It’s not true that wood carvers have a chip on their shoulder.
Wood carvers may be very boring people or extremely interesting, and they are from a vast variety of jobs, from laborers to doctors.
Generally speaking, carvers have creative minds, are mild-mannered, sedentary, and patient (like a popular doctor, “patience” is/are required).
Carvers are working with knives sharp enough for a man to shave with, and unless he’s a whittler with only one or two knives (usually jack knives) to carve outlines of figures, the carver works with different sized blades (may have as many as 4-6 knives, each with differently shaped blades). That’s why very few carvers carve bare handed. Most carvers, me included, wear a protective Kevlar glove on one hand and a protective thumb guard on the other hand. However, the universal truth for carvers is that eventually, you are going to cut yourself. The protective gear usually makes those cuts minor. The dedicated wood carver almost always has variously sizes gouges, V-tools, skews, mini-tools, chisels, and more, especially if he or she is a Master Wood Carver with decades of experience.
As in all groups of people, there are the odd-balls, but I don’t want to talk about me. It’s Eric Morton, a divorced, forty-two-year-old plumber, that I want to mention, concerning past Monday morning carving sessions.
Eric frequently says, “Shit happens, man.” We tease him by saying, “Just how does shit happen, Eric? Can you explain it to us dummies? We enjoy crappy explanations.” Or I will say, “Holy shit, man. That must be when the Pope takes a shit.” It’s all in fun. Eric’s response is usually that he likes it when ‘shit happens’ because fixing toilets and pipes provides him with a good income.
Eric is usually loaded with one-line jokes, mostly bad, but amusing. He’s likeable, even if a little strange and usually even the strangeness is entertaining. He’s also so tall that a conversation where you are sitting, and he is standing will give you a neck ache followed by a headache. When Eric is around, you’ll often hear someone say, “Sit down, Eric.” But lately he has been serious and disturbed by paranormal experiences in his home.
If you’re old enough, you may remember the character Lurch from the TV show “The Addams Family.” Eric does have the vague facial appearance of Lurch. Plus, Eric is six feet four inches tall and slim. His shoes could be used as cruise ships, but his hands are nimble enough to perform good carving work. Where some of us would occasionally need a vice to hold our carving project in place, Eric just wraps his big hand and long fingers around the object, with his boney joints protruding as white knobs. Though he is strange looking and acts weird often, he is likeable. He has found acceptance and friendship at our carving table of four friends: Art, Lynda, Mark, John.
At the last few meetings, Eric has told us ghost stories which, at first, we thought were meant to be humorous, but then we realized these were things that he thought were really happening to him in his home. We realized that he was serious when we noticed him fidgeting in his chair, as if his ass didn’t quite fit. He was getting unusually impatient, and stressed by what normally would be small inconveniences, or easy repair work after too big a slice or gouge. As a group we became concerned as he started waving his knife around in frustration, impatience, and the carelessness he was demonstrating. Each of us had to mention to him that his behavior was not appropriate, especially the knife waving, and each of us was ignored; in one ear, out the other.
He usually complained that he was hearing sounds of chanting, drums and rattles. He said he couldn’t understand the chanting. It was nonsense to him, but it was driving him crazy, and he was not getting enough sleep.
We took notice that he was carving a rather large block of wood. Eric usually carved small animals, sometimes caricatures. This block of basswood was about one foot tall, nine inches wide, and six inches thick. He had drawn the basic head of a Native American Indian on one side, but hadn’t made much progress slicing away the peripheral, excess wood.
The five of us watched him. He probably was aware of us staring at him, so he said, “A son asks his dad if they were pyromaniacs. Dad says, ‘Yes, we arson.’”
Eric forced the joke, though it was one of his better ones. He certainly did not look jovial and must have thought the joke would distract our annoying attention on him. We knew he was upset because he was rapidly bouncing his lower legs up and down without realizing it. He didn’t even notice the table moving, nor did he notice that we all removed our hands and arms from the table since a shifting table was not conducive to steady, precise carving.
Eric snarled, “You see here where I started to carve the excess wood off last night?” A rhetorical question. We waited.
“I shaved off a few slices and would have done a lot more, but I noticed that the slices were flying and adhering to the wall in front of me. It was as if the wood slices were metal, and the wall was magnetic. How the fuck does something like that happen in a normal home, and don’t start talking about static electricity because that’s bullshit.” He looked up at us, stared at each one of us for a second, then dropped his chin against his chest as if his head disconnected from his neck.
No one responded, so I said, “Eric, why don’t you carve a little more excess wood off and let’s see if anything abnormal occurs. Just don’t wave your knives around when you’re talking.”
“Sure. Why the hell not?”
We all tried not to stare as he carved but watched him with our peripheral vision as best as we could. I was sitting across the table from him, so I had the best view. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. I had to start wondering if he was delusional. I’m sure the others were thinking the same thing.
Slicing off the excess wood was the easy part of carving. He finished it in less than half an hour, and it took that long only because it was a large piece of wood on which he was working. Then he started on the nose. Since the nose is central to the face, all other facial features are measured with reference to it. Where the forehead will be, the eyebrows, the cheeks, the ears, the lips and chin all reference themselves to the location and size of the nose. These measurements are approximate and memorized by carvers. Beginners use a face chart until they also memorize the various distances from the nose.
Being slow, precise and careful, he was halfway finished with the nose an hour later. We departed the group carving session and agreed to meet on Wednesday (normally we meet Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9:00 a.m.)
I called Eric at his home on Tuesday but got no answer. He has no answering machine. I tried later. Same result.
Wednesday arrived and we all met, but Eric was not there. Ten minutes later he came into the room and shuffled to the table.
Lynda greeted him first. She has a pleasant, calming voice and he actually said, “Thanks,” and returned the barest of grins. We each greeted him kindly, feeling helpless to assist him.
Eric sat quietly, put the Indian bust on the table in front of him and stared at it. He looked miserable.
Mark inquired, “Why did you start staining it already? It’s not even done.”
“What stain?” Eric asked in a tired, slurred voice.
Mark looked at Eric with incredulity sparking in his eyes. “What do you mean ‘what stain’? The stain that’s under and around the nose, of course.”
“It’s blood, asshole. The nose started bleeding when I was finished carving it. I didn’t want it to dry blotchy, so I smoothed it out and rubbed it into the wood. I figured when it came time to really stain it, I would use mahogany to cover it up.”
“That’s the result of a blood stain?” John interjected, then, “It looks so realistic for the completion of the face. But I wouldn’t want to use it too often.” John smiled at Eric, but it didn’t loosen him up. No movement at all in his lips. Eric stared at John angrily and snapped, “Why not? It’s not my blood.”
Mark, who had been silent previously, said to Eric, “Come on Eric. This is crazy. You’re acting delusional. Christ almighty, isn’t that really your blood, and you’re pranking us? I’d rather hear your bad jokes than take your bullshit seriously.” “I’m not bullshitting anybody, Mark. I’m serious. These crazy things really are happening to me, but only when I’m home alone, so I can’t prove it.”
I added, “Eric, you have to admit that it’s kind of convenient that it only happens when you’re at home alone.” I knew it was risky saying that. I was right and felt bad about it.
“I’m sorry I said that Eric. We just don’t know what to think about your paranormal stories.”
“Yeah? And you’re the last one I would have expected to say that, so screw you, Bill.”
Eric started packing his gear so he could leave.
“Eric, please, don’t go. I know now that you’re deadly serious. I apologize for what I said, for not believing you. I think we all feel that way.” The others dipped their heads in agreement.
Eric sat down and started carving an ear, but his hand was trembling. I put my knife down and asked Eric to join me at the coffee and donut table. I wanted him to put his knife down. When he got up, he tripped on a chair leg and Art caught him and straightened him upright. Art is an ex-Marine. A strong guy.
“All you guys think I’m bat shit bonkers, don’t you?”
“We did, but not anymore,” I responded. “We don’t know how to help you now that we know you’re serious about what’s happening. You know as well as the rest of us that few people believe in paranormal occurrences. It’s difficult to convince people of it. That’s why we thought you were pulling a prank, or were delusional, or, as you put it, ‘bat shit bonkers.’”
“Bill, if you were at my house and saw it happening, you’d damn sure believe it. You’d be as spooked as I am when seeing wood chips flying and sticking to walls and hearing Indian type chanting going on. Yeah, it sounds like Indian chanting that I’m hearing. Similar to a rain dance, or a war dance that you hear in movies. And when I saw the wooden nose bleeding, I was paralyzed with fear, terror really.”
“Would you like to stay at my house for a day or so?”
“No. I’m not putting you and your family at an inconvenience. Besides, no personal injury has occurred, just spooky stuff.”
I thought, mental injury or abuse is often worse than a physical injury.
We returned to the table, where Eric nearly completed one ear.
When it was time to leave, I told Eric to give me a call if he needed to talk to someone. The others said the same thing. We had each other’s phone numbers.
“Thanks, guys…and gal. I will,” Eric grumbled. Then, “See y’all Friday.
On Friday Eric was late again. While he was absent, I asked if anyone had gotten a phone call from Eric. No one had.
Eric arrived and walked to his chair, sat and put the bust on the table, but not gently.
“Had some trouble with the unique curves inside the ears,” he blurted out. “Can anyone help?”
Art and Mark, who were the best ones at facial features, offered their advice and Eric was happy with it. He got busy with the delicate ears.
We were interrupted by a fire alarm and had to exit the building where we meet. It didn’t take long. It was a false alarm and fixed quickly. We were only gone about fifteen minutes.
Returning to the room, we all sat, picked up our carvings and casually got back to work. Then, to our surprise, Eric yelled, “OK, guys! Who’s the asshole who moved my carving?”
We all looked at him, shocked. No one answered, at first, just vigorous shaking of heads side to side. Then Lynda, in a calm reassuring voice said, “Eric, none of us did it. Now that we know you are serious about your paranormal experiences, we surely would not do something like that.”
I spotted it sitting on the windowsill about ten feet from our table. I pointed to it. Eric whipped around and dashed to the windowsill. He grabbed the bust and returned to the table. He looked at the other groups of carvers saying, “Think that’s funny, huh?”
“Eric. Listen,” I said, “None of us did that. I promise. Maybe one of the other guys did it to spook you, or simply in jest.”
“Sure. We’re all friends here, right?” was Eric’s sarcastic retort.
Lynda, being typically kindhearted, rose from her chair and casually walked to the closest tables. She was inquiring if anyone had moved the bust as a joke. She came back in five minutes and shook her head to indicate ‘no,’ no one admitted to doing it and she believed the guys because they had indicated that they knew Eric was having difficulties.
Eric finally smiled. “See, I told you that spooky things were happening.”
By the time our carving session ended, Eric was working on the second ear and doing fairly well, according to Art and Mark.
We all packed up our carving gear.
Eric was faster than all of us. As he left the table, he said, “See everyone on Monday.”
Everyone answered in the affirmative either with a “Yep,” or “You bet,” or a simple nod of the head.
On Monday Eric had the ears and lips completed, the blood stains from the ears and lips were there but smoothed out into the wood, making the stain look like a real light mahogany wood stain and remarkably skin-like. It was spooky how each blood stain made the bust look so much like the complexion of a Native American.
We were all perplexed with the blood stains. I said, “Would be nice if we could get it tested to see if it’s really human blood, but even then, we’d have our doubts. If a test concluded it was human blood, that wouldn’t solve the question of ‘whose human blood’?
I was almost an asshole, again, when I thought of saying, “The red skin really looks like a ‘redskin.’” My lips conquered my tongue and shut off that near mistake.
Eric told us that he hadn’t worked on the bust all day Tuesday, and to his surprise there were no spooky surprises. But now he wanted to work on the hair which he wanted to look greasy and slicked back on bust’s head. Next, he indicated he would carve a headband into the forehead. Before anyone could ask, he said, “I’m using real feathers in the back of its headband. It should make it look more authentic. If it doesn’t then I’ll think of something else.”
We all knew the headband wouldn’t be easy because he had to precisely mark where the headband would go around the forehead and how wide it would be. Then, the hard part, he had to carve away everything on the forehead that was not part of the headband. That would make the headband stick out from the forehead, a delicate piece of work especially if the measurements were wrong and the headband wasn’t parallel to the remainder of the forehead. To make a mistake and have the headband tilted would make the face look comical, which is far from what Eric intended. It already looked like the finished face would have a menacing appearance, especially with the age lines on the forehead and under the eyes which looked more like scars than age lines.
For the first time in a long while, Eric seemed to have calmed down and was confident at what he was doing. He wasn’t as moody and tense. He smiled once in a while. The convincer of his more relaxed appearance was his telling a joke.
“Hey, guys and gal, why is the word ‘dark’ spelled with a ‘k’ instead of a ‘c’?”
We all shrugged our shoulders.
“Because you can’t see/c in the dark.”
Eric looked at each of us as we shook our heads in disbelief. I must admit, though, that his bad jokes were getting better. They’ve probably graduated from first grade humor to fourth grade humor.
Eric was still grinning at all of us. Even with our heads looking down at our carving, we could hear his soft giggling.
At this carving session, Eric took more time telling jokes than he did carving. We were happy to see him more at ease. Before he went home feeling good, he said, “Hey listen to this. You should never, ever buy flowers for a monk. Why? Only you can prevent florist friars. Now that’s comic genius.”
I’ll be damned if he didn’t get all of us to smile.
At Wednesday’s carving session, we could tell immediately that Eric had reverted back to being in a foul mood. He slammed the bust onto the table, dropped his tool bag and plopped down on his chair so hard it slid away from the table. Then a loud, angry sounding sigh and a clenched teeth grimace dominated his face. He stared at the bust.
He started talking to the bust, cursing it with fists raised, then slammed his fists on the table, which, of course halted our own carving.
Eric sneered at the bust as if it was a real Indian. He was talking to it as if trying to intimidate a school-yard bully on our table-top playground. His words got meaner, louder, more threatening.
All the other carvers turned and looked at him.
I could see that all of us at our table were either looking at him, or his carving. His behavior was starting to get annoying to all the carvers, especially his carelessness with waving his knife, his loudness and his banging on the table which involved all of us when we had to temporarily stop our own carving for safety reasons.
Eric suddenly became silent, but started sweating profusely, sweat running off his forehead and into his eyes which caused him to keep blinking, then wiping the sweat away with the back of his hand. I checked to make sure he wasn’t holding a knife.
When he settled down, I asked him to give me his carving so I could look it over. I examined it and told Eric that I thought it was a better job than I could do. I looked at Art and Mark. They gave the carving a ‘thumbs up’ then shrugged their shoulder, at a loss for why Eric was so upset.
But Art added a tease at me that felt like the tip of a spear, which Marines are sometimes referred to as being. He said, “Wouldn’t take much to do a better face than you could do, Bill. Get a piece of wood and an ax. Hack at the wood several times and that’s the kind of face you could do, right John?”
Not only did John laugh loudly, but so did everyone else, including Eric who enjoyed the joke the most being that it was about someone else. Eric seemed to think that I was the best carver at the table and that was way off the mark. Mark and Art were probably the better carvers at our particular table.
I had once tried to help John with a face, and it ended up looking like the face of a gorilla on Super Woman’s neck. I never have, and never will, live that down. But I was grateful for the laughter that had been absent too long from our table. Eric stared at me with a grin that spread from ear to ear.
Eric’s changes in moods were dynamic and startling, especially after all our laughter and his ear-to-ear smile at me. It took us by surprise and was an ominous warning, at least for me it was.
Eric sneered at the bust as if it was a real enemy, a blood thirsty Indian. He was now shouting at it as if trying to intimidate a bully on the table-top playground. A bully at school. His words got meaner, more threatening. He was sweating profusely.
The others were startled as well. I saw the worry lines on their foreheads and the concern in their eyes.
I tried to calm him down, but it was only a brief period of calm. Then his glaring eyes and sneering lips made him appear as if he were one step short of a mental breakdown.
“I’ll have this fucker finished and bring it in on Friday,” he snapped at us. All I need is for someone to show me how to make good eyes. Art and Mark hesitated, but then took turns explaining it to him. They drew pictures, gave names of tools to do it with, and tips and tricks that they had learned along the way in their own carving experiences. Mark carved a quick example for him. Art told him that “YouTube” had excellent demonstrations for carving eyes.
Eric took the piece of Mark’s scrap wood and practiced carving an eye twice. Satisfied, he then packed his bag and just about ran out of the room. He was talking to himself so angrily, so out of control that spital sprayed out of his mouth in an angry mist. He never looked back, and he didn’t say, “See you Friday,” as he normally would have. His footsteps were loud in the quiet room and all eyes were following him, many showing relief.
“Jesus. He’s in a bad way,” I said to the group. “Maybe I should call 9-1-1 to get him some medical help.”
“And say what?” John asked. “That he’s talking to a wooden Indian? That he’s having paranormal experiences? He’ll get locked away for sure, maybe a good long time.”
“Maybe that’s what’s needed,” I whispered. It was so quiet that a pin dropping would have echoed loudly through the room.
None of us knew what to do so we dropped the subject and went home. I decided to call him Thursday, maybe even go visit him, to give him support and a listening ear.
I called twice Thursday morning and, again, Thursday afternoon, but he did not answer. I drove to his house. His car was gone. I rang the doorbell. No answer. I went home and worried about him.
I called Art. We talked but nothing helpful came to our minds, so we waited for Friday to see how Eric had managed to get through Thursday.
When Friday morning arrived and we were all at the table, including Eric, the first thing he said was, “It’s not done. I need more help with the eyes. Damn hard things to carve, you know, to make them look real. I tried, but its half-carved eyes kept moving, and staring at me. I did a shitty job. Couldn’t work on the bitchin’ things, especially with the talking walls, the chanting pipes, the wood chips flying, and me with blurred vision from crying. Maybe I should make the eyelids look closed, like the eyes of a dead person in a coffin. It may be better to make closed eyes on the damn thing. I don’t like looking at it, nor it looking at me.
Eric became mute, agitated, as he glared at the bust, then suddenly he picked it up, swore at it in length, raised it over his head and slammed it onto the floor, breaking half the nose off, the loose half flying into a wall where a sharp sliver of it stuck it into the wall.
When he picked up the bust, and put it on the table, we could see that he’d worked on the lips, which were too bright. When Lynda asked about it, probably because it looked like lipstick, he yelled, “I had nothing to do with the color of the lips. Thursday night they turned lipstick red. Makes the fuckin’ thing look feminine, right? And those lips were moving, trying to talk to me though no sound could be heard coming from them. But the strange thing is that the lips moved in rhythm with the chanting sounds. The lips were in sync with the chanting. I had to leave the house, to get away from the haunted thing. I spent most of Thursday in a diner eating lunch, then went to two movies. After than I ate dinner at the same diner. I went home and the first thing I did was grab a towel and throw it over the Indian. What a waste of my time, and my sanity, too. “Firewood!” he screamed. “That’s what it is. Just a piece of firewood!”
Mark took out a piece of scrap wood, then, in detail, showed Eric how to make a realistic eye. Eric took the piece of wood and tried to duplicate the eye that Mark had made. It came out well. Mark said he just needed to take more care, slow down, make slow cuts, use the point of the knife to make the deeper cuts, and make sure he sharpened his knife before he moved onto carving the other eye.
Eric, like a good carver practiced forming an eye in that piece of wood, front and back, for the duration of the carving session. He was obsessed with it. At the end he was carving a fairly realistic eye, nearly as good as Mark’s. But Eric alternated between sad and happy, mostly sad, until it was time to go.
When time was up and we got ready to depart, Eric stated, “See yah Monday. I should have it done by then. I’m not sure why I want to finish it. It’s been nothing but a pain in my ass, and worse, ever since I started it. Don’t even know what I’ll do with it. Maybe I’ll get some relief and satisfaction making a campfire with it. Don’t even know why I started it. Haunted dreams, nightmares, and a voice saying, “Do it. No relief until I do it.”
Eric’s eyes were glazed, wild and wicked looking. His pupils widened so much that his irises disappeared, and the black pupils threatened to overwhelm the white sclera. It was a frightening sight to see, especially when he looked directly at each of us with a pale, haunted look of desperation.
By now the many other members of the carving club frequently, but subtly, glanced at Eric. They were curious, worried and some of them felt uneasy about his recent behavior. We were advised by the president of the club to keep an attentive eye on him in case the police or ambulance needed to be called. He said that he may have to temporarily suspend Eric’s membership privileges if his behavior worsened. He was becoming dangerous to the group as a whole.
I asked the others at the table to try to call him. Talk to him. Give him emotional support. They said they’d try, and I knew that they would.
Monday morning arrived. I called Eric early but had no success getting Eric to answer his phone. I would talk to him when we met at the carving table. But right now, I was eating breakfast. My wife made scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and coffee so my taste buds were doing an exciting and joyful dance.
As I was finishing my breakfast, my wife brought me the morning newspaper. Nothing new in the headlines. God damned Covid-19 had taken over the headlines and was always the major news event for over a year, so I skipped the front section and went to the ‘B’ section where I froze while looking at the bold print.
LOCAL PLUMBER FOUND DEAD AT HOME.
Police report that Eric Morton, a local plumber and wood carver, was scalped with one of his wood carving knives. The knife was then thrust through his eye, into his brain, killing him. The Police are investigating the matter, but a reliable witness states that the plumber was holding an Indian Head bust that he had carved. The eyes of the bust were gouged out and a wood carving knife was deeply imbedded into the forehead of the wooden bust. The plumber had put up a fight because he had several cuts on his forearms, his face and his chest, but none of them were lethal according to the
coroner. Police suspect a home invasion where the perpetrator not only killed and scalped the man, but also seriously gouged out the eyes of both the man and the wooden bust. At present no definitive conclusions can be made. Police state only that it’s an ongoing investigation.
More details to be seen in tomorrow’s edition.
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