Me:I assumed.
Kragen:I’m not going to touch that.
Me:Estimated completion date is three weeks from today. I’ll be in touch when it’s ready.
Kragen:Can I see it?
Me:No.
Kragen:I meant a photo. Just to see how it’s coming along.
Me:I don’t send progress photos—I want you to see the finished instrument, not a series of stages that don’t mean anything yet. You’ll see it when it’s done.
Kragen:Fair enough.
Kragen:What does it look like right now?
Me:Like a dulcimer.
Kragen:Helpful, thank you.
I set the phone down. The soundboard is right there.
The spruce is clean and pale, the grain running straight and true from end to end. It’s a good surface. It would be a perfectly good plain instrument—exactly what he ordered, exactly what I quoted him.
I think about the napkin sketch in the shallow drawer under the bench.
Five flowers. A loose cluster on a forked stem, the petals slightly irregular the way real flowers are. I burned them on a scrap piece weeks ago and they looked right. Not right like his drawing, right like the thing the drawing was pointing toward. I haven’t touched the scrap piece since. It’s still on the shelf above the walnut stock, face down.
A small design wouldn’t take long. One corner of the soundboard, near the peghead—discreet, tasteful, the kind of decorative touch that saysI noticed something about youwithout saying anything louder than that. I tell myself the wood is calling for it.
He went still when he described them.I don’t think about home much. But some things.
I turn on the burning pen, test the temp on a piece of scrap wood, take a breath, and press the pen to the wood.
The first flower takes shape the way the ones on the scrap piece did, the line finding itself, the petal edges going dark and clean, and the slight irregularity that makes it look alive rather than mechanical. The smell of burning spruce fills the workshop, that acrid char smell that lives in my clothes and my hair and probably my DNA at this point. I do the second flower and the third, adjusting the cluster, finding the angle that makes the petals catch light.
I sit back.
Five flowers in the upper corner. Tasteful. Appropriate. The exact right amount.
I do three more.
Kragen:Question about the fret spacing. Did you end up going with what we discussed in the workshop, or did the calculations change it?
Me:Changed it slightly. Your middle finger reach was the variable I underestimated. I added two millimeters to the spacing between frets four and five.
Kragen:You measured my fingers?
Me:You were looking at the walnut stock. I was doing my job.
Kragen:I don’t know whether to be impressed or unsettled.
Me:Both is fine.
Kragen:Question. Do you name your instruments while you’re building them?
Me:No.