Chapter One by Adam Kibbe

The Last Word

The two men stood erect in a civilian approximation of the military “at ease”, the tension most apparent in the set of their faces about their eyes, and in the drawn lines of their lips. Their handcuffed wrists dangled before them, their fingertips resting on the table, a much-needed third point of support. All senses save direct sight were focused on the figure before them ñ their eyes stared forward, blankly, into the recent past that had brought them here.

The judge looked down on the two figures with an expression usually reserved for material found unexpectedly on the bottom of one’s shoes. He’d held his disdainful gaze on them for long moments now, since the closing statements and resultant hubbub had ceased to echo in the now hushed room. When he spoke, he did not turn his attention to the person he addressed, but continued to pin the two men in place with his piercing glare. “Madam foreman, has the jury reached their verdict?”

Rising from her chair, the foreman glanced down, quite unnecessarily, at the paper in her hands. Despite the dire efforts of the lawyer for the two men, a freak statistical anomaly had generated a jury of twelve women and two men, and random chance had relegated the two men to the positions of alternates. If this were a hardship, they did not show it ñ the jury had only deliberated long enough for appearances, to fend off any appeals for a mistrial, so the alternates’ equally anomalous irrelevancy had not been theirs to bear for long. Besides, as they would now find out, they would not have sullied the unanimity. Theirs, and the eyes of the other 11 impaneled mothers, swung up to lock on the standing figure of the foreman, finally leaving the two men to stand now fully alone, even their lawyer absent, having been expelled after his closing argument, for the fracas ensuing after he, too, essentially made the prosecution’s case.

“On the charge of reckless endangerment of minors entrusted into their supervision, how do you find?” intoned the judge, the question mark all but unvoiced.

“Guilty!” came back the reply, with none of the dramatic pause of TV courtrooms. The word came out unrushed, but still with an undisguised enthusiasm.

“And on the charge of failing to come adequately to the aid of persons in need, in times of severe natural disaster, how do you find?”

“Damn guilty!” blurted the foreman, now appearing to be caught up in the release of the anger that had been (mostly) held in check throughout.

The judge swiveled to give her a warning, but only the admonishing tilt of his head and the formality of his words connoted censure. Above the rims of his glasses, dangling at the end of his nose, the twinkle in his eyes wordlessly communicated his approval.

“And on the charge of being too irresponsible to let live, how say you?”

“Oh yeahÖÖ..” she breathed. “Way guilty there, too!” “Your honor,” she hastened to add.

To be continued ………..

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By Adam S. Kibbe

I’ve nothing urgent or profound to share, alas, but the unholy duo below creeps me out, and the only way to move them down and off the ìfront pageî is by posting new entries — something the Wizard of Wacton has let languish. I do what I can.

Nature toys with us in these parts — elsewhere, too, probably, but Ptolemaic perspectives are irresistible. Barely a week ago, it was pushing 60. Then, last weekend, 6î+ of snow. Yesterday it was almost 70 — a blizzard can’t be far off.

And Michael wants to go camping.

One warm spring day some years ago, I and the Miller/Canning family left behind all the friends who wouldn’t come and drove up to Aziscohos, a revisiting of a site too cushy for the guys’ camping trip that first explored it, but ideal for an easy group getaway. Snow lingered in the shadows, but bright sun greeted us as we set up camp. And the April water was just as cold as the October lakes we usually experience.

I’m too wrapped up in work hyperdrive to yet contemplate my agreement to help Mike indoctrinate the gang of teenagers he proposes to expose to ìrealî camping. I don’t even know where we’re going (nor does he, in all likelihood), so I’ll probably just get into it there, a day or two before leaving, as usual.

But I won’t try to second guess the weather. I’ll bring a bathing suit and suntan lotion, and the usual 85 layers of warmth. And a map, in case we’re still making up our minds on the way, just as the weather here seems to be………

Adam Kibbe

Across the gap of adjoining parking spaces, and through the silencing barriers of two car windows, Dan was laughing in time with me. As we rolled down our windows to say Hi, we knew without saying we were both listening to NPRís “Wait, Wait, Donít Tell Me”. Heíd just pulled up beside me in front of Daniela’s Cantina (once Daniela’s Tacorito) in Acton, where we were meeting Mike for an impromptu lunch. “Osama bin Laden may still be on the loose, but that’s one baseball that’ll never hurt anybody again,” was among the sidesplitters in the broadcast (referring to the recent, explosive destruction of a small leather-wrapped sphere whose role in a baseball playoff game had bizarrely and ridiculously reached curse status………).

Lunch was tasty, despite Dan’s instant aversion to the Americanization of a cuisine probably never actually found this side of the Rio Grande, no matter the nationality or recency of immigration of its proprietors. But an aside with our waitress got him a slightly more acceptable meal from off the menu, and I thoroughly enjoyed my stock, grilled-vegetable burrito (defiling cheese and all). Mike let us eat much of his, so I’ll not interpret his opinion……. And after much discussion over beer, margaritas, and Mike’s virgin ‘rita (lemonade), on topics mostly engendered by The Passion of the Christ, and other such, Mike broached coming back to his place to have a look at Matthew’s car. He claimed he’d been putting off taking it to a shop for a known but undiagnosed electrical problem, confident that within the collective experience and wisdom of his wide-ranging sphere of friends, someone — he was pretty sure Dan — would be able to solve it for him.

With the hood up in the almost-warm, day-before-leap-day sun, optimism stared down realism. None of us know all that much about cars. The basics, sure, and enough to broadly discuss most topics, or identify most thingies under the hood. But to hunt down an invisible, elusive, presumably electrical problem that had started 30 years ago……………? Where to even begin?

Well, pushing it out of the icy pond in which it was marooned and getting it closer to Dan’s Maxima, with its vigorous battery, was a start. But with jumper cables applied, the merest of clicks issued from the vicinity of the dash, the umbilical for some reason insufficient to even close a solenoid. Mike assured us that time was a factor, having been here before, and so we circled around the possible underlying issues while we waited for some electrical process we couldn’t identify to take place.

For one thing, we noticed a plug of some sort loose in space. Presumably it was supposed to be engaged somewhere. And soldered into the wires that fed it was a curious, lacquered cylinder, which Dan, the ex-electrical engineer, identified as a rheostat, or variable resistor. This jogged memories that Matt’s grandfather Mack, himself once an electrical engineer, had tinkered at length decades ago when symptoms of poor starting first surfaced. This must be one of his interventions. But to what end?

And along the same wheel well, he’d soldered a capacitor from a bare place exposed on a small, blue wire, over to a body mounting bracket, and thus ground. Hmmmmmmmmmm……… More puzzlement.

After many false starts, a little more gas in the tank, and one more-patient-than-usual wait, the Beemer finally turned over and ran. Spurting fuel from a cracked line, and hesitating a bit, but clearly healthy, with its basic parts in indisputable working order. So what had happened to change its earlier rigor mortis? Well, for one thing there WAS a charge in the battery now. Why that would be important, we weren’t sure. Cars with almost dead batteries are usually easily started by jumping. But this one always goes dead again. And a voltmeter quickly showed that the Beemer’s alternator wasn’t participating. At all.

So we got out the manual’s wiring diagram (yes, they have the original manual!), which, while in large part incomprehensible to me, is at least encouragingly simple. It fits legibly on one 5 x 8 (or, being German, 13cm. x 20 cm.) page. Dan identified the key component, the alternator, which Mike and Matt had already replaced months back, from a more instinctual diagnosis. We traced every wire shown in relation to it, and lo and behold………… No ground! None. And thus no circuit. As the old alternator’s ground was missing, Mike and Matt hadn’t installed one, and while we haven’t concocted a theory for why Mack might’ve thought it unnecessary and deliberately removed it, we think we’ve at least identified why the alternator’s not charging the battery.

Then we traced the wiring from alternator to regulator. Dan did an impressive job of explaining what a regulator does, and even correctly guessed which thingie IS the regulator, and then we identified that the wires leading to the regulator end in the free-floating plug thingie……….. A second smoking gun.

Ye old regulator

A few hiccups of memory bubble up from days when Dan had more grease on his hands. When regulators go bad (and they always do), they CAN be bypassed — while important, they are not critical. And slowly we piece together what might have happened…….. When the Beemer first showed starting problem symptoms, it may well be that it was the regulator. Either because he was frugal, or because it was a German exotic in the stolid Midwest of the day, or just because he could — Mack bypassed it. But not crudely, just by crossing some wires. First he inserted the rheostat to be able to tailor the alternator’s output voltage. Then he inserted the capacitor to drain off any excess voltage into the carriage. Mystery plausibly explained. And yours truly had the last inspiration.

The capacitor showed major signs of cracking. What if the solution had actually become the problem? Dan throws the probes across the capacitor, and sure enough — a short to ground. The damaged capacitor is draining the battery, and the ungrounded alternator’s not there to feed it. Facts fall all over themselves for us.

So Mike calls his auto parts store and orders up a regulator. Should have it in two days and be around $30. We sit around feeling dubiously proud, though the jury’s still out — Mike and Matt will make these fixes, and we’ll get back to you. Yes, we were once again manipulated by Machiavellian Mike into doing his work for him — the spirit of Huck Finn lives on, transported from the Midwest by Wolfman, now playing father in the Northeast.

And Matt, who is now driving anything he can, now that he is — say a prayer — a licensed individual, may one day be able to drive his own car, one that a loving family, visionary father, and host of dedicated friends has made, if not yet possible, at least thinkably likely.

by Adam S. Kibbe

Yes, this expands mightily on Mikeís ever-so-succinct, essentially contentless entry of 12-29-03, Hemiptera — but redundancy is an inappropriate attribute to assign my effort, as neither rhyme nor reason was given at the time. Really, an absence of any information at all.

First, Iíd like to thank Mike for doing the research — presumably on my behalf — and congratulate him on a successful (if superficial) identification. Second, I laud the image he found, better than these here. For instance:

Lastly, Iíd like to give him additional grief for the lack of content or context in his post. But I can let that go……. I spent a clumsy hour on the Net myself to come up with my own mere smattering of data. From what I now understand, the appearance of these stolid little insects is a nationally unifying aspect of the past fall season — with a provenance said to be the western U.S., theyíve now shown up in states coast-to-coast, and have even hopped some vector or other over to Europe.

I write, not just because they were for the first time in my awareness notably everywhere here in Massachusetts this fall, hiding in warm corners and dangling in disconcerting numbers from trees, but because even now, several months into an acutely cold winter, at least one still circulates in slow, six-legged deliberation around our house. Eating what, I darenít imagine.

This critter (allow me the presumed thread of singular continuity) shows up — usually just after youíve decided itís finally died — just about everywhere (luckily not yet in our bed). Itíll just be sitting there on the edge of a molding, propped up on those stilt legs, looking like itís thinking through its next move. Sometimes it flies. Weíre startled (for the umpteenth time), itís usually all but inert. One could infer despondency, but I tend to anthropomorphosize too much (I had to edit every ìitî in this piece from ìheî, for instance). Besides, there are many opportunities to off itself if it were of a mind — walk into a web, roll in poisonous chemicals, fall in the toilet. No, I think it has an enduring perseverance which is at odds with despondency.

I figure our guestís current pace has a lot to do with the air temperature. We keep our house at about 68 when weíre in and awake, 60 otherwise (unless weíre staving off potentially frozen pipes). But its kin didnít move fast even in the comparatively balmy days of early October. Fast enough to get inside, somehow, though their chunky solidity would give the impression it would take open doors, not mere cracks. How this [one?] got in is probably not a mystery, though I canít say for sure. And once inside, itís fast enough to avoid spiders, too, one would surmise.

Some may be asking why it would have to perish of natural causes or suicide, when most homeowners would long ago have mixed its insides with its outsides — squished it. Well, yours truly regularly evicts flies and bees by catching them against a wall or window with a glass or jar and sheet of paper. Not only am I a vegetarian who can barely contemplate the deaths of any creature (other than willfully, the more annoying members of my own species), but I figure itís a great deal due to my own inattention that theyíve strayed into my artificially insectless environment anyway (that or plain osmotic pressure). I finally decided mosquitoesí ill intent merited the death penalty, though, so Iím not completely bonkers.

But the idea of squishing this stalwart individual is too alien, too arbitrarily cruel. Not only canít I, I canít even think of why I should. Oh, I can construct arguments, though they wouldnít involve dread or disease. How about ending its pointless existence, curtailing its arguably prolonged suffering? Itís not ìnaturalî for it to be alive, indoors, in winter, after all. It should be burrowed deep in the soil, hibernating. But it IS here, and Iím not sure enough of its ìshouldsî to go dig it a hole. Besides, itíd likely be a lethally abrupt transition.

And then thereís the ìlifeî thing. I mean, look at it. Up close (if you can). Donít worry, it wonít bite you — when warm, itíll actually react aversely to your proximity (though with zero alacrity — no predator faster than a sleeping sloth could fail to catch one). So check out the details. Little sporty black back leg accessories. Jaunty antennae. Folded wing shields that give a bowtie quality to its back. Some even have nice color contrasts going on. And itís alive. It moves. Apparently with intent. Incomprehensibly tiny leg muscles extending limbs in efficient concert to advance across surfaces boasting no apparent traction. Up walls and windows, across ceilings. Presumably it breathes, air coming and going through the tubes that serve bugs as lungs.

Yeah, thereís that word. Bug. For many, thatís all it takes, their bigotry an easily assumed mantle just before they drop its final curtain, without so much as a ìsay goodnight, Gracieî. And this isnít just a bug. Itís in the family Hemiptera, one of the ìtrue bugsî, faithful to all attributes that place it in the categorized scale weíve designed from our desire to place things in a scale that helps us ìunderstandî things. A true bug. Thereís a phrase that gives one pause.

But not me. Itís still marvelous despite that. Iíll confess that even for me, the alienness of insects is pretty much unparalleled by any other species of the planet outside the Plant and Fungi kingdoms. And Republicans. But like the latter, their mere existence and bewildering variety is a constant source of wonder, and Iíll leave the cheap shots at that. This critter truly has my admiration. Maybe youíd feel similarly if you accorded it its full title:

Western Conifer Seed Bug
†
Hemiptera:

Coreidae (Heteroptera: Pentatomomorpha)

Leptoglossus occidentalis, var. Heidemann.

Well, I was impressed…….. And so we sidle around each other, each quite sure we donít belong together, but neither prepared to do anything about it. Will it make it to Spring? I canít imagine how. But it wonít surprise me if I accidentally let it out a door some warmish day months from now, just as it mightíve gotten in months before. I wonít be sorry to see it go, but Iím not sorry it gave me food for thought this winter. However, if theyíre back in redoubled numbers next year — they say they have no natural predators here — we may yet get more intimately acquainted…….

by Adam S. Kibbe

First, apologies for the length. A telling was requested, this is what I came up with, The Editor approved. It could’ve been longer.

Secondly, why no pictures? Because you all have rich imaginations and deep internal lives and will surely paint this better than I could photograph it. And it’s not done, anyway. And so. My tale………

No matter how you sliced it, the Holy Spirit was running interference on the targetís upper body. I couldnít get a clear shot — not without collateral consequence. It hadnít even looked good on paper during strategizing, where the oversimplifications could have easily trapped the unwary — and this was real-time, line-of-sight, hard reality. And the Spirit wasnít moving, that was for sure. It wasnít good. And it was the least of my problems.

Three years ago, when Iíd started to set this up, Iíd known the risks. I donít know that my employers did, and living the outcome was another matter. Plus, time was quickly running out. Now that the colors had failed and every last reprieve been snatched out from under us, all at this, the 11th hour. Exhausted, I wondered — whoíd set this up this way? Not me. Three years come down to 5 days, targets known only from sketches — hardly sane.

But time is time, and flame will rise at the appointed hour, prayers be answered (or curses hurled), smoke swung in appeasing arcs, judgment rendered. Clockís ticking. Back to it then. Move a little right of the Spirit, get a clearer angle on Christís head. So. Next.

Somehow the Europeans — notice how Americans (like me) use that word as if it denotes a separate species — manage a one-month visit back into their leisure lives each summer, and somehow their economy survives, their schools educate, their borders hold, the planet spins. I havenít taken a two-week vacation in accessible memory, but weíd stretched this one — to visit my folks in Albuquerque — to 12 days out of the office, and I was in that groove. What I needed now was a graceful, phased reentry. Not what I got.

Iíd already had several major lighting projects lined up for completion by end of first week back, and I did get most of Monday to survey the backlog and plan, which was quite reasonable. But then George called. They donít fit. Three years in the planning, and now this.

My fault, maybe — I specified them blind. I went over this fact with Andy, the head electrician, when we met several months prior to this do-or-die week to strategize, asked that he examine clearances before ordering anything. But then a transformer vault exploded on him while working at another job, a hospital, molten copper and flash-heated oil punching through a containment wall and almost annihilating his hands, damaging much of his body. But miraculously sparing his eyesight. Iím told heís up and about, with a great attitude.

And so it fell to George to catch up to this runaway freight train and herd it into the station. That not more fell through all the available cracks is yet another miracle.

Itís all about the art, and about a church that never closes closing for one week to put in sacred art — controversial art — over which they have agonized for years. And the lighting that will give this art life. A huge cross made of a canyon live-oak split vertically. A Corpus of exquisite detail, rendered realistically in diaphanous bronze mesh and floating finally free of the cruel iron spikes still left in the twained trunk, one palm turned up to heaven, one facing us. And rising towards a luminous band of interpretational light and flame and spirit. The Holy Spirit.

Itís not arrogance that would make me think I could successfully gauge all the physical relationships and sight lines and individual material qualities and illuminate these objects to the fullest of their potential, realizing the dreams of both the artists and the congregation. Nor sheer stupidity. Not exactly. I simply had no choice. The ineffable Holy Spirit piece had been delayed years while the same artist searched for the perfect tree for the cross. Or waited while it grew, or came to him — weíre not sure why this took so long, while the Corpus, by a separate artist, waited in storage. But I never got a model, or the real thing, not even a sample of the material. Just a description, and a sketch.

I built in flexibility, thought through all the pitfalls I could imagine. The hardest part was color. Being the Holy Spirit, sheer white was its common rendition. But the client wanted it to glow as with flame for Pentecost, at other times be blue. Or purple. I designed a way to do this (I thought), convinced them to spend the money. But it didnít work.

Of course, I donít know this yet when first George calls me. Just that a side project, undertaken to combine two messy projects into one, has a big hitch. Now I need an alternate fixture. Finding suitable architectural-grade fixtures on momentsí notice is tense, frustrating work, but itíd be too hard to spin it into compelling drama. Suffice it to say we had a way out; then we didnít; then we did; then not, and so on. And on and on. Clock ticking. Of course, money was also involved — how MUCH for overnight freight, and from WHERE? What would any good crisis be without the cost of the crisis for amplification?

Having spent hours on phone and email, pulled some strings, and been availed of some minor miracles, we closed up one night with things looking up. And then awoke on the second-to-last day to find someone had arrived overnight and (arguably legitimately) taken from the warehouse all 240 fixtures, of which we needed but 20. In another kind of zone entirely, I suggested that ìsomeoneî go after that truck and beg or steal back what we needed. He came back with 12. We took them.

By then had come my first day on site. There was more than one problem by then. I already knew that the artists had miscalculated something, and the pieces werenít installed exactly where theyíd been shown in the sketches. Off by a couple of feet, actually. But I wasnít worried — lights can be repositioned, and the relative positions of the three art pieces had been maintained. So I came in to see where the installations — both art and lights — stood.

Meet the rep for the control system, but weíre not ready, so please come back the next day. Meet the rep for the high-tech, color-changing-LED lamps that will give the Holy Spirit its many looks, make sure all the parts are correctly connected before firing it up. But guess what — donít need this, never thought of that, wonít be able to be controlled by the main control system. But the needed parts could be traded for. later. Okay, plan B to get us through the weekendís consecration ceremonies, pick it up again later. So fire it up. Is it on? Oh.

It IS on………………. Kinda underwhelming, isnít it? 16 fixtures, and………. nothing.

That was the hardest part to get around. I had presented these expensive fixtures as ìweakî, hence a whopping 16 of them. But while the Holy Spirit had moved, it had actually gotten closer to the lights, which shouldíve made the effect stronger. Unfortunately, it moved from being in front of them, where it would transmit and reflect some light, to being directly under them, where the lamps ìsawî mostly the edge of the ribbon forms and spilled most of the light straight through onto the floor, scattering next to nothing forward. No life. No spirit.

We achieved some improvement by refocusing other lighting but were well short of expectations. The artist was respectfully optimistic but had to catch a flight, left me to make it right. My direct client muted her disappointment, but to say she was angry and crushed would not be an overstatement. I was in an agony of guilt and indecision. To bail on the whole idea, admit it just wouldnít work, or by doing so, miss some opportunity to in fact give them what theyíd envisioned, play hero? Or both…..?

We removed the high-tech lamps, rewired the fixtures for their normal low-voltage halogen use, installed some of the extra lamps for other fixtures that Iíd judiciously put in the bid package, and turned ëem on. Now THAT has Spirit! Wonít change colors, but what a difference. Could it be better? Well sure………… We could backlight it……. Clearly the materialís best aspect is transmitted light. What would that look like? Well, let me bring in some equipment and show you. Next day, a lone lamp tottering on the end of a 30í sectional pole swaying dangerously (putting the now priceless art at risk), we reach a new vision of the potential of the piece, and while we know we canít make it happen for the consecration, we know it WILL happen. Better. Better.

And the now-too-many-fixtures directly over the piece can be subdivided into groups and lensed in different colors and maybe give us not so much crow anymore, but cake — both to have and to eat. Iíd like to say it was my technical genius, but perhaps better, it was collective will and vision. As a group, we refused to give up on the pieceís potential, and while weíve yet to see the result, weíre confident. Though confidence was something I was mostly out of then and there. And I had other fish to fry.

The Corpus. The angle. In the scheme with the weak colors, the other lighting had to miss it entirely lest it wash out the colors. Now that we were cooking with gas, we could afford to graze the Spirit — which threw a slightly undesirable shadow but got a good angle on Christís upturned face. A clear shot. Acceptable consequence. Next.

Oh yeah, the miracle fixtures had been picked up by one of the electricians, who drove many hours into Connecticut and back to get them. But they were finally here and would get installed before the place got its final cleaning. Not enough time to wire them up, but that can come later. They were a gravy afterthought anyway.

So whatís left? Focus the rest of the lights, then set into doing the one thing Iíd actually expected to be doing this week — reprogramming the control system and its new components to accommodate the new lighting into the preprogrammed scenes set up for daily use. This involved much discussion about relative levels and strategies regarding what is linked to what, but was anticlimactic and went fairly smoothly. At 8:00 on the night before the main event……….

That last night. To call that week a marathon is but an approximation. Iíd only partially gotten to some of the other lighting projects Iíd been expecting to do that week, as Iíd been otherwise fully embroiled in this fiasco. Stressful effort — mental anguish — is in many ways more tiring than physical effort (not that Iíd really know, getting far more of the former than the latter, alas). After less than a week, I felt Iíd been back from the Southwest for a month, Albuquerque long forgotten. But I pushed hard at those other jobs and made some headway on that last day. Then headed back out to the church, an hour or so late to rendezvous with the electrician, and go over status before starting reprogramming.

But my car had frozen up in the single-digit weather. Its seven or eight-year-old battery was just not up to stirring the frozen sludge in my crankcase (okay, I was a grand or so past the scheduled oil change, too), and it gave up the ghost.

So I tried to push start it. By myself. Needing to go uphill first so itíd have somewhere to roll down (backwards). Twice. Did I mention, itís a BMW? Solidly built……. Iím not.

Adrenalineís a potent drug, and I was feeling fine after Lukas generously jump-started me (though I would limp painfully for days). I raced into town and parked (nowhere near the church, unfortunately) aimed downhill — just in case — and trudged through the biting, Arctic chill with my armloads of gear, up to closure.

5 hours later, after finally setting the presets (with an unexpected five members of the committee in vocal attendance), I begin to clean up. Iíve just had an illuminating conversation (that unavoidable pun) with Father Joe and the director on the symbology of the pieces and what is ìknownî and not known about The Crucifixion, a conversation which has deepened all our appreciations of the work. The lightingís okay, and will get better, and weíre all warmly appreciative of each othersí commitment. The artís beautiful.

The remaining four members — three pastors and the director — begin to rehearse a part of the next dayís ceremony, though I donít yet know that is what theyíre doing. I hear the beginnings of a prayer, assume this is an impromptu, personal benediction — of the process, if not the art pieces — and instinctually stop and bow my head. I who have not bowed my head in prayer in a House of God in decades. I am grateful for the pause, for the good will, for the knowledge itís all now in someone elseís hands. No words form in my mind in offering to what most would know as deity, but I pray, nonetheless. Or at least, find myself open to their prayer, which is simple and eloquent, easy.

Then they start practicing the three swings of the Censer, I finish my packing, and with some weary good wishes and goodbyes, Iím off into the night with my armfuls of gear, now limping slightly, through the frigid night in the direction of my distant car. It started. I went home.

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.

When we began this project several months ago, there was a loose understanding that hours of labor required and overall duration would diverge notably. It was also understood that Adam would have to put his own shoulder mightily to the wheel, unable to afford Michael doing all of the work. But even hindsight isn’t all that clear on the trajectory now……..

Yesterday Adam walked out into this newly yellow cube and strapped on his toolbelt to make ready for Mike’s next push — blueboard. Meanwhile, Mike took himself and his family all the way to Gilsum, NH and refreshing Spoon’s Pond to distance himself from this now “boring and bankrupt” albatross, and to breathe fresh, clean air into lungs recently polluted by the insidious filaments of fiberglass. Adam looked around the warm, humid confines and gathered the strays of his will together. And had an epiphany.

In early demo, Michael had carefully dismantled the kitchen floor duct, located in the slider wall to be demolished, and had stuffed fiberglass into it to keep debris out. Thus had it stayed, momentarily forgotten. With the rest of the Kibbe household now on central A/C, this duct languished, merely adding pressure, perhaps, to the rest of the household. But Adam saw that it was on the addition side……. Seconds later, an invisible fountain of cool air spewed up into the strata of heat and began to work magic.

Buoyed by this shift, both of temperature and of attitude, Adam plowed into the task at hand — applying strapping to the trayed, hip ceiling. A critical task, as its joinery sets the stage for the blueboard, on which will be writ in the plasterer’s hand with skimcoat the lines and angles of Adam’s vision. All went swimmingly for 4 or 5 hours until Adam ran short of strapping less than 20 cuts and 16′ from completion.

No matter, a quick trip into Home Depot for some 1 x 3 and exterior caulk (for other tasks) after the Sunday paper, and he was back at it, finishing in time to watch the Western open be put lengthily into time delay twice on account of thunder and lightning, with Tiger in a commanding lead (yeah, Adam sometimes watches golf, the putz). The stage is now in readiness for the beginning of the end, as one of the last items of gross construction comes to an end, and finish materials begin to take sway. Outside, final spackling and caulking makes ready for finish paint; inside one can begin to dream of paint. And of tile, lights, furniture, music…….

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…….

Lines of strapping 1′ apart trace the shape of the hip tray. Have at it, Mike!