Thursday Was the Sharpest Day by Brent Waggoner
Monday is for vacuum cleaners, tubes clogged with hair and paperclips. Tuesdays (two-days) people remember that they only has one copy of the will. Wednesdays are for movers, browsers, waterbed enthusiasts. Fridays are dead. But on Thursdays, they come bearing knives, scissors, stitch-pullers, boxcutters, family silver, straight razors, cleavers with mysterious divots.
I take them all, no questions but how’ve you been and sometimes not even that. I wrap the finer pieces–obsidian, ceramic–in cheesecloth and stack them carefully in the wooden fruit crate behind the counter. And when the last customer leaves, I carry the crate into the back room, where I’ve all manner of sharpening tools.
Whetstones, pull-throughs, grinders, diamond rub, angle-grinders, clamps, vices. The workshop of a sharpener is foreboding to outsiders. Not to me. I always start by tidying my workbench and then I select the most interesting things in the box and begin.
Some weeks are dull (haha) but the rarities keep me going. Three weeks ago, a middle-aged woman with blonde hair brought me a scythe that dated back to Plymouth Rock. She didn’t figure I sharpened gardening implements but it couldn’t hurt to ask; meanwhile, I silently salivated. Later, gently massaging the rib, I had what I believe to be an ecstatic experience. My workshop filled with light and I heard a voice speaking in tongues no man, including me, had ever heard. How much time passed, I don’t know. When I came back to my senses, the scythe shone, beard and tang beatific in the gloom. When the woman came to pick it up, I told her it had been stolen and paid her $50. She didn’t seem to mind.
I’ve had other visions too. The act of cutting, the art of sharpening, seems to thin out the walls between the worlds, slowly but surely, sanding through barriers without leaving a trace. I’ve spoken to my wife (dead), Barack Obama (alive), and Paul Newman (unsure). When I’m out and about, I see people I’m sure aren’t really there, but we just nod and go on our way.
But mostly I just sharpen, like tonight. Some light jazz drifts in through the window as a dented Oldsmobile drives by. And as I turn to look, I hear a scraping and turn back to see my scythe, no longer on the wall, no longer mine. I hear the sound of tearing, the whisk of a cloak, the soft clink of my whetstone hitting the floor, then Death, that greatest sharpener, tests the blade.
Brent Waggoner was born in Indiana and is currently living in South Carolina, USA. He’s married and has three great kids. Brent’s been writing for most of his life and has always loved flash fiction. For him writing has been a path of self-discovery and survival.
