He always smelled of Brylcream and I wasn’t even fully sure what that was, but he said it was stuff he put in his hair. I found that quite odd since he didn’t have all that much hair and what he did have on the top was thin, and probably at one time red. From five feet away, you’d think he was bald as a stone. His name was Jake, and some people called him Jake the Snake. I thought that was funny; he didn’t.

Thick black-framed glasses added to the scolding frown he wore on his face and his head shined in the sun and I wondered if the shine was from the Brylcream too. Sometimes he’d wear a hat over his shiny scalp and the dark-framed glasses made him look like someone who was smart. I assumed that to be true and did what he told me.

In the summer, in the morning, we’d sit outside in the back of his house and eat thick and dry oatmeal. Even when it was too hot for oatmeal. He’d finish his breakfast, chawing and sucking on a rhubarb stalk. I tried that stuff once, and that was enough to gag me. The oatmeal was tolerable, but the rhubarb was bitter and awful. Finally, he’d pull a half-burned cigar from behind his ear and light it and inhale deeply and cough and gag sord and long. All I could figure was he was trying to hack up all the cancer I was certain must be growing in his lungs.

We’d work all day, sweating side by side, cutting boards with saws. He’d yell out numbers to me and I desperately try to not cut the boards wrong. When I did, he’d lift his head and motion with his nose and a twist of his head and thick black glasses to go get another one from the pile, while sweat dropped off his nose and flew off to the side of his face. Then he’d tell me that board was coming out of my pay, and I’d laugh because I worked for nothing and even though he looked mean, Jake was kind most days.

My summers as a carpenter were the result of some deal concocted between the old man and my ma to teach me something—anything—and try to keep me out of trouble. School had miserably failed me by my twelfth summer, and I guess Ma figured something had to take with me. As a student, I wasn’t much for learning anything I deemed not worth my time to learn. Most of what they tried to teach me in school I saw was not worth my time. Algebra made a little sense to me, but not much else did. One teacher told Ma he thought I may have problems with my brain. I was incapable of learning even basic things.

I liked the sweet and sour smell of the cut wood, but the sawdust made me itch. I liked the scream of the saw as it cut its way through the lumber. It scared me, but I guess I liked being scared. When the saw was cutting, I couldn’t hear anything else, and the noise would ring in my head long after the blade stopped singing.

I lived in fear I’d cut my fingers off every day of that hot summer. By the time we stopped for lunch to eat a bologna sandwich—every day, every single goddamn day, it was a bologna sandwich—I’d wished it was time to go home, but just because I was lazy, not because there was anything all that great about being home. One day, I was looking at his hand as he ate his bologna sandwich. I asked him how he lost the middle two fingers on his left and he pointed to the saw with his nose and his thick black-framed glasses and didn’t say anything else about it.

I’d work the saw and sometimes after I had cut enough, he’d let me hammer in some nails. Hammering seemed more work than cutting. He’d watch me banging, and I’d get nervous and bend some. He didn’t say much, but he had a way of showing silent disapproval.

Every afternoon, the sun would go down and behind a wide hedgerow of weeds and staghorn sumac trees. At least that’s what kind of trees he told me they were that separated the house we were building from another vacant lot. Finally, he’d raise his head and tell me to go to the truck. I knew this meant the work was over. I’d run to the truck and grab the cooler, once filled with ice but now just full of water and cans and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Then I’d run back and meet him and we’d sit on a pile of boards and drink the cool, not cold, Schlitz beer and shots of the bitter brown whiskey.

He’d look at what we’d built and what didn’t go so right that day and say it was a good day’s work. The way he said it made me feel that a good day’s work was something to be proud of and feel good about. Then he’d tilt back his head and pour an entire can down his throat and burp and open another can and take a long pull off the bottle. Then he’d toss me a Schlitz and pass me the bottle and tell me I’d earned it, but don’t tell nobody he let me drink.

Jake always said the beer tasted better after a good day’s work. I didn’t understand at the time what he meant, but I liked the secret beers, and the whiskey made me feel better. I liked building things and not fucking up too much.

Then one day, after a few beers and slugs of the bitter brown whiskey, I asked him how come he don’t have any family and he lived all alone. He pointed with his nose and thick black glasses at the bottle. He said that bottle was his family. I got out of his truck that night a little drunk and a little tired and I wondered all the way home if the whiskey would one day be my family too.