Not of him, surely? He watched Jake’s eyes dart uncertainly around the woodshed. The orange wash of the lantern flickered over a vast array of strange objects that he could see Jake trying to process: tools, axe heads, hatchets, jars of screws and nails, tubs of motor oil, dented tins of paint. As he scanned the woodshed, Jake had left his face unattended and Frank could clearly see the fear unsettling his pale features. This bizarre new environment, he suddenly realized, with its sharp tools and sinister light, was the place where Daddy changed into someone else. Someone Jake barely recognized, with alien eyes and scarecrow hands, each holding a beaker of chopped-off toes.

Again he stifled a laugh, sensing it would alarm his son. Frank placed his arm around Jake and drew him close.

“Tell you what,” he said, removing the goggles and the gloves. “You give me a hug and I’ll let you use my extra-special axe that no one has ever used before to chop a very special piece of wood. How’s that sound?”

Jake’s eyes widened. He stopped twisting his hands and focused on his daddy’s face.

“Why is it special?” he asked.

Frank reached for a small hatchet that hung from the side of the shed.

“Because it’s been waiting for you, of course.”

It sounded sickeningly sweet, even to him, but Jake was thrilled to think that such a thing might be true. He looked at the hatchet with the kind of earnest deliberation Frank himself used when considering his next move in a game of chess.

“Can I touch it?”

Jake reached out a white, probing hand and Frank withdrew the hatchet.

“Not that bit,” he said, pointing to the blade. “It’s too sharp. This is the part we hold right here.”

He turned the handle towards Jake’s hands, and the boy placed his hands around the wood with a gentle reverence that Frank admired.

“Now,” he said, keeping his large hand wrapped around the boy’s grip. “Here’s that special piece of wood I was telling you about.”

He placed a small off-cut onto the chopping block with his other hand and watched the boy stare at it.

“Why’s the wood special?” Jake asked, watching the blade of the hatchet gleam in the orange light.

Frank looked into his boy’s eyes. “Because this piece of wood’s been waiting for you too, Jake.”

He waited for his son to question him further, but his answer, despite its ambiguity, seemed to be enough.

“What do we do now?” Jake said.

Frank stared into the boy’s eyes and wondered what his memory of this night might mean to him when he became a man.

“We raise the axe,” he said, guiding the hatchet above the boy’s head. “We watch the wood closely…” He paused for a moment, enjoying the sudden intimacy that seemed to have developed between them. “Are you watching?” he asked.

Jake nodded.

“Then we bring down the axe in one smooth, uncomplicated stroke…”

He gloved Jake’s hands in his own, held the hatchet tightly, and swung it cleanly through the air. There was a moment where he felt the boy draw in a sharp breath, his pulse quickened by his father’s skill, before the hatchet split the wood in two. Jake stared at the pieces for a moment, breathing hard, seeing something in the wood that Frank could only guess at. To him, they looked like two imperfect halves, one no longer dependent upon the other. Wasn’t that all there was to see? He looked closer at the wood and realized that Jake was staring at him. The boy let go of the hatchet and hugged him hard.

“I’m glad it waited for me, Daddy,” he said.

Frank hugged his son and wondered why he wanted to weep.

“Me too, Jake,” he said softly.

He squeezed him once and then reluctantly released him. Sometimes, he thought, it was so hard to hold him. Harder still to let him go.

He watched the boy run out the door and scamper up the garden towards the house. He became so small so quickly. Just before he reached the patio, he turned around and waved. A five-year-old boy in pajamas and Wellington boots. Smiling at his father in the dark.

* * *

Frank closed the door to the woodshed and wrapped his hands around the hatchet, imagining that he could still detect the subtle warmth of his son’s fingers. On the cutting block lay the two halves of wood they’d chopped together. Frank lifted them to his nose and inhaled the smell. He felt humbled by how ordinary it seemed.