The Door to Heaven Read online

  Dominic.

  DOMINIC

  Dominic’s mamá became a kindergarten teacher at his school. She had not worked while his papa had been alive but now she seemed happier than he had seen her in a long time. She never did cry after his papa’s funeral, and he never did bake her buñuelos. She had begun to spend more time with the advanced class teacher — the dark man with the thick mustache at the garage sale. His mamá stopped looking at his papa’s designs on the walls of their house. She spoke less often in Spanish and she smiled more often with her broad mouth. He felt that she was like a house that had been remade from the inside out with new floorboards and rewired electrical and fresh paint. The only argument he had with her happened the day she told him to repaint their house’s interior. She wanted him to paint over his papa’s designs.

  “This house looks like a cave covered in the art of a caveman,” she said. Dominic could not do what she asked. The house was a museum of his papa’s life and work. His papa had built the whole house from the ground up. His papa had built all the furniture inside — the rocking chair and the dining table and the chest at the foot of her bed and everything else. Why paint the house? Why not mar his papa’s headstone? Dominic refused his mamá. He would not paint over his papa’s designs. He studied them often. The designs taught him how to be a millwright. They showed him how to be the man he wanted to be — his papa. “Hijo,” she said to him, “this is the man I am trying to get over. How can someone else like him help me do this?” No matter what his mamá said, he could not paint over his papa’s designs. From them he had already learned much about woodworking. He did not think that she understood him so he took her hand and led her into the hallway. They stood in front of the raft’s design. The hallway was a chapel where Dominic could speak with God and his papa in Heaven. The hallway was a painful place for his mamá. She would not listen to his explanations. She could not look at his papa’s cave art. Weeping, she covered her eyes with her hands and through her hands and her tears she said, “Please, please, please, hijo. I am begging you. Paint the hallway wall because buñuelos will not heal the hurt of my heart.” The designs on the walls had prevented them from saying goodbye to his papa. Saying goodbye was too painful for him. Not saying goodbye was too painful for her. And he could not bear to see her suffer. So reluctantly, softly, he said that he would do what she asked in three days. He needed time to say goodbye to the designs so that she could say goodbye to his papa without them.

  Dominic spent the next few nights copying his papa’s designs in a sketchbook while his mamá slept. He copied every design in the house. He left out no detail. He would remember everything. He would not forget his papa. He would become the memory of his papa that he had placed on a pedestal in the museum of his mind.

  The third day came. Dominic painted the whole house white. He worked without thinking and without feeling. He wondered what life would be like if his mamá had gone through the Door to Heaven instead of his papa — and he could hear his papa’s disappointment. He apologized to the spirit of his papa, not for feeling the way he felt, but for dwelling on his bad thought. He finished painting. Then he fried buñuelos. The house filled with the odors of paint and coffee and fried sugar bread. His mamá awoke and came into the kitchen in her bathrobe. Dominic handed her a plate stacked full of buñuelos. There were far too many than she could eat for breakfast. “Lo siento,” he said to her, but his apology seemed to extend beyond the plate he offered. She did not seem happy or upset about the buñuelos. She looked at them blankly for a brief moment. Then she sighed, nodded as though coming to an agreement in her mind, and took the plate from him, but not before kissing him on his forehead. “Gracias,” she whispered, sounding more tired than sincere.

  Dominic and his mamá spent more time together although they spoke less often. They assembled jigsaw puzzles on the dining table while they ate meals. He would begin a puzzle by assembling the frame. She would begin by finding the pieces that matched in color and shape. They hardly spoke while they worked. Some nights they would work in silence. Other nights she would put on some music. A few nights she let him choose what they would listen to. He preferred listening to audiobooks while he worked. She liked puzzles that had a picture of big cities. He preferred pictures of bridges or buildings. They could finish a simple puzzle in a day or two. A more difficult puzzle could take a week. Finishing a puzzle gave him a good sense of completion and he liked looking at his completed work. She never liked finishing puzzles and would only finish a puzzle to begin a new one. And she would only finish a puzzle if she knew she had time to crumble it up and start a new one, as if the old one had never been. She never let one sit on the table overnight. Dominic would sometimes fast from a meal if he knew that they were going to finish a puzzle. He would let his mamá finish it and begin a new one alone. Soon he began building a glass frame for their puzzles and he would put the puzzle in the frame before she could crumble it up. He hung some of the framed puzzle pictures in his room and others in the hallway. He framed one picture that she liked most. It was a picture of a large city with many active people. He hung it in the living room for her. She looked at it. Then she stood on the back porch. She looked at the reflection of the stars on the stillness of the lake. “La Muerta,” she whispered but he heard her. He wondered if she was planning to leave him.

  Dominic did not have many friends. He read and he drew designs in his sketchbook. His favorite books were the ones his papa had liked — Huckleberry Finn and Treasure Island and the Swiss Family Robinson and even Lord of the Flies, although he did not like the violence and the mean words. His Robinson Crusoe paperback was worn and loved. The front and back covers soon fell off and the spine became pliable. Almost every page was dog-eared and many pages fell out but fit back in like bookmarks. He tried other books. And some he liked. Patrick O’brian sailed him far out to sea. Ellis Peters hid him in a world of solitude and prayer and murder. But he always returned to his favorites books, which had been his papa’s also.

  The weekday was the same for him. He made repairs to his house in the morning before school. He went to school and kept to himself. He drew designs in his sketchbooks for the life he hoped to have on the day he became a man. He struggled with some assignments until he learned a good routine. He did not like to be called on by his teachers because they wanted him to say more than he wanted to share. He wrote down every homework assignment and he did his homework after school. His grades told his mamá and his teachers that he was an average student. He let them think what they thought because the present for him was a time to work toward the future. And his future was not theirs.

  Dominic would work on the puzzle with his mamá during supper. Then he would go to the raft in the inlet near the junipers. The junipers grew from shrubs into trees fast. The trunks became thick and twisted and beautiful with smooth white bark. They hid the raft well. He would hop on his raft and punt out to the island. He would think about his papa and Huckleberry Finn. He never told his mamá what he was doing. She never asked. He wondered if she knew.

  He felt at home on the island. He would stay there for many hours. Sometimes he brought stale bread to feed the mallards. They shied away from him at first. But the more he fed them, the more they became fearless. They would go closer to him and they ate bread from his hands. Sometimes they nipped his fingers with their hard smooth beaks. That always shocked him but never hurt him. The ducks followed him wherever he went on the island. And he felt loved.

  But walking those nights around the island with the smell of bread on his hands made him hungry. He learned to make a fish trap by gathering several long sturdy sticks and setting them in two rows on the shoreline, two outer rows going deeper into the water, and two more rows curving back in. It looked like the letter M. The mouth of this fish trap had a small opening in the innermost point where the fish could swim in and never swim out. He would impale an insect on a stick and set it in the water near the shore. Then he would walk away and explore the island
and talk with the ducks. He would return after a while to find a catfish stuck in the corners of his trap. It could not figure out how to swim back to the opening. The fish usually had a good size. He would grab the fish to pull it from the water with his bare hands. He learned how to hold the catfish with the soft barbels slapping against his fingers so that the pectoral fins never pricked him. “You must be smart like papa,” he would tell himself.

  He spent several days learning how to build a fire by trial and error and patience. He brought his tools from the mainland although he was resolved to use whatever the island provided. Striking a flint rock against his hammer worked wonderfully for making fires. The inner hairs of a cedar tree made excellent dry tinder. Sparks ignited the tinder and he kept a small controlled fire outside the cave with the light refracting off the cave walls and making the cave very bright and warm. By firelight he made more plans for the future. He would build a pen for ducks and he would learn how to clip their wings and herd them. He would kill and pluck and gut them. But he did not want to roast food over a spit. Black bears and coyotes from the mainland might smell the cooking and become bold enough to swim out to the island.

  Clay was abundant around the base of the hill. Dominic gathered the clay and shaped it into plates and a pot and a slab for searing and frying. He hardened them by digging a pit in the ground and covering the bottom in dry tinder. Then he set his clay wares inside and divided each with more dry tinder until the hole was filled up to ground level. He made a small tepee of sticks on top of the tinder and he set fire to it. The slow burn took a day. Then he dug his clay wares from the ashes in the pit. They had hardened and were simple and durable.

  He built another fire in between two large rocks and he set his boiling pot on top. He set the slab beside the fire to heat. Then he boiled lake water and boiled hickory tree roots until the water evaporated and left salt at the bottom of the clay pot. He held the pot with his shirt and he scraped the salt from the bottom on to one of his new clay plates. There was salt enough for a few meals. He would have to boil more roots. He caught another catfish and boiled more water and he watched the water bubble while he gutted the fish. He threw the offal into the lake for other fish to eat. Then he filleted the catfish and put the fillets in the boiling water. He added some salt. He did not think that there would be a smell. But there was a smell. And it was a good smell. His mouth watered. He was hungry. The pot was small and not heavy. He carried the pot in his shirt and emptied the water and he was careful to keep the fish in the pot. But his palms burned and he planned to make a new pot with handles. He laid the boiled fish on the clay slab by the fire and he listened to the fillets sizzle. He did not let them sit long and he flipped the fillets over with a smooth flat stick. Some of the fish stuck to the slab and he wondered if he could make butter. Then he scooped the blackened fish fillets onto his plate and he ate the fish and added more salt and then he ate some more. He had never tasted better catfish. “Thank you, God,” he said with a mouthful. He had never been more grateful for anything in his whole life.

  Eric Flu did not come back. Dominic did not think about him or the Door to Heaven. He went out to the island every night. He ate catfish and was happy when he caught a small trout and his thanks to God seemed more sincere then. He found mallard nests by torchlight. He learned to hold eggs before the torch to find unfertilized ones. The sphere silhouetted in the center was the delicious yoke that would not develop into a hatchling. But if he could see a red thread umbilicaled to the shell he would put the egg back into the nest. “You hatch and grow,” he would say to the duck fetus in the egg. In the boiling pot Dominic added salt and poached some eggs and hard-boiled others. Other eggs he fried on the slab with butter that he brought from home.

  Dominic was growing into a man. His mamá said that he had “virilidad,” but he did not understand this word either in Spanish or English. He grew taller than his mamá. He became lean from his hard work. The eggs and the fish gave him strength. A short coat of black hair grew on his arms and chest, like his papa had had. But he was lithe like his mamá and he wished he were as broad as his papa had been. A beard began to grow along his chin and jaw. It became thick. He did not like the feel of razor blades on his skin, so he trimmed his beard with electric clippers and his own hair too. But he would not grow the mustache that his mamá suggested.

  Dominic did not visit the shops in the center of the village unless he had work. Villagers said that he was a millwright like his papa, but he did not feel that this was true. His papa had entered an apprentice program, but he had not. Mr. King said that apprenticing with his papa made him a millwright, and Mrs. King agreed with her husband, and he tried to believe them both. Dominic liked his neighbors and he would not accept payment when they asked him to help them with repairs to their home. Mrs. King crocheted new sweaters for his birthday. Mr. King told every villager about the talented new millwright. He was never without work.

  Dominic used his papa’s tools, but he also used the newer tools that helped him with precision and efficiency. To tighten and loosen screws, he could have used a drill with a screwdriver bit, but he preferred gripping a screwdriver while employing his own strength and his papa’s catchwords. “Righty tighty. Lefty loosey.” His arms were sinewy and very strong. He did not speak to anyone while he worked and no one spoke to him except to offer iced lemonade on hot days. The lemonade was good but he preferred the lemonade he made from the squaw bush berries on the island. My island, he felt and what he felt he believed. Most jobs were minor repairs that took him less than an hour. He never felt a sense of accomplishment afterward. His goals were on his island across Lake La Muerta.

  Working on the island made him happy. It was home to him. He chopped down trees for wood. He carved planks. Thinner trees yielded two planks and were easier to drag back to camp and the firelight. Carving planks took weeks. His papa’s designs did not call for nails. The craftsmanship was the ancient art of mortise and tenon joints. He built a desk from his papa’s designs and a table too. He kept his papa’s designs in a sketchbook in the same desk. He never let himself think about how his mamá had made him paint over the walls of his house. He would have never hidden from the world the last marks of his papa’s life and work.

  Dominic also put the designs he drew in school in the desk in his cave on his island. He based his own designs on his papa’s designs. He made a worktable and shelves and a chest and other furniture that could be found in any house. He also built a cross that he propped up against the back wall of the cave. He would look at the cross and he would remember to pray. His papa’s designs were more sturdy and complex than his own although his papa’s designs seemed so simple. Dominic loved the work. He worked long into the night and sometimes till early morning. He worked until he had only enough energy to punt back to the mainland. He did not like returning to his house. Duck Island was his home. His room was his cave. Some nights he slept in his cave. Those nights he slept best. The cave floor was uncomfortable at first. A few mornings he awoke feeling very sore. But his body hardened with strength and resolve. He loved the open air and the clean smell of the cave. The cool wind coming off the lake would blow in and fill the cave with the scent of algae and dust. He thought it was a good scent.

  The Door to Heaven returned on the night his mamá was supposed to finish a puzzle that was entirely white. The puzzle had been difficult and fun. Dominic enjoyed the challenge, but he would have preferred to do the puzzle of the red barn. He asked to be excused from dinner because he never learned to enjoy finishing puzzles that he knew his mamá would crumble up. He had not built a frame for this one so his mamá gave him permission to be excused. He told her that he had work to do outside. She did not ask any questions. She never did. She focused on finishing her puzzle so she could crumble it up and start a new one.

  Dominic punted out to Duck Island to eat his true meal. By then he had explored the island many times. He had found walnut trees and fig trees and pear trees. He had planted ora
nge trees and almond trees and he planted potatoes near the cave. He had made several clay jars wherein he kept fresh fruit and dried fruit and also nuts and salt. His meal that night was two hard-boiled eggs and a boiled potato with almonds and figs. He boiled tea with heather and gorse and nettles. The meal was delicious and he ate until he was full and was glad that he could eat on the island.

  The rainy season would come soon and Dominic had been building an awning at the mouth of the cave to stop rainwater from dousing the fire and splashing into the cave. He had designed the awning in his school classes and he had been eager all that night to work more on the project. Like his papa’s design for the raft, he was building the awning with stainless steel screws for durability during a storm. You are turning this place into a real Eden, he thought and he wondered if Adam had been a woodworker like Jesus’ papa, Joseph, and his own papa too.

  Dominic saw the Door to Heaven on the island. It had appeared when he had not been looking, and now it was just outside the mouth of his cave in the campfire’s soft, ruddy glow. The Door to Heaven seemed darker in the firelight. In that instant he was flooded with old memories that he had not let himself remember for a long time. But now he could see in his mind the day his papa died. The memory was so vivid and real it was as though he were reliving it. He remembered how the Door to Heaven had opened and how the vines of light wrapped around his papa and lifted him from the ground and brought him through the Door to Heaven. He gripped his screwdriver. He had an urge to tighten something.