Part 8: Wounds We Don’t See
Ellis Merrow stood in the clinic waiting room, gripping his wrist with the opposite hand, thumb pressed deep into the soft meat where the pain had settled for months.
He hadn’t told Isaac. There were enough hurts between them without adding a doctor’s visit. But when the joint started locking in the morning and the mop handle slipped from his grip last Thursday, he knew.
It was time.
The nurse called his name.
“Mr. Merrow?”
He rose slowly, nodded, and followed her back.
The exam room was cold, bright, and sterile in a way that felt unnatural. He sat on the edge of the table, back straight, hands still.
The doctor was a man in his forties with kind eyes and no patience for silence.
“Rheumatoid arthritis,” he said after a brief exam. “You’ve had symptoms for a while, haven’t you?”
Ellis nodded. “Years.”
“You work a physical job?”
“I clean the high school.”
The doctor made a soft sound. “You’ll want to start treatment. There are options — meds, therapy. But this doesn’t go away. You’ll have to make changes.”
Ellis didn’t flinch. “I’ve made harder ones.”
But still, he looked down at his hands, now veined and swollen, and wondered how many more benches he had left to build.
That evening, Ellis didn’t go straight home.
He drove out of town, down the winding two-lane highway that followed the river until the trees gave way to open fields and fences. He turned off at a gravel road, one he hadn’t driven in years, and stopped at the small cemetery nestled behind St. Andrew’s Chapel.
Clarice rested there.
The stone was simple:
CLARICE MERROW
Beloved wife, mother, and quiet compass.
Ellis knelt, resting a hand on the top of the marker.
“They say my hands are wearing out,” he murmured. “But I guess you already knew that.”
The breeze moved through the grass. Somewhere beyond the fence, a crow called once and fell quiet again.
“I think I’m ready to let Isaac know more of you,” he said. “The part I kept for myself.”
He paused. The weight of it all pressing in. The body aging, the dog gone, the boy growing faster than grief could catch.
“But I don’t know if he’s ready to carry me.”
He sat there a long time before heading home.
At the house, Isaac was in the garage.
The smell of fresh-cut wood met Ellis at the door. Isaac stood hunched over the workbench, carving something new — not the dog this time, but something smaller.
Ellis watched him a moment. Saw the way his hands held the blade. The way his shoulders curled like his mother’s used to when she was lost in her own creation.
Isaac looked up. “Didn’t hear you come in.”
Ellis smiled faintly. “That’s because I walk quieter these days.”
“You okay?”
Ellis hesitated, then stepped forward.
“I went to the clinic today,” he said. “My hands aren’t holding up.”
Isaac straightened. “Is it bad?”
“It’s not good. But it’s not the end.”
Isaac nodded. Then did something Ellis didn’t expect.
He pulled out a second carving knife. Held it out handle-first.
“Then let’s build something before they stop working altogether.”
That weekend, they started crafting birdhouses — one for every classroom at Dutch Hollow Regional High.
“Why birdhouses?” Isaac asked.
Ellis shrugged. “Because they stay even after the birds are gone.”
Together, they shaped pine and cedar, old fence boards and leftover trim. Each one had a unique design — a small detail that only the students would notice. A carved heart under the roofline. A door shaped like a star. One had a tail-shaped wind vane, just like Basil’s wag.
Isaac suggested they hang the first one by the counselor’s office.
“It’s where Basil waited most days,” he said.
Ellis agreed.
They worked side by side through the cold of January, the heater humming in the garage like a lullaby.
By February, the first birdhouse went up.
Students noticed.
One by one, they left little notes inside — scraps of kindness folded small:
“Today was hard. But I remembered him.”
“I saw someone crying and sat with them. Like Basil used to.”
“Dear janitor — thank you for showing us how to stay when it’s hard.”
Isaac collected the notes and placed them in a glass jar. Labeled it:
“Proof.”
“Of what?” Ellis asked.
“That what we do matters.”
Then came a day in late February — warm enough to smell earth in the wind — when Ellis walked into the school office and saw his name on a white envelope, taped to the staff bulletin board.
He pulled it down. Opened it.
Inside was an invitation.
Dutch Hollow Regional High presents:
The First Annual Basil Merrow Day — A Celebration of Quiet Heroes.
Underneath was a note from the principal, scribbled in blue pen:
“We’d like to give students a chance to learn what loyalty really looks like.
And we’d like you to be the one who tells them.”
Ellis folded the paper slowly.
“I don’t do speeches,” he muttered.
Isaac, walking up behind him, smiled.
“Good. Then maybe you’ll just tell the truth instead.”
That night, they sat on the porch again. Beneath the spruce. The bench creaked beneath their weight. The wind blew gentle.
“You think people can heal from something without talking about it?” Isaac asked.
Ellis thought for a while.
“Sometimes,” he said. “But sometimes we carry wounds so quiet, they forget they’re allowed to speak.”
He looked at his hands.
“They’ll never be what they were. But maybe that’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
Ellis nodded toward the birdhouse, swaying slightly in the wind.
“Building something that lasts longer than your hands.”