the shipmaker.

this is the first section of the short story i am working on. after this part, i put a page breakish sort of thing, and i've started working on the next section a bit but will not share it just yet. i've worked more on what i wrote before. i tried to put it in a better format that is hopefully easier to understand. i hope it does a good job building character and setting the stage for everything else. feel free to comment with thoughts. :)

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Walter Hinkle lived a simple life. Every morning the sun crept through his drapes and rested on his eyelids, bringing him out of a light sleep. Walter never fell into a deep sleep; any ray of light, or creak in the house, could wake him. He needed complete darkness and eerie silence to drift off. When he woke, he followed his routine.

"Walter, what do you want today?"
"Usual, you know that."
"I know, but I can't get a word-a conversation outta you if I don't ask you a question or something."

He didn't reply.

Walter walked into the Town Square Coffee every morning around 8:30. He functioned more robotically than humanly until he got black coffee in his system. Even with the coffee, to many, he still acted robotic.

"Tell me something you're gonna do today, Walter."
"I'm going to wait until you give me my coffee, then I am going to walk out of the door. I'm going to look for supplies I need, go home, work on something for a while, then eat and sleep and breathe."
"How fun! What you working on?"
"What I work on everyday."

Walter couldn't stand Martha, the barista at Town Square. She was in her mid sixties he assumed, and she fit the mold of the sort of woman that was in her mid sixties and lived in Newberry. She was rotund, the dimples of her face could not be avoided, her glasses sat the tip of her nose, and she talked too much. She tried to hide graying hair that was obviously still graying. She seemed to him like the sort of woman who, if she asked a personal question and someone answered it, would tell everyone else who came to Town Square that day.

The reason she always had to pull teeth to get conversation out of him was because he always avoided her. He didn't mind people, he just minded people who asked questions that didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Walter lived off a disability check that he started getting years ago. He found out at the age of 39 that he had severe carpal tunnel, was developing bone crippling arthritis, and that he could not continue work. He had built houses, starting at the age of 18, right out of high school. He'd never wanted to go to college. Walter's dad worked with his hands, Walter worked with his hands.

"Son, whatever you do with your life, do something you can look at later. Something you can put on a shelf or take a picture of to remind you that you did it."

He thought a lot, but never felt like thinking alone should earn a man his keep. He needed to have a craft. His father made that clear. He needed to feel like he could hold something for long enough and it become beautiful. When he realized he could no longer hold two-by-fours for as long as it took to watch them become beautiful homes, he needed another craft.

He started to make small ships. He collected twigs from his yard and larger branches that fell from the oak by the tool shed. These he carved into being the hull of the boat. He looked at thrift stores and went to yard sales and bought old, yellow paged books that he ripped apart and used to make the sails. Every sail covered in words from books he'd never read. Every now and then he'd do a double take on the sail of a ship, seeing words he recognized.

"... nature, red in tooth and.."

Walter wasn't a reader, so he never understood how he would see words he knew. Later he'd notice a book of sonnets by Shakespeare, or early poetry by Tennyson sitting in the trash, gutted of pages, and it would make sense to him. Everyone quoted them, he couldn't avoid knowing their works. He never looked at the titles of books before he tore into them. It didn't matter if he threw away Emerson or a cheap Harlequin novel, they all made similar kachunk sounds when they hit the sides of the trash can.

"You don't even read Shakespeare?"
"What the hell does a carpenter do with a play by Shakespeare?"
"At least you knew he wrote plays."
"Just because I don't read doesn't mean I'm an idiot."
"Oh, you're still an idiot."
"And you're just an educated son of a bitch."

Robert and Walter had been friends since pre-school at Newberry Baptist. In Newberry, that's how people got to be close friends, they grew up together. The only difference is that, for close to eight years, Robert left. He moved away after high school, went to college, put his thoughts on paper, and returned to Newberry with a new level of pretentious conversation that Walter never could have imagined in Robert. Walter liked the new, educated Robert. Walter tended to be perceived by outsiders as an asshole because he wasn't into small talk and had no sense of humor. Robert was close to being the same way, only his attitude stemmed from his undergrad degree in English, masters degree in philosophy, and doctorate in liberal arts. Robert could deal with Walter, and that's what kept them friends.

One thing Walter couldn't grasp was why Robert returned to Newberry. He moved back and told Walter he was doing so because he wanted to "get a feel for Newberry so that he could write an autobiography that was true to self." Walter thought it was a bullshit way of saying that even after three degrees, he still got scared sometimes and wanted to feel comfortable.

"Comfortable? What does that even mean, Walter?"
"You know what it means. You want to feel like you don't have to fear something."
"Everyone fears, you can't avoid that. I wouldn't move somewhere to try to avoid the inevitable. Not to mention, I have an awful lot of comfort. Her name is Pam."
"Right, right, a wife. I guess another warm side of the bed is what some people need."

Walter never married, and felt himself to be a hollow man. He didn't blame himself; he didn't cry himself to sleep. Long ago, after his one bout with love, he had chalked it up to providence and left it at that. He thought too much, his bones were breaking underneath him, and he had little sense of humor. These were truths of his being he could not shake. There came a day when he decided that he was better off alone, because the only graces he had ever offered, he offered to himself. He had no reason to be concerned with romance anymore. He concerned himself with the work of his hands. He had accepted and made the most of this life, a life he was content with.

"You're going to die alone, and you're going to regret it, Walter."
"Says the man with the wife, of course."
"I'm just saying, I think it could brighten up your days a bit."
"And I'm just saying, I'm not Robert Allen."
"You sure as hell aren't."
"Robert, do you think dreams mean anything? And don't feed me that Freudian theory bullshit either. I'm asking you."
"Do you mean dreams when you go to sleep, or goals you have?"
"Seep dreams."
"I think it depends. I guess it could mean something, but other times I imagine it's just random stuff. Or, maybe it's random to you because you are having issues with identity that are so subconscious you don't realize they're issues you're having."
"I said no theory bullshit."

Walter had an attachment to a sort of recurring dream he had. There was a unifying factor, but then differences also. The unifying factor was a woman with changing hair. He thought he recognized her, because of how he felt when he woke up, but wasn't sure. Throughout the dream her hair would shift from being brunette, to auburn, and sometimes to black. He never remembered any distinct facial features, only her hair, and he knew it was always changing. He would always feel as if he'd seen a different woman, but in the dream and after, he knew she had to be the same.

The dream would include snippits of him being in a forest, cutting down a tree, then another snippit of a tree in a barren field, set on fire. Other times he would be on a ship, with the sail of the ship covered in words that appeared and ran across the sails as if someone was writing on it as he journeyed the sea. He never remembered what the words said. He figured he had no attachment to anything in the dream, but instead, just to the feeling he had when he thought about it.