That Friday evening, I moved the chassis onto the palette. It was barely big enough to hold it. On Saturday morning, I worked at the store and went home with seventy-two dollars and fifty cents and a 50 Amp wire. Paul had subtracted the seventy-eight dollars for the wire, purchased at wholesale price, from the one-hundred and fifty dollars and fifty cents I had made during that week. The seventy-two dollars and fifty cents wasn’t enough for either the battery or the magnets. It would probably take me an additional three weeks to come up with the money. That would put the completion date right before Christmas. I thought about asking my stepmom if she’d order the magnets for me in exchange for the money. But I decided to wait until I actually had the money in hand. The battery I could get at the car parts store in town.
If the chassis was fairly easy to weld together, the centrifugal rotor was a different story. The instructions talked about forging a three-dimensional blade, not unlike a fan blade, out of the plate I had found in the drawer. I had never done anything like it. I was afraid I would burn out the material and render it useless. The magnets were to be placed along a semi-circular shape that was open at the top. The fan blade would then be centered inside the magnets. "If done correctly, the magnets should hold the blade in place without any further assistance," it said in the instructions. If done correctly. I began to doubt my ability to do this. The chassis was crude work. I had welded pipes together many times before. But this wasn’t a task for an apprentice. It needed the hand of a master. Someone like my dad.
For the next few days, I couldn’t make myself light the forge and begin. Instead, I sat in the shop unable to do anything. I wasn’t ready. I shouldn’t have started. I simply couldn’t do it. Even Paul noticed my change of mood and asked me a few times if everything was all right. I nodded each time, certain he wasn’t able to help me.
"You know, your dad thought very highly of you," he said one day while we moved bags of salt from the back to a spot near the front door of the store. "And I don’t mean only as a person. He spoke highly of you as an apprentice. Her heart is in the right place, he said. She can figure anything out. The more challenging, the better for her."
"He must not have known what I can or cannot do," I replied.
"Do you really believe that?" Paul asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Do you think it likely that a master blacksmith of nearly forty years does not know what his apprentice can or cannot do? Or is it more likely that he knows precisely what your limitations are and how to overcome them?"
I wanted to say, "Yes, it is likely. And not only is it likely, it’s true. He doesn’t know my limitations. Only I know them." But I didn’t say anything, mostly because I didn’t want to offend Paul, knowing of his deep friendship with my father.
"A master only becomes one through the very mastering of what he was not able to master before. Otherwise anyone can call himself that. The taller the task, the further the learning carries you."
When he placed the last bag of salt onto the stack of other bags next to the door, he stretched his back and wiped his hands on his pants. "If your dad thought you could do it, I’m sure you can. Whether it’s easy or not, doesn’t matter, does it? His confidence in you should be enough to erase the doubt in your heart."
Paul sent me home two hours early that day. He assured me at the door that I would still get paid for the time. I went home, emptied the dishwasher, and helped my stepmom put away groceries.
"So what are you doing out there in the shop every day?" she asked.
I stopped for a moment and looked straight at her. I could almost see the cloak of sadness surrounding her.
"I’m building a time machine so I can go back and talk to Dad."
She started to cry. I didn’t know what else I could have told her except the truth. I made tea in a thermos and brought a couple of apples and a jar of peanut butter with me to the shop.
Then I lit the forge.
4
I worked for seven hours straight. In the end, I couldn’t feel my shoulders and lifting the thermos seemed an impossible task. I left it in the shop that night. As I lay in bed, I could still feel the heat of the scorching coals in my face; the smell of the thick leather gloves was still on my hands. I took the noise of hammer on steel with me to my dreams. I’m coming to you, Dad. I’ll see you soon. I’ll see you very soon.
I went back to the store the next day after school. I was tired and sore but I didn’t want to miss more than the two hours from yesterday. Paul had made hot cocoa in his tiny little kitchen. It was only three in the afternoon but the sky had darkened already. A few flurries of snow had fallen. He asked me how it went last night and I gave him the short answer. "Good," I said, hoping he wouldn’t detect the insecurity in my voice. I didn’t really know how it went. I’d finished the task but I had no idea what the outcome would be. I’d basically put together parts with no way of knowing how it all would turn out.
We put up Christmas lights around the bay window, which was just me handing Paul the individual string lights and, at the same time, holding the ladder so he wouldn’t fall over. We’d been working quietly for a while, only interrupted by a few questions he asked and me giving him very short answers, when he stopped and turned toward me.
"May I ask you another question?" he said.
"Sure," I replied.
"You know I’ll help you in any way I can, right?"
"Yes. Thank you."
"I owe it to your father. But not only that. I think you’re a bright kid and…you’ve been through a lot…with your mom and now your dad. My question is…"
I saw that he was looking for the right words to use. Part of me wished he would stop there and not say anything.
"Forgive me but…what are you building?"
I didn’t answer for a while and Paul didn’t say anything either. I think he wasn’t sure if he should have asked. When my stepmom asked before, I didn’t think about it much. Maybe it was the way he asked. His tone of voice was kind and genuinely concerned. Up until now, I hadn’t questioned what I was doing. I’d only questioned my ability, not the fact that I was doing it. I had followed the instructions from the notebook blindly. His question stirred something in me—something I didn’t think about before. The last couple of weeks, I was too busy going forward and the task itself had blotted out the purpose of it. What was I doing? Did I truly believe it possible to build a machine that would bring me back to my father? To tell Paul the truth seemed silly all of a sudden. And in saying it out loud to him I would expose the lie and realize that there was nothing on the other end of this, that I had sent myself on a fool’s errand. I couldn’t stop the tears from coming. Pain suddenly washed over me. My wish to see my father again had made me blind to the reality of it.
Paul sat down next to me and held me. I couldn’t control my tears anymore and sobbed into his arm. It was as if the flood gates had opened. I had never felt pain so deeply before. I thought about my father and my mother and each time I thought it was over, I started again. Paul didn’t say anything. He knew this was a necessary evil, that I needed to cleanse myself and face my loss head-on. After what seemed like a very long time, I let go of him and he handed me a box of tissues. I told him about the hospital and what my father had said to me. At least what I thought he’d said to me. I told him about the drawer and the notebook and the machine and while I did that, I saw the sadness in Paul’s eyes. It occurred to me at that moment that, throughout my own grief, I had never thought about his.