Chapter 5: Honest Work

The Endicotts' splitting maul cost nine hundred dollars and had never touched a log.

It hung on a leather strap in the woodshed with a card that read HAND-FORGED, HONEST.

The head was polished well enough to check your teeth in.

"Honest Work is a team task," Peter said, from the doorway with his clipboard. "Each pair splits one cord of firewood. Esther will award points."

"A cord is a hundred and twenty-eight cubic feet," I said. "You can't split that by lunch."

"It's a symbolic cord," Peter said. "It's about eight logs."

Esther sat on an overturned bucket with her green notebook open on her knee.

"A log split is twelve points," she said. "A log watched is four."

Arthur took the maul in both hands.

He set a log on the block, lifted the head over his shoulder and swung with his eyes shut.

The maul hit the block six inches to the left of the log and bounced.

"That counts as a split," Esther said, writing. "Intent is nine points."

"It does not count," I said.

"I'm very generous with intent."

Arthur tried again, and the log rolled off the block and into Peter's shins.

Peter said a word that was not on the program.

On the third swing, Arthur put the maul down and turned away.

I thought he was embarrassed.

He was walking toward the groundskeeper, who was stacking kindling by the door.

Arthur took something from his back pocket, folded it small, and pressed it into the old man's hand.

The groundskeeper looked down at three twenty-dollar bills.

He looked up at Arthur, and then at me, and then back at the money.

"I'll do your half," he said, "but I'm not taking sixty dollars for it."

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