Iron Belly (Gumbo)

     Wrapped in a thick blanket, his permanent cloak during the months of isolation, Franklin poured a fresh cup of coffee. According to the farmer’s calendar on the wall, it was Sunday. December. The moon was in her second phase, smiling over the Earth. Laughing at some private joke. He dug through the bits of remaining firewood, found some pieces he hoped would give off a little heat, and stoked the fire. Mostly ashes in the grate. None of the wood he burned during the cold snap was good hard wood, and left few if no embers to build upon. Unsure of how to continue feeding the black, cantankerous beast, again he wished he had replaced it when he first arrived.
     He didn't know how old the stove was, but it had been there as long as the structure itself... since his grandfather built the small hunting cabin with his own hands. Each board of the maple walls and walnut floors was chosen carefully by the exacting eyes of the life long carpenter, cut from trees off the land where the foundation was laid. He milled every board -- each chosen for longevity and the simple beauty of unadorned wood. There was no crevice that didn't feel the touch of those measured, callused hands and deliberate fingers of the man Franklin remembered only in vignettes: holidays, Sunday visits, birthdays, and family reunions that were a forgotten pastime before Franklin’s seventh birthday. The cabin sat empty for over a generation, when he inherited it as a footnote in his father's will—more a record of debts than the distribution of property. Those three and a half acres were the only thing left free and clear. Franklin took responsibility for the property, adhering to some nostalgic sense of obligation. At the time, he considered renting the place out to weekenders and hunters.
     But he never laid an eye on the place until his retreat in the late days of the past summer, leaving his well-planned life in the wake. He went about, blowing the dust off everything, trying to make the place inhabitable again, stumbling onto evidence of the old carpenter's presence. Scent of wood shavings, Lux soap, and cheap after-shave were imbedded in the wood like heavy varnish. An old calendar on the wall above the kitchen sink had read October 1970. A coffee mug from the St. Louis World Exposition. The soft leather rocker retained the imprint of the tall, narrow frame Franklin didn't inherit. The cabin kept the mark of the man. There was no place he could go and not feel as if he were being watched; the wind shook the tin roof, made noises like whispers. At night, the floors creaked from condensation and the temperature changed, waking him up out of shallow sleep. He even began to think his grandfather was still there, tending to the place – that the builder still belonged to the cabin just like the cabin still belonged to the trees, just as the trees belonged to the mountain, just a the mountain belonged only to itself. The iron belly represented another facet of this inevitability. Like the hill he tried to tell himself was his new home, the stove belonged only to itself. It was a squat, black, cast iron beast, made when stoves were made for warmth as much as for cooking. Acclimating to life at the cabin became reckoning with the cantankerous thing.
     After feeding the iron belly, he returned to the table. It was covered in papers strewn in no particular order. As he sat, his back bent with accepted familiarity and he went over the computations from the night before. 390,400,000. He noted where he began to nod off, around the middle of the page. Lines upon lines of handwritten numbers. Hypnotic repetition. He was still impressed by the shorthand system he devised to get past writing so many zeroes. He began prayerfully.
“Every integer greater than three is the sum of two prime numbers.” There was something in the columns of numbers, something soothing. He allowed himself one more look at the calendar, and spoke another, more bitter number.
     “Thirty.”
     Madeline stopped calling thirty days ago.
     He imagined her as she was six months before. Sitting at the kitchen table of their new home. Everything around them embossed with the obscene glow of new, unlived objects. Acquisitions without distinction. Devoid of personality. The house was the first in a brand new subdivision outside of Blighton. Everywhere he looked, rolling farmland was being transformed by men and bulldozers and cement trucks. Within the year, most of Edge Lane would be completed. The only thing remaining of the farm would be the un-uniform house across the road, with it’s wide porch, tin shingled roof, and the rusty water pump in the front Madeline labeled “divinely picturesque.” The new kitchen table was made in what the store placard referred to as a New England design. She picked it to match the decorating scheme in the rest of the house. The wood was so shiny; her reflection stared up at him with the same hollow eyed gaze. His only escape was to look off into the kitchen, filled with off the showroom floor, unused appliances, all reflecting his face back to him as he went through the meticulously practiced speech, using the tone he supposed was resolute.
     “Please,” he told her. “It won’t be forever. It’s just something I need to do.” He watched her fidget with her engagement ring. The night he proposed, things were so much clearer to him in the candlelight. Madeline had never been so beautiful. Thinking of that night, he very nearly took back all he said, retracted his leaving before it occurred. If she had asked, Franklin knew he would have changed his mind.
     “I thought no one could prove it.”
     “I can…”
     “You against three centuries of mathematicians?”
     “I have to.”
     She didn’t answer. Franklin was glad, because he knew he would have ended up leaving anyway, in the middle of the night. There was still time to postpone the wedding, and send back the gifts. There was still time.
     One month after his arrival, she began calling. Initially, he was annoyed with himself for even bothering to turn on the phone; it never occurred to him that anybody would actually call. Strictly for emergencies. Seasonal changes were in progress outside. All around the cabin, summer whittled away. There had been more than the usual amount of rain during the spring and early summer, and the trees maintained their dignity even as the leaves fell. Japanese beetles had been bad though, so many of the pine trees as well as a few poplars and maples were dead weight against the wind. Madeline asked him about the weather, about the condition of cabin. If it was nice. If it was warm. Were there any deer, because her brother was always on the lookout for new hunting grounds. Was the work going well? Did he need anything? No, Franklin told her. He was just fine. Just him, Goldbach’s conjecture, and the iron belly stove. There was plenty of food. Plenty of everything he needed.
     Franklin imagined her every time she called. Her scent, her touch, her subtle and athletic curves carefully hidden beneath conservative business suits. When she came in from the gym, he used to follow her into the shower and soap her down, making sure to bubble every inch of her body. He was enamored of the way she laughed with surprise each time.
     Madeline never asked him to come back. “Do you miss me?” she asked him once. “Are you enjoying life without me?”
     He never answered. He only spoke of Goldbach, prime numbers, and the early death brought on by Japanese Beetles.
     He tried to sound distant whenever she called. As if her call was an intrusion. As if. He didn’t quite know what to say to her, and wasn’t entirely sure why she called. Love, he supposed. He wasn’t sure if he loved her or not. He certainly knew he wasn’t ready for the life she was building around the two of them: a life of mortgages and car payments and midnight feedings. College trust funds. IRA accounts and Certificates of Deposit. He knew he wasn’t ready to be the first person to use a chair, or sit at a kitchen table, or dirty an unblemished spoon. There was time for all that, if Madeline wasn’t so damned positive about the whole thing. More than any of it, her unwavering faith in all the fixtures and trappings of their neat and tidy life unnerved him. As if it were expected. Normal. Franklin knew people married every day; people bought houses and cars and opened Christmas savings accounts. The home waiting for him—that he supposed was waiting for him—was a clean slate. He knew if he told Madeline he wanted to come back, she’d let him. There were no ghosts in the cracks. No worn marks in the New England style table. No imprints on the furniture. All prepared to accrue the scars and etchings of some life she saw so clearly. So much care taken by her to ensure its perfection. All the colors coordinated. The wallpaper was appropriate and seamless. The artwork matched her decorating scheme. Everything was placed in just the right spot for optimal visual effect and usage. A filtered, planned kind of comfort.
     It was a home impossible for him to grasp before leaving. Gradually, the thought of it became alien. Maybe that was the reason she quit calling. By the end, all he really heard was the lilting, invitational tone. Her words were gibberish. It reminded him of speaking in tongues. His grandmother’s church. He used to spend weekends at her house when his parents needed to forget they were no longer the young and irresponsible people they had married. The minister was a helmet hair old man in a Texan Sunday suit. He thundered from his pulpit about pervasive sin and the selfish ways of the world, railed against rock and roll, quoted scripture without once looking at the worn Bible he waved and pounded like a tambourine. The summer Franklin was ten years old, he watched as his grandmother—normally a quiet and self possessed woman who crocheted her own potholders—jabber and weave on her swollen ankles until she reached a near frenzy, passing out from the oppressive heat.
     Autumn wheezed into winter, and Madeline’s calls became sparse. For two weeks she didn’t call at all; but eventually, she did. Franklin engaged in as much conversation as he thought was necessary, unable to distinguish her words. He envisioned her vegetable garden and the flowers she planted around the house’s perimeter. She warbled in a widow’s tone, and Franklin spoke only of the numbers.
     Thirty. Such a small, inconsequential number.
     Midday shadows slinked around the walls, the floors. Whispering and hissing amongst themselves, no longer interested in him. They were familiar with each other, Franklin and the shadows. They understood one another. He shivered, and stood up to go and check the stove again. It was rapacious. Opening the door in time to see the last bit of flame die out, Franklin looked and saw there were no embers to build on. Just a mound of gray ash.
     I’ll have to empty it soon or it’ll never keep a flame. A few ashes drifted out with the next gush of wind down the chimney pipe, fluttered to the floor with the careful descent of yearling feathers. The only kindling left was the aborted portion of his computations. No one would be interested in the steps, anyway. Only the final line mattered. A few scraps of paper. The walls glowed in the reflection of the open grate and while he watched the carefully written lines instantly flame then turn black and into gray ash, he noticed one of the running boards along the wall was loose. Good solid wood. He walked over, tore it off the wall. It separated from the wall in two pieces. He placed those in the dying flame, watched the yellow fire take hold and burn a bluish green. There would be plenty of wood, and plenty of time.
     The iron belly hissed, content to be nourished again.