“Around this table, we will build our house,” John'd said, his hand resting on The Big Table he’d built as the crux of an announcement. Quentin was half-leaned on John’s table saw in the middle of the shop floor, still smelling of booze with creases on his mustached face from John’s couch pillows. Bill stood by the door, ready to leave at a moment’s notice since he’d had a hard time finding someone to mind the office while he stepped away for the “surprise of a lifetime.” Every motion from the three kicked puffs of sawdust into the noon rays that fell from high windows, and neither guest really understood what they were looking at while John stood smiling, wearing his work leathers and positively beaming next to his freshly lacquered round table he’d ornately carved to resemble a strong tree, the legs and stem forming the trunk, and, the top, a flattened crown of branches, all built from his most beautiful oak. 

“Quentin,” he’d said, “With what’s been going on between you and Rose, and Bill, with how busy you’ve been now that the business is really up and running, I’ve been thinking we’ve forgotten what it’s like to truly be alone. To have peace.” He cleared his throat and decided to continue against the blank faces, “And with what happened with Janine and Me, and Janine taking Suzy, I’ve had too much of being alone in one way while feeling crowded in another by the relics of a life no longer mine in our house.” He paused again and saw that something had struck a chord. Bill’s face let go of some of its harsh confusion and Quentin tilted his head like a child letting information pour into his mind for absorption. “With the land me and Bill got when our Mom passed, I suggest we build a place for us,” he’d said, “a place we can become who we are supposed to be with these lives none of us asked for or expected but are now living.” 

Though Bill’d had different plans for his part of their inheritance, which launched him into an early resistance, cursing his younger brother who’d won near every fight their whole life and John attempting to console the bitterness of an elder brother who only lost because his positions were rarely his own, and though none could remember agreeing, within two weeks both Bill and Quentin were helping to chop down the lumber whenever they could get away. 

Around this table we will build our holy place, he’d said, Bill thought and ran his thumb over that dedication, which John had carved all around the lip of The Big Table. He leaned to the left to let moonlight over his shoulder pool across the tabletop so he could see to collect the cards they’d strewn. The cards were sticky in the oceanic heat that clung to their bodies like a wet sheet. A smell was creeping up that Bill remembered from when they buried Quentin’s decapitated pointer where it lay after he’d cut it off while sawing floorboards in the early days. Bill looked over at Jay and Quentin who, like father like son, were slumped and winded and dazed. He wiped some of the cards on his sleeves before placing them back into a pile, his chair creaking loudly as he propped his hulking frame up on his elbows and prepared to count the deck. His booming voice startled them all when he said, “We need more light,” especially Quentin who came to and stood up. He looked around the vicinity of his chair the way people do when they feel they’ve been caught doing nothing. “I’m work— I can’t find the damn matches,” he said.  

“I got em here,” Jay said, and pulled them out of his vest pocket and tossed them across the table. 

“These’re all wet,” Quentin slurred. 

“Well, pretty sure they’re all we got,” Jay said. 

Quentin stared too long at the wet matches while the whiskey soured in their stomachs and a smell began to fill the entire cabin like smoke. None had really thought this far ahead. When Bill could sense their collective resolve struggling to tread water, his eldest son's instincts took over, sending him to the bar to fish through the drawers right as Quentin said, more or less to himself, “will these fuckin things even still light”, holding the matches up to the moonlight and catching sight of his phantom fingertip, nubbed like a baby carrot, that tingled every time he looked at it. Bill ignored him and pulled a wad of cotton deep out of a drawer, then sat in his chair and tore six small pieces from it, dipping each of them in the whisky left in his glass before tossing them around. 

“Here,” Bill said, “put these in your nose.”

A hellish breeze blew through the open door then, jostling the stacked cards and damp tendrils of Jay’s swept-back hair, and sending a rush of whiskified wind straight to Quentin’s brain. “You’re gonna make me fuckin flammable while I’m trying to light this”, he said while he held the match between his middle finger and thumb and struck it, ripping off the head with the pressure and releasing a Goddammit! before he pulled out the next one and started to blow on it. 

“The hell are you doing?” Jay asked as he watched his father struggle with the matches like a child. He then remembered his own childhood running through the skeletal body of the Cabin-in-progress with John’s daughter, Suzy, when they were just children, and how John, with tools-in-hand and sweat-browed, would laugh when they would tucker themselves out and fall and lay in the tall grass.

Quentin looked up at his son and said, “I’m trying to dry them out.” Then he stuck the next match, finally inciting a spark. 

“Shit,” Jay said, “never mind. Keep going”, and Quentin drew another match and vacillated between shaking it and blowing on it this time. 

The fumes from the whisky plugs were making them feel drunk again and, for his last attempt, Quentin pushed himself away from the table and told them all to stop breathing, then said a little prayer and when he struck the match a hiss proclaimed a small flame and he, big-eyed, pulled his other hand close to it for protection, the light shining through his fingers like fire contained within the jaws of a skull and Bill and Jay hardly believed his drunk ass would get it to the lamp until the very moment the flame touched the wick and it lit and Quentin placed the glass back over it. All at once, the quivering lamplight cut the thick darkness and it danced across John’s marbled cheekbones, each a cliff that cast deep shadows over his face. His chin drooped down into his chest and dirt covered his white shirt and the parts of his body where they’d dropped or drug him. Purple veins spread over his forehead like cracks just above eyes that were closed like he’d only fallen asleep and his short gray hair was mussed and his skin dewy with condensation. He’d slumped much further in his seat since they first strapped him in as the belt had been tied too loose. 

Tears formed in Bill’s eyes and his jaw clenched in a depressed fury. They could hear the knot forming in his throat when he said, “What we did...” but couldn’t finish. Each man’s eyes fell around John’s body, darting around when their memories clashed with what they now beheld. For Bill, he saw in John’s slumping form the younger brother he’d hated, and then loved, who’d been the only one that ever truly understood his curtness and distance, which kept him isolated, for the protective instincts they were. For Quentin, he saw what was left of the man that saved his life after he lost his wife, and almost his son to the drink. No matter John’s condition, Quentin only saw the knowing eyes and heard the deep cool voice that had become the better voice in his head. Jay saw the man that had become a father until he got his own father back. He felt the large hand on his shoulder that pulled him in for the hug when he told him he and Suzy would be getting married. Well, Thank God, he’d said, the rocking chair rascals finally tying the knot.

Bill cleared his throat loudly to banish the silence and, with his voice still trembling, said, “Well, let's pour the man a drink.”

“Pour?” Jay asked. But when he felt the bare, semi-comfort of practicality settle in, he continued. “There’s no more in the bottle.”

“We’ll each pour him some from our glasses,” Bill decided, sounding less and less sure of himself. Time pressed through the acrid and moonswept room, expanding into a dense stasis until Jay stood with his glass ready to pour, but when he leaned over the table he lost his balance and tripped forward, catching himself on John’s arm, causing his whole body to shift. 

“Shitshit!” Jay said as launched from his seat while Bill yelled to Fix him, dammit!

Jay moved fast and tried to pull John up under the arms first but struggled and ultimately opted to lift him by his coat. Bill moved back to the floor and held John’s legs once again while Jay loosed and tightened the belt again, every move causing the smell to waft into his face, permeating the whisky-cotton barrier and making him lightheaded. Jay pulled the belt much tighter this time but with no caution and stopped when they all heard a pop. Jay then slowly loosened the belt by a single notch, then let the slack dangle from John’s mid-section. 

When he returned to his seat they sat there a while, not knowing what else to do. Eventually, Bill stood and poured some of his whiskey into John’s glass, which inspired Quentin to do the same. Then, with heavy hands, Bill started to deal out cards. He threw a few to each man, who, then lifted their hands and half-shuffled what they had in order of real or anticipated pairs or straights, but none could focus. 

Minutes felt like hours before Bill turned the first card from the deck in the middle of the table and John slumped again, a cracked rib finally falling out of place. Their stomachs sank and they looked down at The Big Table, then back to behold their friend. Each, in their turn and their own way, took in again the entire sight of John sitting in front of cards he could not turn over with a glass of whisky he could not drink. There had been some prevailing emotion at the outset when they felt the emptiness of his chair like a wound gushing blood. After all those bottles and stories swapped, after carving those final numbers together on his tombstone he’d placed in Rosewood the year before (which none had understood at the time) it had almost felt logical. He hadn’t been gone that long. They deserved more time. 

There’d been fields of dead in holy wars that did not smell as rank as that room as a brand-new death crept into each of their hearts. A much worse death replacing the first with something unsanctified, that they would remember more than the man himself. They’d all agreed, with how sudden he passed—Suzy talking to him while we was in his shop one minute, then walking into the room the next to see him face down the next—that Death was an insane and cruel thief, and they’d all been taught never to abide a thief. 

Bill held up his glass one more time while liquid pooled around one of John’s shoes and Quentin leaned over to push John’s head up for the toast, which made his head fall backward, revealing that his eyes were not completely closed. Moon and candlelight caught in the glassy slit between his lids and made them dazzle with strange life. Not knowing what else to do, Quentin touched his son’s glass as a signal, then raised his own and said through a heave, “Welcome back, John”.