Chapter 4: Steam Box

I sat at that stop sign until a car honked behind me.

Then I drove to Saugatuck with the patent face down on the passenger seat.

I didn't tell my father about it.

He had enough wires on his chest.

On Sunday the cardiologist let him out, with a rule against stairs until his checkup on Saturday.

The apartment over the shop was a steep climb up the stairs. So he went to Cullen's couch in Douglas, complaining the whole way.

On Monday I filed for divorce at the Kent County courthouse, and I took my name back while I was at it.

On Tuesday I lit the steam box.

The steam shed sat at the back of the yard, by the river.

It was a long gray shed with a boiler, a plywood box eight feet long, and the bending forms bolted to the floor.

The Wilhelmina waited in the main shed next door.

Twenty-six feet of 1931 mahogany, upside down on her stands, with a row of empty spaces where her frames should be. Twenty-two frames in all.

Cullen came in at nine with two coffees and a box of donuts.

"Breakfast of champions," he said.

"Breakfast of heart patients."

"That's why your dad doesn't get any."

He set one coffee by the form and leaned on the doorframe to watch.

The first oak strip went into the box at nine-fifteen.

An hour per inch of thickness.

I stood by the boiler and listened to it rattle and hiss.

At ten-fifteen I opened the lid, and the steam rolled out over both of us.

I had maybe a minute before the wood started to cool.

I pulled the strip out with gloves and laid it on the form and leaned my whole weight on it.

It bent.

It bent beautifully.

And then, right at the turn, it went off like a gunshot.

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