Short Story - My Everything

My Everything.

I first noticed this when I was only ten years old. Small town doesn’t mean Podunk, insignificant or dismal. In fact what I have come to know is that the greatest ideas come from the smallest corners just down the road. Bruce Jacobs takes his time in the miniature garage outside his Inola, Oklahoma home. There, perfectly spaced just beyond the voice range of his lovely wife and back off the main road, cutting down on the traffic noise, Bruce puts equal parts love and passion into every one of his works.

If someone told you he was forty-five you would nod and move forward never knowing the difference. What’s twenty years anyway? He walks upright and with a welding mask or safety goggles on at all times scares the children whom believe he is building some type of space-robot.

When it comes to killers, murderers and down right despicable people after something terrible you hear how they were always the quiet one. Bruce is the quietest man in town but would walk a mile to avoid stepping on even a cockroach. His miracle lab contains no fancy beakers or high-tech computers but instead a skill set acquired over all his many years. Sometimes the history of the work is in the nicks and cuts on the carpenters hands and tools, not in the finished project. Scars always have a story whether comedic, endearing or painful.

Bruce takes on the challenges every morning, getting out of bed, caring for his wife and facing the unknown. Life brings goodness to us all and Bruce kneels every night and thanks God for his blessings. For years he prayed for her health to improve but now pleads for even the simplest relief. He escapes to his garage to create his next great work. He sees the need for the things that others just can’t. He brings life, a calm warmth, into that garage. He doesn’t understand why life is what it is. He does understand what life means to him. Love can be the driving force in the life of a big city executive or a small town artist.

That morning he walked out of the house forty seven steps, one for each year of their marriage, unlocked the door to a place he would never again visit. As the lights flickered to illuminate his place of hope, he stepped gingerly to his workbench. Sitting on the worn wooden stool he folded his arms in front of him and laid down his head, without warning and yet peacefully.

In all those years he always came back inside at lunch time. In all those years she had never even asked to enter that small garage. In all those years he worked so hard for her and now it seemed in death his soul was there in that poorly lit ten by twelve garage. She found him there, peaceful. Above his workbench a carved wooden sign reads simply, “She is my everything and I love her as such.”