The Cooper Works With His Door Open

Everyone is writing about the notice. Nobody has watched the man behind it.

I went to the yard at the fourth bell. The hoops are stacked in the road now, three courses high against the wall, because the shed is full. A carter has to swing wide to pass. Nobody has complained about this.

The cooper’s name is Elber Nast. He is sixty or near it. His door was open. It has been open every day I have gone by.

He works standing. A stave in the left hand, the drawknife pulled toward him in the right, two strokes, then he turns the stave and looks down its edge against the light from the door. Most staves he turns twice. Some he turns four times. One he set aside without a word and took another.

His hands are not fast. That is the thing I went to see. The backlog is five days and his hands are not fast, and he is not trying to make them fast. Two strokes, turn, look.

A boy of about ten works the shaving horse at the back. He is not fast either. He has been taught not to be.

At the sixth bell a woman came in with a jar. She had run cord around it and set wax over the crack, badly — I could see the wax had gone in cold and stood proud of the stone. She said she knew he could not take it for four days. She said she would leave it and come back.

He took it from her and put it on the bench and looked at it the way he looks down a stave.

“Who did the cord?”

“I did.”

“The cord is right.” He turned the jar. “The wax was cold. Warm the iron longer next time. Count sixty.”

She said she would. She took the jar back. He did not charge her, and he did not mend it, and he did not put it in the queue. He gave her the sixty count and she carried her own jar home.

Then he took up the drawknife again. Two strokes. Turn. Look.

The notice is nailed to the post outside his door. From where he stands he cannot see it. I do not think he has read it. I think somebody read it to him and he went back to the bench.

Twenty-second day without rain. His door was still open when I left.