Mallet

Old man Grayson in his overhauls, Red Wings,
and St. Louis Cardinal baseball cap grabbed my arm
at the primitive tool auction in Albia on Saturday
and said, “see that big ol’ mallet over there?”

And I nodded, looking where he pointed at a
rough old wooden mallet that was not from
this world but I didn’t know it yet that had
a hand-carved handle long as a broomstick,
thicker than the skinny end of a baseball bat with a
blocky oak head nearly the size of a concrete block.

I took it in my hands, shrugged, felt its weight, and
turned its business end to the ready and imagined
driving something with it, a big tent peg maybe when
Grayson said “my Granpa told before he died in 57
that that there mallet and those like ‘m was used to
drive timbers plumb and flush in the old coal mines,
like the Gold Goose he worked in the old days near
Hamilton, and all these old boys here at the auction just
think that these are mine tools but these here wood tools
are slave tools we brought with us from the plantations.

Or the idea of 'em anyway, ‘cause the plantation bosses
didn’t want black men with steel ‘cause steel was too
expensive to buy they said, but really with enough time --
and they sure had enough time -- a clever fella could make
a nice club or shiv outa steel and they didn’t want that, no sir."

And he looked at me and I said, “Oh.”