The Coffin Maker

Chapter 1

He first heard the news from his mother and Mrs. Bergman who were having coffee and a cigarette in the kitchen. He burst in and asked if he could have a cookie. The distraction caused his mother to clamber from the table with tea towel in hand to extract a baking pan from the oven, but she did not stray from the conversation.

"I hear they're tearing it down to build permanent lakeside homes," she said, motioning to her son that he could take a cookie from the batch cooling on a wire rack. "And the backyards will run down to the water so they'll be movin' the road and I reckon we'll barely have a view of the lake anymore."

His mother and Mrs. Bergman tossed names around, and talked about money and missed chances, too much for a twelve-year-old boy to comprehend, so he interrupted again.

"Mom, mom...Who's tearing down what?"

"Why the old Inn down by the lake," said his mother.

He could feel his world ripping apart. "Does it mean you won't be working there this summer?"

"Well, I can hardly work there if they tear it down now, can I?"

He stopped eating his cookie. "When are they going to do it?" he asked.

"They started early this morning," interjected Mrs. Bergman. "You were probably still in bed."

He put the remainder of the cookie on the counter, ran out the back door and hurried away on his bike.

His mother turned to Mrs. Bergman. "Go figure. I always thought he hated the place and that it bored him terribly. You know, they gave me a free room every summer when I was on the staff. It was good of them. Saved me long walks home on the days I was tired. No sense to be walkin' home at night to turn around and walk back the next mornin'."

He peddled fast and the cool morning air made his eyes water as it rushed past his face. He saw the crotchety Mr. Biggs driving his station wagon in the opposite direction, so he cut through his property and saved a whole block. When he got to the Inn, the roof was already gone. Men in hard hats were swarming the property and trucks were making a lot of noise hauling away the rubble. He straddled his bike and watched, nearly overcome by feelings of shock and disbelief. They were tearing down his special place. How could they? What would he do? In the midst of the dust and the cacophony, he slipped into a daydream of the summers at the Inn where he and his mother were allotted a room because she often double shifted as cook and house keeper. It was his special room. He could almost see the late model Ford arriving at the Inn, the crunching sound that the tires made as they rolled over the gravel, and Debbie and her girlfriend getting out of the back seat. They were three years older and paid no attention to him, but it didn't matter. Debbie brought a different friend to the Inn every year. He liked it when they wore their bikinis and lay on the dock in the sun. He watched them unseen from the thick brush by the willow trees. He liked it when they moved about on the towels and he could imagine the shapes beneath the tightly fitting nylon. However, he especially liked it when he was upstairs in his special room and the girls took baths. His room had its own door to the bathroom...he looked through the keyhole, breathless and excited beyond compare when they stepped out of their clothes...he saw them completely...and they were unaware! Nothing in the world felt like it!

Now it was gone forever.

"Hey kid, watch out!" yelled a man in a yellow hard hat when one of the trucks began backing up.

Gone forever...how would he get the feeling again if his special room was gone? What would he do?

He peddled down the roadway that hugged the lakeshore. He passed some other boys on bikes who were riding to the scene. They called to him but he gave no acknowledgment for he was too concerned with a world that did not include the Inn. It meant an uncertain future that would demand extra good hiding places in parks where teenage couples went after school or climbable trees in backyards that grew close to bedroom windows. Later, it led to spy holes in motel walls and a job as a night cleaner in a Minneapolis office building across the street from a hotel. In the evening, he returned to the site and found a stack of interior doors propped up against a tree like pieces of sliced bread. He easily found his bathroom door because it was green on one side and white on the other. With a screwdriver, he removed the antique glass doorknob set and the brass entry plate with the keyhole that had provided a world of pleasure.