’s. It didn’t really matter to Cal. He slid a stiff, wooden hand across the smooth surface of the casket. This right here was his final farewell.

Cal laid a kiss on the wood before turning away. Grabbing a lemonade from the little fridge, he left the shop door open as he returned to the house. That way the mortuary would have no problems getting the casket if he didn’t get up in time. If he got up at all.

Charlie was waiting for him outside. The young man leapt back in surprise at Cal’s appearance.

“S-sorry Mr. Oakheart! Er- Cal! I was just wondering, I mean I wanted to ask…” rambled Charlie as he strangled a baseball cap between his two hands. Cal sighed. It looked like the awed wonder from yesterday had finally worn off. He wondered how long the younger man had been dallying outside trying to decide whether or not to intrude. Well, he didn’t mind now that his work was finished. It seemed he had some time for questions after all.

“Follow me,” ordered Cal. He turned and trudged off towards the woods at the back of his property. Cal knew the path by heart despite having only visited the Cocobolo clearing a handful of times over the years. A shiver of warmth passed over him as the clearing opened up in front of him. The trees circled around a spiral of hunched-over figures sitting on stumps in a space that was too large to fit naturally in the small strip of trees they had entered. Cal wove his way to the central figure. Weather and time had worn away the edges and details until you could barely tell the figure had been a man at all.

“This is, or was, my ancestor Elias, the first of the Oakhearts. The first to bear our gift and our curse,” murmured Cal. He moved on, describing great-great-great grandfathers, uncles, and aunts. He stopped at a startling young face, lacking the many wrinkles that most of the statues possessed.

“This was my Uncle Dallen. His wife died in a car accident just a year after they married.

He was twenty-five. His death is one of the youngest cases of the curse that I can recall. That’s the risk we take, when we choose to tie our lives to one person. For a while, I wondered why we chose to marry at all. Then I met Leah.”

“What happens when an Oakheart dies before their spouse?” asked Charlie.

Cal shrugged and said, “We don’t. I think it’s a part of our curse. We get an uncanny sense of luck that lets us avoid dying and, in return, we always have to watch our spouse die before us.”

“I can’t imagine choosing to fall in love and get married when it means you could die at any

moment,” said Charlie. He shifted from side to side, shoulders slightly hunched, as his eyes flicked away from the smooth planes of Dallen’s face to the ground before inevitably being drawn back to the visage of the young man. Charlie was only twenty-eight himself, not that far off from twenty-five. Cal could vaguely remember being scared of the same possibility around his age.

Cal studied the younger man for a moment before saying, “Love isn’t something that you choose not to do. What if you had this curse? You could avoid any chance of attachment, go off and live as a hermit somewhere. Are decades spent alone worth giving up every memory, whether measured in months, years, or decades, you have with Claire?”

Charlie blinked at Cal’s words. He turned his head away from Cal, toward the direction of his home with Claire, gaze unfocused as he considered the question. The lines of unease creasing his face slowly surrendered to a serene smile.

“No, I suppose I wouldn’t give that up,” murmured Charlie. Cal smiled back.

“No, I didn’t think you would.”

He tugged the younger man away from Dallen and led him past the last couple of figures to the final statue, the one furthest out from the center of the clearing. He traced the familiar features and lines with a wood thumb that rasped against the cocobolo face. Every pore in the skin was distinct, every eyelash defined, the details barely touched by the passage of time. Cal would be like that soon.

“This is my father,” said Cal. He tipped the bottom of his can of lemonade towards the empty stump sitting a little ways away. “And that will be my place, once the curse finishes its work.” Cal held his wooden hand out for Charlie to see.

Charlie grasped Cal’s wooden palm with trembling fingers. Cal could hardly feel the pressure of his touch as the younger man traced the whirls of wood grain that replaced wrinkles and fingerprints.

“How is this even possible?” whispered Charlie.

Cal shrugged and gently pulled his hand away. “Hell if I know the real reason, but as far as the stories go, love.”

“Love? Really?” Charlie’s voice was dry with disbelief.

“Like I told you yesterday, when we marry our spouse, we give them our heart. When they die, we bury it with them.” Cal’s chest echoed like a hollowed-out tree, a wide cavern that Leah no longer filled. More to himself than to Charlie, he whispered, “In a way, it is as much a blessing, as a curse, that we follow after them so soon.”

“Wait, so you’re dying?” asked Charlie. An oddly fragile expression settled across his face.

Cal waved a wooden hand at the statues filling the clearing. “I thought that was pretty clear, kid.” remarked the old woodworker. He turned to leave the clearing.

“Is there any way we can stop it!?” demanded

Charlie as he stumbled to catch up with Cal.

Cal slowed and twisted back around to face the younger man. He laid his heavy hands on the other’s shoulders. “Charlie, son, I’m seventy-two years old. I just lost the constant companion of fifty of those years. Why would I want to stop it?” Cal stated gently.

Charlie’s jaw clenched and his head dropped to look at the ground. His shoulders drooped as he whispered, “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to, not right now,” replied the old man. Cal released his shoulders and moved back towards the house. The clearing faded away behind them. “Not for a good many years with that sweet Claire of yours, if you’re lucky. Come on, I’ll walk you back.”

………………..

Cal watched from his front door as Charlie crossed the street to his own home with a bowed head. He was a good kid, one of the best Cal had taught. They had never had children of their own…but then, what really defined a son or daughter. Was it flesh and blood? Or something else? If he had had a son, Cal liked to think he would have been a little bit like Charlie. Leah would have liked the idea of that.

He sank into his chair on the porch, his wood joints creaking in protest as they bent.

Popping the tab of the can, Cal took a long sip of the now warm lemonade before settling back to stare out at the street. It was dark and quiet, the lights in all of the houses turned off. In the faint light of the moon and stars, Cal could make out the broken table still sitting in the deep blue shadows of Charlie’s driveway.

“The furniture these days, it’s all cheap and shoddy work, ya know Leah?” he croaked fondly, his throat rough from sawdust. “It never lasts for long, not like the things I make. Young people these days don’t know how to appreciate things that last a lifetime and more. Though I suppose my old things will come to an end someday as well. I wish they wouldn’t, but they all do eventually, right Leah? Just like us.”

Cal leaned back in his chair, his spine groaning as he looked up into the stars, wondering if Leah might be one of them now, staring down at him. He really ought to make his way to the Cocobolo clearing. It was tradition to let the change finish there. He felt overwhelmingly tired though, the strain of his two long days of work finally settling in. His muscles were rigid and sore, the pain of too much work seeping through his bones like tree sap. Cal felt his eyelids droop, feeling like they were carved from heavy oak. The magic of the clearing would see to it that his body made it there one way or the other. The night sky vanished behind the lids of his eyes as Cal felt himself drift away into a peaceful darkness filled only with the gentle creak of the empty rocking chair sitting beside him.