Family Heirloom Challenge: "Ply Your Silver Hammer" -- by Benjamin Leskey

Ply Your Silver Hammer

By Benjamin Leskey

My old uncle scowled and scuffed his way up the gravel path, sending little stones flying all around. I am certain I got one in my shoe as I walked beside him, but what did he care about that? What did I care? I was getting paid, and he was paying me.

We came around a clump of tall, scraggly fir trees, ugly looking specimens that twisted around each other at the root but all spread out and bent further and further down as they tried going up. Most of them were dead, except one that was only nearly dead, and another one that had managed to stick its decrepit top above the others. There was an old ax buried in the base of the nearly dead fir; most of the ax-head and half the handle were being engulfed by the tree’s bulging wound.

“That’s been there a while,” I said, pointing.

My uncle didn’t turn his head. “Wasn’t there when I was last here.”

“When was that?”

“Not long enough.”

We could see the house from there. It was smaller than I expected; I had never seen it in person before. It was a disappointing shabby gray barn. Only the front door made it look like a house. There was a small, grimy electric light glowing by the knob that cast its glow into the growing darkness.

My uncle didn’t turn his head, but out of the corner of my eye I saw the corner of his eye change from white to black.

“Heh,” he said, instead of actual laughter. “Dreams are weird, right? I had a crazy one just the other night. I dreamed I was coming back here instead of you, and somehow it was you bringing me up the walk. Just remembered that. Also you were my dad.”

“That’s weird,” I said.

“I dream a lot,” he went on. “Jenny will sometimes try to tell me what they mean, but she doesn’t know anything.”

“Huh,” I said, instead of actual speech.

“Well, if you ever get a wife, I’m sure she’ll tell you the same thing: ‘Leslie, don’t give ‘em a thought. You’ll forget ‘em in a moment anyway.’”

“Not unlikely,” I said. My name was also Leslie, so he might have been quite literal.

We came up to the house. My uncle stabbed the lock with his key and swung open the door to the vicious smell of dust and must. He shoved the key into my hand and stepped away. “All yours.”

I shifted the key to my other hand and clenched where the sharp tip had left a mark. “Okay.”

“Hey,” he said slowly, “Uh… would you mind repairing some of the damage to the shed while you’re here?”

“I won’t be bothering with that,” I said. “I won’t have to look at this place again, after this week.”

He frowned and began crunching his way back down the path. “I’ll come for you in a week, Leslie,” he called. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Not that I could.” I watched him disappear around the dead firs, then I shut the door.

One week was all I had to stay. My great uncle Oscar left his house and fortune to his relatives when he died, but somehow all that was left of the Kirk family was me and my Uncle Leslie. His wife Jenny and my mother were still around too, but old Oscar had hated them. The worst part was, neither me nor my uncle would get anything until I died or spent seven nights alone in his old house. Thanks, Oscar. Uncle Leslie looked at his options and figured getting me up here would be the better option than killing me, so here I was.

There wasn’t much to speak of, either. Something had stripped the house of anything attractive or pleasing, so that only stiff, hard furniture and naked pipes plunging in and out of slightly decayed walls remained. Most of the light-bulbs were weirdly dark; I could easily imagine sour old Oscar Kirk sitting on his hard chair, staring at the hard table in front of him in the hot, dim glow that had been his only companion for thirty years.

After a meal of canned soup, I went poking around the house. The first floor was really unremarkable, perhaps at some point it could have been a home. I got hungry again and ate another meal of canned soup.

Lightning flashed outside through the growing wind, followed by a tremendous clap of thunder that rattled the entire house and echoed around the forest. The vibration left behind the sound of clinking from upstairs, and worse, the sound of a rocking chair rocking that simply would not stop.

I seized a heavy flashlight and marched upstairs to the attic, expecting to stumble my way through the dark to arrest the disturbance. However, the attic was far better lit than the first floor with bright electric lights giving a pleasing glow. There was even an aged Christmas garland across one of the beams, the first bit of decoration I’d seen in the place. A rocking chair sat at the far end of the attic rocking away in the draft of a window that had come slightly open during the thunder. Around the rocking chair was a library, shelves of books and papers, and hanging on the wall that the chair faced was a forearm-length, crooked, dented silver hammer that clicked softly against nails in the wood it hung from. I stalked over to the little library and shut and locked the offensive window. The rocking chair went still, and the clinking hammer hung silent.

The prospect of something to read was already cheering me up, and I bent down to see the titles on the shelves. They were all well-worn books on smithing and metalworking, worn like Oscar Kirk had been reading them religiously for thirty years. I guess he really had.

I picked up a paper from one of the stacks beside the books. It was hard to parse, an ancient handwritten note that read: Ian Doe does not accept free horse-shoes. I will visit his stables to-night. A second paper seemed less ancient, and read: Molly Graves seems uninterested in silver bowl. I will push her harder. Another, newer, paper caught my eye and I took it up; it said in typewritten letters: Grievance: Word is that Leslie is not favoring metalworking. I will have Gordon bring him to my house for a spell.

That had to be referring to my uncle Leslie, for though it was newer than most of the other notes, the paper was obviously older than me. Gordon was his father’s name, my grandfather. The rest of the notes that I rummaged through were all of similar tone and content, and many looked so old that Oscar Kirk couldn’t possibly have written them himself.

The attic didn’t feel bright anymore. Rain roared down outside, and the lights struggled to fight against the growing darkness as the smothered sun sank lower and lower. I went back down the stairs and turned off the lights. The furnace in the heart of the old house kicked on suddenly, and the hammer clinked one more time at the pulse that ran through the frame of the building.

I showered in lukewarm water and put on some of Uncle Oscar’s clothes that had been left for me. They fit well. I threw my towels and my own clothes into a basket.

“Les.”

Oh! I jerked and glanced wildly around the empty room before darting back to the living room. No easy sleep for me that night, no relaxing in the evening. I kept one hand on my flashlight as I sat up in the living room with my back to a solid corner.

It was my name where nobody was there to speak it, and it had startled me. It was not the machinations of my own inner voice, because one cannot be startled by their own thoughts, only shocked by hearing them, like one who looks into a mirror and recoils or despises the sound of their own echo. Startling is when the reflection changes during the viewing or the echo returns with an original voice.

I slept despite it, eventually, because I couldn’t think about it forever. But I could, in dreaming; not even sleep can give a break from thinking, or at least one would not know if it did.

A thunderous morning came with clouded sunlight. I had been hoping that a bright day could drive off my evil imaginings. Still, daylight was daylight, and since I wasn’t scaring myself with imagined names I felt better about my situation. I determined to go back up into the attic and poke around a bit before lunch, just for fun.

I sat in the rocking chair and read some from Oscar Kirk’s old books. They were really dry and technical works, so I didn’t get nearly as much amusement out of them as I had intended. I thought about my great uncle sitting where I was sitting, reading the same book I was reading. 

He might have just finished reading, and then he might have taken up a note pad and scrawled out a few notes. Perhaps he was thinking about some discussion he might have about his passion. He could have mumbled a few words as he wrote, maybe he was someone who talked to himself. But wouldn’t he have to discuss with himself? Who else was there to talk with? There was nobody, few people he knew were even alive at all, and they were only two men named Leslie who didn’t like metalworking. What a disappointment, but there was still time for him to give them an interest, let them in on the family profession, show them what it was all about. But there was a shadow in the corner as he wrote, and he remembered that they had their own paths, and they had gone far from him. So very far from working with metal, and with tongs, and with a dented silver hammer.

I didn’t want to think about that anymore, it was too vivid an image. I put away the image, put away the book, went downstairs, and put the attic out of my mind. I ate soup instead.

In the afternoon it got darker as the clouds thickened. If someone had tried, they couldn’t have soured my mood more easily. The darker it grew, the darker I felt. The lights in the house felt dimmer than ever.

CLINK! went something in the attic as the furnace came on. CLINK! ROCK! CLINK! ROCK! and so forth, ad nauseum. I charged upstairs, slammed the reopened window shut, double-checked the lock and found it lacking quality, arrested the rocking chair, and grabbed the crooked silver hammer, putting an end to its quiet rattling. I stalked back down, fetched some tape, stalked back up, and taped the window’s lock so that it couldn’t shake loose again.

“Les.”

I jumped.

“Les… Les… Les...”

That wasn’t the wind or my imagination. Something was making a noise that sounded exactly like my name, and I was going to put an end to that as well. I listened this way and that until I caught the silver hammer scraping the wall in just the right way to pronounce my name. No more! I seized the hammer, pulled it off the wall, and stormed back out of the attic.

I put the hammer on a table in the living room and let it lie there, where no ill winds could blow it and it could not speak in dry, tongueless words. I was a little angry about being so startled, as was only natural, so I sat in the chair before the hammer and glowered for a solid hour. I would have glowered longer, but I fell asleep.

“Les… Les… Les…” I dreamed, at a forge situated in the living room. My uncle Leslie was there, cowering. Oscar Kirk was there too, but I couldn’t look up and meet his eyes. I was holding the crooked silver hammer like a weight dragging my mind and gaze down.

Oscar Kirk told me to strike the metal.

I brought down the hammer and obeyed.

Uncle Leslie stood up and came over. I swung down and struck the metal again.

Oscar Kirk reprimanded. Uncle Leslie pointed at the metal. I struck down.

Suddenly I realized I was dreaming and looked up at Oscar Kirk.

“Don’t you think it’s wrong that Leslie put you in front of himself?” said the withered man, and I brought my hammer forward. The jolt woke me up, and a good thing too, because I was about to smash the window with the hammer that I gripped painfully in a white-knuckled fist as I swung it.

My own father had mentioned his hammer before. He said it was old and wondered why none of our ancestors had sold it. It wasn’t actually of any use, someone had made it long ago to be decorative and since then it had been a symbol of the family, at least until Oscar Kirk had left it squeaking names on a wall. Now I didn’t really want to see it at all, and most definitely not in my hand. I put it carefully back on the table and sat down, shivering from the strange awakening.

Thinking on it, dream-Oscar was right. This should have been the other Leslie’s thing to deal with. It could have been calling either one of us. The silver hammer was fairly valuable, my uncle should have made off with it already. He really should have, I wouldn’t have missed it at all. I wished he would come back just so I could give it to him.

I muddled about the rest of the day and went to sleep worried.

In the middle of the night I half-woke and looked around the dark living room. Oscar Kirk stood there, pointing at the hammer on the table, barely visible in the billowing darkness.

“I will not be paid,” he said. “And you are not required to pay me. Take the hammer and work before your time falls short.”

Why me?

“You must take this gift,” he went on, as though he had not heard me.

Give it to my uncle instead, I don’t want it.

“Take the hammer, Leslie. Imitate me.”

The heavens split with a terrific bolt of lightning connecting the clouds, and the peal of thunder that resounded shook me to my senses and I jerked upright, looking around for an old man who wasn’t there. I stared at the hammer on the table, and remained staring for hours until morning brought new cloudy light.

I craved the mundane. I ran into the attic, seized an armload of dry technical books on metalworking, ran back down to my dusty corner and began reading as if my life depended on it. I read of forges, metal, tools, weapons, pots, and horse-shoes. I immersed myself in terms far beyond my own understanding. There were sometimes notes written in the margins, contending points or affirming practices. I tried to ignore these, they made it seem too personal; too much like the tradition it was. Maybe, if I understood it, it would stop bothering me. But that’s a fool’s hope.

What was I supposed to do? I had no answer, and the hammer had a clear thought that threatened to drag me to grip it once more. I spent an entire day reading, and that night I kept reading as long as I could before I slept at last. I had no dreams, there was no space of time between when I blinked and woke five hours later to dawn. That only made things worse. I felt silent oppression as if I were trying to hide from a giant who could see me the whole time but I could not tell if it had found me yet.

I went outside for the first time, and got wet. It was better than being stuck inside the house, but it was still fairly bad. I saw the shed, somewhat damaged, though there were materials inside that could be used to repair it. I went back inside and cleaned up and cowered for the rest of the day, reading again. And after that, I slept where I was.

I dreamed, and I saw Oscar Kirk swinging the crooked silver hammer from side to side, and it grew more crooked with every swing; it dented against the air and deformed and writhed; it was silver in his iron grip. “You could,” he said, “You really could.” I saw that he was not mastered by the hammer, but he was the master of the hammer in my dream.

So, the next day, I took the hammer and went outside. It felt right in my hand, cold, yet familiar. It belonged here, as it had belonged to Oscar Kirk, to his father, to his father’s father, all the way up. It had belonged to my own father, and it belonged to my uncle, but they had not taken it as they should.

I went to the shattered shed and began working. It is quite an experience, using a crooked, dented, silver hammer for repair work. But I went at it with preternatural prowess. I’m not sure what I learned from reading books on metal working, but I felt like a genius brandishing my hammer. Nails, wood, screws, glass; they were all suitable materials for my hammer, and I made glorious progress on the shed throughout the day. I retired in the evening and rested through the night with the hammer still in my belt. I never slept so well.

My great work was still lacking, so I went out again. I needed no food and little water throughout the day. Giving in felt very good. I found my purpose, at least for now. It’s hard to describe how much better I was making the shed, and the tool was really the best tool I could have had; the only tool I needed. It was perfect, and I worked the entire day away.

During the night I dreamed of horse-shoeing and of Oscar Kirk smiling broadly. “Look, Leslie, it’s Leslie,” he said. “You’ve got it, right?” I was happy that I could finish what Oscar Kirk couldn’t; I could fix the shed and, really, fix more than only a shed.

In the morning, as I waited for my uncle to come by, I put the finishing touches on the shed with my trusty gleaming hammer. The day was bright, and the house was cheery. I could almost imagine a smiling man up in the attic window looking down from above.

He came around the corner of the house, hearing the sound of my toil.

“What have you done here!?” he cried, seeing my masterpiece.

I turned toward him and showed him my tool, the perfect silver hammer. “I decided to fix the shed after all,” I told him. “I found a great hammer, so I figured I would.”

He stared at the windows and beams and planks, but he said nothing.

“You really should try it,” I said, coming closer to share my hammer. “There’s no obstacles, you must take the hammer and ply it.”

You should have seen the look on his face.

Really, you should.

Why don’t you find a crooked silver hammer of your own?