Felix and the School Desk

He found it in his dumpster, drawers gone, paint chipped, curses carved into the desktop. “A little project,” he said, winking at my brother and me on our way to shoot hoops, sandpaper and plywood tucked under his good arm. Evenings he’d put George behind the bar and get back to the storage room, whistling Frank Sinatra while he rebuilt the drawers then sanded every inch, “Angel Eyes,” “What’s New?” “It’s a Lonesome Old Town,” my brother and me watching through the basement window while he thumbed the inkwell smooth, the pencil gutter, and beneath the handles, gliding up and down each leg, his wife dead ten years, his daughter trying to find herself dancing topless in Jersey, his hands turning raw, dust everywhere, hacking cough, realizing too late he should have worn a mask, still hawking phlegm into a napkin when he kicked our fathers out, still whistling Sinatra after last call, “the wee small hours of the morning” he’d tell us later, “when all good children should be in bed,” calling us in the next afternoon to give us the school desk, three coats of chestnut varnish, a matching chair. We’d have the world on a string, he said, if we studied hard, asking again if we liked it, if we were sure we could carry it home, telling us to make him proud.