15. Xylography

Why Young Abigail initially ended up on the back porch, playing with her father’s old pocket knife, is anyone’s guess – mine: boredom. But that’s not important. What’s important is why everyday since, she would at some point find herself splayed out on the weathered pine, digging the blade’s word tip into the surface of the planks and blowing the splinters and chips away like they were the flames of candles on a cake not quite designated for a birthday. She didn’t really know the reason, herself. All she knew was that suddenly she’d be there, working on yesterday’s pattern, which was an elaboration what had been carved the day before, and so on.

It was strange to Abigail – she had never much liked drawing or even doodling. She wondered if it had something to do with physical ease of dragging a pencil against paper. When she was chipping wood away, her mind would be so absent of the image – or anything really – as her hands seemed to be focused and preoccupied enough for the whole of her.

Occasionally her mother, whose routine these days was emptying a pack of cigarettes in the kitchen until she felt the obligation to prepare some form of a dinner, would forget to shut the back door. In such instances, it would be common that the billow and escape through screen door’s shoddy wire, and the cloud would distract Abigail, letting all the sounds and sights of the here and now remind her of something big and scary and not altogether real. There was an ever-present darkness within and among Abigail that was difficult for her understand or even really be aware of, let alone explain to her mother or school chums.

Actually, it’s tricky for me to explain too, because I’m not Abigail, but I do know more about it than you. All that I can feel comfortable saying about the darkness is that each etch and groove that was chiseled from the pine was bit of whiteness carved out from behind the mass of pitch-blackness she could sense. However, her hands knew that evening out all of the floorboards to a new, more or less, flat surface would just yield all of the white dim down into what it had been. There was something important in the tactile variance of depth. Something real.

Spin the seasons one good turn and you’ll see Abigail, still young but much older, standing on the rails and digging the knife into top-most trim of the porch, where the design had grown and where it would end.

Eventually, Abigail hopped down, barefoot onto the rough and ornate floor of the porch. She didn’t really know what to do. After a silent meal with her mother in a smoke-drenched kitchen, she decided it might be time to visit her father’s grave.

 

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