I do not know the physical details of the girls in town but I know the physical details of my brother. He is the same size as our father. Our father was shorter than my brother but our father had a great chest like a barrel. My brother is taller than our father but his chest is like a slab, flatter and not as big around as our father's. I think their slightly different shapes make them just the same size. My brother has the same swing as our father. The anvil is mounted at the perfect height for both our father and my brother. My brother has dark hair on his backside. His toenails grow in mounds. Everywhere on my brother's body there are red marks where the skin stretched because my brother grew so quickly. His big muscles made marks on his skin as they grew. My brother grew more quickly than the girls in town. Not one of them is big enough to bear his son. If my brother had had a son when my father died, that son would already be big enough to work as my brother's striker. My brother's son could replace me at the anvil. It would not take my brother's son years to grow. He would grow even more quickly than my brother. It would take no time at all for my brother's son to stand at the anvil. He would crawl from his mother's legs to the anvil and rise, holding the sledge in his hand.
13
My brother eats looking over our father's ledgers. He does not notice that I have not emptied my dish. I try to empty my dish but my throat has narrowed. Even the smallest bites of meat lodge in my throat. I leave the table and sit on my bed with my dish. I push the meat off my dish onto the floor. I pull the pallet over the meat. I slide the pallet beneath the bed. Now my dish is empty. I put the empty dish on the floor. I lie down on the bed. I am tired but I cannot fall asleep. I will go outside. I take the saltcellar from the table. My brother does not look up from the ledgers. I leave the house and walk around the hill in the moonlight. I sit down on the hill. The moon illuminates the ships in the bay. Dark figures are moving on the decks of the ships. The foreigners like to dance on the decks of their ships. Their ships are taller than any of the buildings in town. The foreigners are building hotels in their district that will be as tall as the ships. Soon the view of the bay will be blocked by hotels. Only the foreigners who stay at hotels will see the foreigners who dance on the ships.
I lie back. I balance the saltcellar on my stomach so it points up from my stomach at the moon. I rock from side to side by flexing each buttock. I want to see how far I can rock before the saltcellar topples. The saltcellar topples. Now I can flex each buttock with all of my strength. The burning I feel in my buttocks makes my legs tighten, my stomach tighten. I curl my fingers and toes. I relax my buttocks. I pick up the saltcellar and pour salt on the earth where my brother rubbed. I do not turn over like my brother. I stay on my back. I move my eyes toward the outside corners and look through the disc of the moon to see the bigger, brighter light it hides from my view.
This is the first time I have slept outside. I wake up when the sun is rising. The grass is wet. My body is wet. I feel cold. The bay is covered with mist. I have grown so much in the night that I cannot fit through the door of the house. I cannot fit through the double doors of the forge. I lift the roof off the forge and look inside. My brother is working in his leather apron. I see the bellows and the hearth and my brother at the anvil and the workbenches and the metalwork stacked against the walls. My brother passes up a sledge. He wants me to work at the anvil, but I am too large. I crush the sledge in my fist. Fragments fall. The head of the sledge cracks the brick of the hearth. I reach my arm into the forge. I take the horn of the anvil between my fingertips. I pluck anvil and post from the floor of the forge. I look at the bay. The mist is burning off and I see that the ships in the bay are anvils, gray anvils mounted on the muddy verge of the bay. Instead of civil ensigns, the anvils fly flags that bear the name of the forge. I shout down to my brother. I describe the anvils on the bay and their different colored flags. Each flag bears the same name. It is the proudest moment of my life. We have expanded the forge.
My buttocks tighten with joy. I rock. My buttocks burn. I feel hard irregularities beneath my buttocks. I am standing up, looking out at the bay, but I am also lying down, feeling hard irregularities with my buttocks. Suddenly I am dizzy, sensing myself upright, then supine, upright then supine. My breathing comes in gasps. I roll over and heave, but only air comes out of my throat. The air is hard as rock and hurts me as it pushes from my cavity. I push the rocks of air from my throat. When I am finished, I stumble to the house. The air is gray and damp. I hesitate at the door of the house because I remember having grown. I fit easily through the door. My brother is sitting at the table. He has been sitting there all through the night. I cannot tell if his eyes are opened or closed. As I climb into bed my heart hammers in threes, three quick hammers, the blacksmith's signal that the striker must stop. I realize I am holding a rock in my hand.
14
In case customers come while my brother is down at the bank, I stay at the forge. I do not mind. It is a good opportunity to repair the champion's knife. Often at night my brother leaves the fire alive in the hearth, banked under ashes. This morning the fire is out. I shovel coal on the old fire, two shovelfuls of the good wet coal my brother uses so sparingly. I mix pine twigs with the coal. I light the fire and pump the bellows. The fire is dark and big. The smell is strong. The fire is unwell. The smell fills the forge. I have forgotten the champion's knife. I run to the house. The door is closed, the windows are closed. The air inside the house smells bad.
The champion's knife is changed when I pull it from between the bed mat and frame. It is not a knife at all. It is a broken file. There is no cutting edge on the file. I am certain the champion's knife was a knife. It has changed. My brother must have taken the champion's knife and replaced it with a broken file. I should be able to make the file into the champion's knife. I have never been in the forge without my brother or our father. I like the way the fire smells, strong and unwell. I grind both sides of the file. I put the file in the fire. When the file is red, I take the file from the fire. I drop it in the tub. Maybe I should have bent the file over the horn of the anvil and hammered the file. The file is not shaped exactly like a knife. It is better than a knife because it does not have a handle. I will carve and paint the handle for the champion's knife. I will paint the handle yellow or blue.
Standing at the double doors of the forge, I see the doctor coming up the hill. The doctor moves quickly as though he is in a great hurry. The doctor is thin but he moves quickly. Doctors must be thin and quick. They are summoned in the early morning or late at night and they always respond quickly to the summons. The doctor is busier and busier in town. The town is prosperous and the doctor's practice is thriving. I remember leading the doctor to the forge. I remember following the doctor through the streets between the bakery and the doctor's office. I had difficulty keeping up. The doctor was almost running, his black doctor's bag in one hand, the white baker's bag of seeded rolls in the other.
The doctor's face is beaded with sweat. There is no shade on the hill and the path is steep. The doctor comes right up to the double doors. He wipes his face with a white cloth from his vest pocket. He is looking for my brother. He peers around me into the forge. The ground does not vibrate, the air does not vibrate, no sounds come from the forge, but the doctor expects to see my brother. He does not know my brother at all. Even using his medical equipment, the doctor will never know anything about my brother if he does not know to listen as he approaches the forge.