The tables, when she got them back, were a revelation. She’d seen him working on them in the evenings when she’d gotten home from the bar, his huge form bent over in the dim light of a hanging lantern in the back yard, wood shavings littering the ground at his feet like late snow. But when she took them back to The Hook and Anchor and really looked at them, she was taken by surprise. Stunned, even.
The broken pine legs had been replaced with sturdy pieces of oak, adorned by fanciful carvings. Mermaids danced up one set of legs, frolicking amidst the seaweed and chests spilling over with treasure. On another table, dolphins swam in pursuit of schools of fish, the details so clear that the regulars chortled and pointed, recognizing the different types they caught so often. A third table featured fierce pirates, battling with each other or sailing the sea through shark-infested waters. The tops of each table had been stripped of their worn varnish and refinished, so they glowed in the soft lights of the bar. Here and there small scenes were etched into the surface - shallow enough so they wouldn’t interfere with the function, but matching the more intricate carvings down below. The damn things weren’t just repaired. They were works of art.
The customers were fascinated and word of mouth brought in the curious to see them, all of them staying to drink a beer or two. Bethany made enough from the extra business the first few days to more than make up for whatever she’d lost in cheap broken glassware.
At the end of the week, she came home from work, slammed the door, and glared at Alexei, who was putting together a picture puzzle with her father in the kitchen.
“Fine,” she said. “Come back to the damned bar. You might as well fix the rest of the chairs there; I’m tired of hauling them back and forth. But no drinking. And if you so much as chip a coffee mug, I’m going to kill you and bury you in the back yard, even if I have to hire three guys to carry you there for me. Got it?”
The two men stared at her.
Alexei nodded slowly. “Got it,” he said. “It was okay, what I did with the tables? Not too fancy? I can do them again if you don’t like them.” His accent was stronger than usual, which Bethany had found usually indicated some strong emotion. This time, it probably just meant he was tired or something. Not much to get emotional about when you were talking about furniture.
“They are…nice. People like them. They’re a conversation piece,” Bethany said. “You’re very talented.”
Alexei blushed, something she would have guessed was impossible. “Bah,” he said, ducking his head. “Just an old hobby. Something I used to do to pass the time by the campfire. I started out carving little wooden toys for…for some little girls I knew. I’ve just had a long time to practice, that is all.”
“Well, whatever. They’re okay. People like being able to keep finding new little details whenever they look at them. I keep getting requests.”
“Like what?” Calum asked. “Naked ladies?”
Bethany rolled her eyes. The mermaids had been bad enough. “No, more like favorite sea birds, or whales. One guy even asked for dragons. Who knew our customers had such vivid imaginations?”
Calum snorted. “There’s a lot of time to daydream on a boat, in between the hours of backbreaking work and the long trips in and out of port.” He got a distant look in his eyes, and he rubbed his stubbly chin, his whole body drooping a little.
“Time for bed,” Alexei said, his sharp eyes picking up on the signs. He looked at Bethany. “You’re sure it is okay I come back? I promise this time I’ll remember. And I’ll carve you some dragons. I like dragons.”
“Fine,” Bethany said. The truth was, she’d kind of missed having him hanging around the place. It had been oddly quiet, and there always seemed to be a giant, Alexei-shaped hole at one end of the bar. “Just until the agency finds a new aide to send.”
Calum made a rude gesture and wheeled his chair toward the bedroom.
“Good night to you too, dad,” Bethany said with a sigh, and went to go walk the dog.
*
It was Monday and Alexei was back at the bar and something was wrong.
Bethany couldn’t quite put her finger on it. He was behaving. Which, let’s face it, maybe was part of what felt off, but it was more than that. He’d come in at ten in the evening, gotten a cup of coffee without a protest, and sat in the corner using some hand tools to mend a chair that had seen better days even before it had been whacked across someone’s shoulders.
This was the third night since she’d allowed him back in, and he’d mended a few more pieces of furniture, along with a few other things around the place that her father had let go. Occasionally he’d joined in on a game of darts or pool, but his heart hadn’t seemed in it. In fact, if she had to pinpoint what was wrong, she would have said that something inside him seemed as broken as the chairs, but she didn’t know what, or how to fix it.
She’d had to remind herself that Alexei Knight wasn’t her problem. It wasn’t her job to fix him, or anyone else, except maybe her father, who she was pretty sure was beyond help. Alexei was just passing through and would be gone in a week or two. It was a waste of her extremely limited time and energy to worry about him.
Needless to say, that didn’t stop her. She wasn’t even sure why she bothered to talk to herself if she wasn’t going to listen. She was almost relieved when, later that night, his interest was caught by a conversation between her and two men sitting at the bar.
“So what is it you do, exactly?” Bethany asked the tall, quiet one wearing glasses and carrying a bag bulging with files, a small laptop, and a stuffed parrot, of all things.
“I’m an oceanographer,” he explained. “I work out of Woods Hole. I’m supposed to be researching changing ocean currents, but we’ve had so many reports lately of disappearing fish and sea mammals, I was assigned to look into it.”
“Sea mammals,” the fisherman sitting next to him said in a disparaging tone. “He means whales and dolphins. I don’t know why you science geeks can’t just say what you mean.” He drank down a huge gulp of his beer. “Every damn thing in the ocean is disappearing. Might as well say so.”
The oceanographer shook his head, but drank down his own beer faster than usual.
“You mean because of global warming and such?” Bethany asked. There was always an ongoing debate among the locals as to whether or not climate change was to blame for the worsening fishing.
“Well, that too,” the oceanographer said. “But in this particular case, there seems to have been a dramatic change in the last week or two. We can’t find anything to explain it. The water temps have stayed more or less steady, there are no unexplained shifts in the current patterns, salinity is unchanged. But the fishermen who called us are right. The fish aren’t where they should be, and there aren’t nearly as many whales or dolphins as there normally are. Frankly, we’re baffled.”