Tokens

Whenever I see it, I am drawn to it, as when I was a boy. The hammer’s once-flat surface has been battered askew; fruitless prying has bent its head downward to its rust-speckled chrome shaft, and the petroleum-smelling, once-tacky-to-the-touch black rubber handle is slick and hard as a vintage steering wheel. For all practical purposes, the hammer is useless. It sits forgotten, on a utility shelf in my basement, until I spy it. Usually, this happens while rummaging for my children’s seasonal playthings. Each time, I lift its handle to my nose and breathe its toxins.

At six years old, I found the smell dizzying as I walked to the checkout with my father, carrying the inexpensive symbol of masculinity. It was the first time I had discovered something that sickened me, but that I couldn’t get enough of. The hammer was bought to build a small wooden tank. My appointed therapist suggested that we undertake a task together for father-son bonding. The time, tank, and hammer felt like those childhood promises you inherently knew were never meant to be kept, which added to their prospective excitement. 

The tank was a simple construction: a pyramid of two rectangular blocks, topped with a small square turret. A hole was drilled in the turret at a forty-five-degree angle, and a small, short length of dowel was fitted into it with wood glue. My father had cut short sections of a larger dowel for wheels and attached four parallel strips of narrow wood to the tank’s bottom, to place the wheels on. Next, he carefully hammered fat roofing nails into the sides of each stout dowel wheel. He did so very gently, not to split them. When all the wheels were fitted with protruding nails on either side, it was my turn to contribute. My job was to fit round-topped fencing staples over the nails, behind their heads, fastening the wheels to the tank with enough room for rotation. 

I had spent my days after school preparing for this task. Every afternoon, I eagerly descended the steps to our dank, unfinished basement, where the cool air was always heavy with sawdust and furnace oil. I started by selecting various types of nails from the faded, plastic ice-cream containers on my father’s tool shelf. Next, I would pull a piece of wood from his scrap pile and kneel before it, precariously holding a nail on the board between my thumb and index finger. The heft of the hammer was too much for me, who already lacked dexterity. Although I often hit the nails, few went in straight. Most bent sideways and were battered into the board that way. Many times, I would miss and bash the tips of my fingers. When I finished rocking on the puddled concrete, suppressing the urge to curse as I cradled my purple fingers, I would continue.

As the days passed, I learned. I learned to identify galvanized nails, which were more expensive, especially spiralled galvanized nails. I also learned that bloodied fingertips were part of the process. Such injuries were minor compared to the daily pains of a working man—the one standing before me frequently had fingers bound in black electrical tape. I also learned to use the claw of the hammer, as a bent nail was a waste of money. I was to pry the ruined nails from the board, straighten them against the floor, and repeat my practice. Given how often I hit my fingers trying to hammer bent nails into place, I became adept at straightening them. I recalled these important lessons when the time finally came to hammer staples over miniature axles.

Something about the much-anticipated act felt cruel. With every whack, the hammer would glide off the staple’s rounded top and land on my finger. Despite my hours of practice, I was failing. My looming father’s disappointment grew in tandem with my eyes’ rapid heating. Eventually, he took my hammer and finished off the wheels for me. Afterward, I watched from across the room, clear from fumes, as he carefully painted the tank black.

At eighteen, after being expelled from school and later discharged from the army, I moved with my twenty-four-year-old girlfriend to a low-rental apartment in a faraway city. I brought a hockey bag packed with clothes, an extension cord, four double-shot glasses, brass knuckles, and the hammer, but no insights about tragedy. The hammer stayed in the drawer of our bedside nightstand. Every time I opened it, there was a preview of memories. I retrieved the tank two years later, when I returned to visit my father. 

Sometime after I arrived, I made sure to tell him that building the tank might have been my greatest memory with him. I said it in passing, as men didn’t engage in sentimental conversation. He said nothing. No nod from the hospital bed, no extension to catch time as it danced along a narrow dowel, flailing. I left the room aware of my overexpression; a primer to feeling foolish for weeping as I watched him die.

Joe Couture is a writer living in rural Nova Scotia. If you want to connect with him, try here: @rjcouture.bsky.social.

A Song for Joe