After the pounding din, the silence was riveting. Hung had just walked in and was standing in the kitchen, his face bearing an expression frozen between the hopeless smile one might give an implacable predator, and utter shock teetering on anger. Michael and I were on our knees in the sunroom, more than halfway through tearing up the tile floor he had laid the day before. It had taken the two of us the better part of an hour that morning to wrap our minds around what we had begun to do — Hung had just walked in. And it was his work.

The day before, as intimated by the intro to Eagle Lake below, Hung had arrived to put the second — arguably the first — major finish material into our addition, applying our subtle but zooty Italian tile to the slab he’d laid just two days before, in a complicated randomized pattern dreamed up by yours truly. Michael and I spent over an hour with him strategizing and doing initial layout, and then with a half dozen tiles in place, Hung’s momentum building, I finally went off to work, excited by what I’d find when I returned that night.

Midday, Tricia called me at work to diminish my expectations. “You know, it won’t be exactly straight. The pattern is very complicated, and he’s a little off. The middle won’t be exactly in the middle. Just so you know.” Implication being, there’s no going back, but it’s barely noticeable, except to the adaptationally-challenged, such as myself. But I talked her through the intent, explained where certain compromises were expected, and she became convinced it was alright after all, just a matter of perspective. Nevertheless, after a late night lighting mockup, I came home somewhat tense.

The tile looked great. I could begin to see how the room would be when it was finished. Yes, the center tile looked maybe a half an inch off center. More of a problem was a slight hook at the end of the middle row, but taking up and adjusting a few tiles would fix that. I went to bed content.

When I awoke, I had work to do in the addition to make ready for another thing Hung would do. But as I set about it, something about the floor was bugging me, and I stopped, stood back for a better view. It couldn’t be, but that “hook” from the night before now seemed like the whole row, indeed, the whole floor, was on a slant. But surely that was optical illusion — out came the tape measure. And 5 minutes later, I was in the dark pit of despair, my dream and vision in ruins about me, barely the strength of limb or will to dial Michael’s number. “It’s crooked. The pattern’s perfect, but the whole floor’s rotated relative to the walls — it’s off by well over an inch across the 12 feet, and in both axes. I wanna die.”

Okay, melodramatic, but I’d schemed and sweated the tiniest of details for almost three months, and now, the first unfudgeable thing — arguably the grandest and most noticeable treatment — had failed the simple tests of centered, and parallel to the walls. After some half-hearted fact-finding, Mike said, “I’ll be right over.” On a day he had other plans, and for a task second only perhaps to coming over to shoot a friend’s mortally wounded dog.

It took us awhile to come to grips. We measured and rationalized, pondered keeping it, visions of jack-hammering up shattered tiles, and confrontations with Hung keeping us from declaring the right thing to do. But then Mike tentatively put the claw of a hammer under a tile, and miracle — it lifted, intact. The way was clear. We began the grim but oddly invigorating task of reversal, the first step to setting things to right. Brutal, ugly work, but way easier than it should have been (though that in and of itself was some cause for concern, later dispelled). And then Hung walked in.

He never said a word about it all day. After I explained the problem, pointed out the benchmarks, theorized about where “we” might have gone wrong, all with a conciliatory smile on my face, he just went out to the garage, got his demo tool and squatted down to erase his previous day. Occasionally he’d stop and glance about in perfect poker face, only by unattributable inference in any shock or disbelief. I finally went to work, leaving Mike to labor on with Hung in the silence only by definition punctuated by the percussive cacophony of demolition, the human aspect impenetrable and cloying.

There was much intimate and revealing conversation that day, I’m told. Mike learned much about Hung’s early life and flight from Viet Nam 20 years ago with his fledgling family. But the subject of the task at hand was tabu and impregnable. We may never know why, where this all sits in Hung’s psyche. And I care.

It is perhaps undemonstrable by any means that could be called scientific that one’s spirit, persona and attitude imbues the works of one’s hands with an energy sensible even to those who do not believe in “energy”. Great care and optimism, pride and comradeship had swelled the karma of this space, and while I am without shame or doubt heavily invested in the details and attached to my physical vision, so too am I committed to the experience of everyone working here being informed and uplifted by that which all others have brought to this work. I had my own darkness to wrestle with, but Hung’s own weighs on me.

I can’t reach into his darkness, if even there is any of that of which I worry. I can only hold out light. When I got home that evening after the demo was done, I worked into the wee hours laying out guidelines, drawing maps, writing instructions (just a few, really). And I went to work without staying to coach Hung, trying to simply create trust. When he arrived, Tricia said to him, “I’m glad you’re back.” He might, after all, have decided, enough’s enough. But I think that touched him, and he threw himself into it, and it’s beautiful. I hope he comes to understand my need to rewind, even, perhaps to share it, if only post facto. But when I took the picture below yesterday evening before beginning the new layout, it came out looking not so much like the wreck it felt like at the time, but rather like the fresh possibility it in fact was, both in our say-so and in actuality.

Implements of destruction, some new, at rest, a day’s work undone.