Don Callo

He refuses every time I offer it to him. Keeps telling me he prefers to use nails.

We leave my house and walk the short distance to his, down a graveled road, the color a dusty, pale orange the result of two weeks without rain.

We pass through an iron gate leading to his property, the hinges complaining as the door swings open, yet silent as it slowly returns and we walk away, apparently happy to be left alone.

As neighbors, we have spent many evenings together. Almost always over a smoky fire, sipping strong coffee brewed in a large clay pot. At the bottom, the saturated coffee grounds sit, listening, growing more and more bitter the more we talk. I always know when it is time to leave when I start tasting the coffee’s disapproval.

He leads me past the wash area, cluttered with plastic buckets of various colors, but never straying from even the most basic crayola rainbow. We duck under arcing banana leaves and arrive at what appears to be a muddy garden. Small banana trees, no higher than one’s knee, sit alongside their older siblings, patiently waiting their turn to reach the sun. An area has been cleared and work has already begun on the supports. Scraps of multi-colored wood, I imagine stripped from various sources, have been nailed together to form longer beams. Small patches in two eucalyptus trees have been shaved away, revealing inner layers, white like milk.

I begin double-checking the measurements for the project - the roof, the posts, the cross beams - and again broach the topic.

No, I prefer nails, he tells me.

I think about what he has said as I lift up the first beam and steady it on my shoulder. He places four nails in his mouth, raises his end of the beam and reaches for his hammer.

His blows with the hammer make a clean sound, a ping that hangs in the air for what seems like seconds, although I know it to be only a fraction of that. I notice his control is perfect; each blow landing dead center on the nail, with the satisfying ping resonance as a reward for his efforts. I begin to look forward to each one, and smile.

We lift the second beam and again he fills his mouth with nails. He smiles at me for a brief moment, a genuine smile, yet weakened with the strain of gripping the nails between his lips.

Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. The last note reverberates out through the banana leaves, as the nail disappears into the soft, vanilla-colored wood.

He tugs on the beam, pulling down and outward to test its strength.

This is good, he says.

And it was.