by Joss Murray
Illustration by Tim Murray
Well I’ve been hammering this axe into this big oak tree for ages now. What started off as a kind of whack sound has become more of a deep thud. My pace has become metronomic (about 140 thuds per minute, but who’s counting). My axe is blunt. I don’t care. It’s pretty cold in the yard. Quite early on I tried to make a fire. The wood doesn’t burn. I carry on hammering never the less. My sore throat asks for water, I give it cigarettes. My blistered hands bleed. My back throbs. My eyes sting. I could stop, but its fun. I enjoy it.
All of sudden the sun trombones down on me through a gap in the trees, there’s a jangle of banjo from the old fellow who lives next door and tambourine sounds come from the throat’s of a nest of starlings.
I keep on hammering. Thud. Thud. Thud.
I trample off into a day dream about slide guitar and whiskey, which makes my axe feel heavy and my pace slow, but it’s rhythm never drops. This axe is full of energy, it’s my dodgily tattooed arms that are drunk. The axe is as sober as a new born.
I carry on hammering, now drunk as a drip tray at the end of a busy night. The sun has gone. The cold has come and my wood doesn’t burn. I carry on. At some point I hit what an athletic man would probably call ‘the wall’. I call it being numb, but for whatever reason this numb wall of mine has put a spring in my step. I decide, quite pretentiously, that my day’s work has taught me something about the spirit of misfortune, which brings a smile to my dry mouth. The tree falls for the last time and I lie next to it, content in my drunken slumber.
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