Jason Marc Harris | 37
Despite our incremental transformations, we did not panic. The harmonizing of these ghostly threads drew us together in a web of contemplative solidarity. Or was it the wisdom that had traversed star systems? Or merely a narcotic effect of that sticky resin emitted from squeezing the handle too tightly as we employed it for so much useful work?
It took a couple of months, but we grew wiser, more interconnected, and more peaceful. Marijuana still wasn’t legal in Texas, but passing around the Handle gave us a high like no other.
Yet we remained practical as our minds drifted together. We prepared for winter.
We hammered fences, roofs, and Dutch-oven cookers without blisters because the Handle fit like a velvet sheath over all the tools anyone wanted to use. Mr. Peakes, who owned the only bookstore in seventy-miles, had not yet touched our sacred relic. “Don’t you know this is just some fiberoptic pipe a clumsy astronaut dropped down the garbage chute on the space station? You’re clogging your eyes with hysteria and lies. Why, I’m surprised the National Enquirer ain’t here yet.”
We told him to give it a try, but he shook his head and said we’d better keep hammering. He gibed that Christ would no doubt have been up on the cross in a jiffy if the Romans had pounded nails using our heaven-sent mallet. We laughed politely since he was old, and irony is the most intellectual of humor. We were becoming dry wits while star silk reknit our parochial synapses.
Mr. Peakes was also our best Santa Claus and neighborly handyman. Besides sometimes loaning out the books that he seldom sold, he fixed up anyone’s ATV or motorcycle like he’d built it himself. We didn’t want to disrespect the man by not laughing at his awkward jokes.
It’s sad that Mr. Peakes got the blame for what happened to little Sammy