The Skeleton & The Carpenter

Hardware Guy - The Man, The Myth, The Legend, Part IV

          "I'm sixteen now. I could get a driver's license. Lighten up and let me drive!" Roger reasoned.

"You kiddin' me? Let an unlicensed driver get behind the wheel of my only means of transportation, which also happens to be the delivery vehicle for my business, my livelihood?! I can't afford to lose this truck, Rog!" Hardware Guy argued.

"Look, the fact of the matter is it's getting late, and if you drive through the night you'll be too tired to put up any kind of fight in the competition tomorrow. Let me take over the driving so you can get some sleep! Plus, look at it this way: somebody is going to have to teach me how to drive eventually, right? And how does one learn to drive? By driving, unlicensed, with a licensed driver in the passenger seat, that's how! Don't think of it as endangering your truck, think of it as driving school for me." the skeleton proposed.

"Well, when you put it like that," Hardware Guy, suddenly aware of how tired he was, was being swayed, "I guess there isn't any harm in teaching you how to drive."

So at the next red light they encountered, the driver became the passenger and the passenger the driver. More nervous than he had expected to be, Roger clutched the steering wheel for dear life, sat with his spine straighter than a ruler, and could feel his heartbeat in his throat. But he was not a bad driver; he found that it came naturally to him.

"Great, now I'm wide awake." complained Hardware Guy. "Tell me a story, Rog."

"You know all of my stories, pal. You're going to have to tell me a story."

"Alright, I can live with that." Hardware Guy curled up in his seat. "When we last left our hero – that's me – his brother had up and enlisted in the Marines. I was trainin' for my second annual Junior County Carpenters Contest, where I was going to beat John Bellvins or die tryin'. With Bubba gone, I was able to scrape by on the joint savings account he and I had set up, plus the checks I was getting from him bein' a Marine. The Junior County Carpenters Contest was in the middle of June, not too long after Bubba up and left.

"Bubba's girl, who was pretty mad at him for leavin' with no notice, came out to the competition to cheer for me. She was a sweetheart, she was. I aced the first round. I was up against some amateur who went to Seaside High with me. Nice guy, but not ready for that level of competition yet.

"The second round went even better than the first. Ever notice that birdhouse outside of the workshop? That's where it came from. Me and my opponent had to build the best birdhouse in the least amount of time. Took me three minutes and twenty-seven seconds.

"And then came the final round: me versus John Bellvins, just as I had expected. We had to build baby grandfather clocks. Everythin' was goin' great, until I was at the bandsaw cuttin' a fancy edge onto the piece that was gonna be the top of the clock, when my mustache got in the way of the blade, cuttin' off the left tip of my 'stache. Now, this was a normal occurance and wouldn't have usually been a problem, but, flash forward half and hour, after I've got the whole thing assembled and I'm waitin' for the stain to dry – I went with Cherry Blossom, it was a beautiful clock – and the judges came around to give me my marks. And, wouldn't you know it, that piece of my mustache that got cut off had somehow found its way from the bandsaw to my clock. It was stickin' out of one of the dados, held in place by the stain that was drying. The judges took off six points for that one piece of hair!

"I lost that round by five points. I would've beaten him if it weren't for that one, stupid, tiny, microscopic little hair. If I knew..." Hardware Guy's voice got softer and softer until it trailed off completely.

In a daring move for a first-time driver, Roger took his eyes off of the road, only for a second, to confirm his suspicion that his friend had indeed fallen asleep. Just as he was settling in for his quiet, late-night crash course in driving, the radio began blaring heavy metal music. Roger scrambled for the volume dial, momentarily forgetting that he was behind the wheel, and the truck swerved into the wrong lane. Fortunately no one was coming, but Roger was shaken nonetheless. After steering the car back to the correct lane, Roger very carefully turned the volume to a moderate level and searched the airwaves until he found a smooth jazz station.

There, that shouldn't wake up sleeping beauty over there, he thought, smiling at his own joke. The lonely, quiet drive commenced.