Antler Ring Redemption

I turned sixty-five in March and I still have not gotten used to the word retired. It sits in my mouth like a button. I was a baker for forty years, Casey Munoz, up at four, shaping loaves until roughly 2021, and now my days start whenever the cat decides. You would think that would feel like winning. Some days it does. Other days it feels like standing in a big empty kitchen with no orders.

The closing ceremony for Kev's printmaking studio was on a Friday in October, in Vantage, Washington, down a gravel path behind the back alleys of a strip of buildings that used to be a fruit cannery. There was a generator humming outside that made the whole place feel like a campsite with art in it. Maybe forty people, wine in paper cups, drying racks pushed against the wall like furniture at a wake.

I knew almost nobody. Kev I knew, from way back, and that completed the list. So I did what I always do at parties, which is find the least social object in the room and stand near it. In this case it was a set of deer antlers mounted on the wall, with a pile of woven bamboo rings on the worktable under them. Somebody had painted a sign that said RING TOSS, 25 CENTS, ALL PROCEEDS TO THE STUDIO'S LAST LIGHT BILL.

"That game is a lie," said a voice next to me. "Those rings would crack if you sneezed at them."

I looked over. A man about my age, big hands, gray buzz cut, flannel that had clearly done some work in its life. Sixty-something, I figured, and I was right, he told me later he was sixty-three.

"You've tested this theory," I said.

"I picked one up. Felt like a breadstick." He held one up between two fingers. "Whoever wove these used bamboo from the actual plant out front, which is charming and also means the game lasts maybe six throws."

"That's very cynical for a closing party."

"I'm very cynical at all parties." He put the ring back. "Dom."

"Casey." We shook hands. His palm had calluses in places mine had burn scars, which felt like a fair trade.

"You don't look like a printmaker," he said.

"God, no. I baked bread for forty years. Retired. You?"

"Hotels. You know those crystal chandeliers in the lobbies? Somebody has to climb up and dust every single crystal by hand. That somebody was me, thirty-one years. Retired two years ago."

I laughed before I could stop it. "That's a real job?"

"It's a real job. It's also hanging off a scaffold two hundred feet over a marble floor with a lamb's wool wand and a prayer. You drop one crystal, it hits the floor, it's gone, and the manager hears it in his office." He mimed a small crash with his fingers. "I have not been up a ladder since and I don't miss it."

"So what brings two retired people to an art studio funeral?"

"Free wine," he said, and raised his paper cup. "And Kev. He's a friend from way back. You?"

"Same. Well, the Kev part."

We stood there a minute, and then he nodded at the antlers. "Twenty-five cents says you can't hit the far tine."

"There are three tines and I have a quarter."

"That's the spirit."

I paid my quarter into the coffee can, which was the first money I'd handled in a social situation in months, and threw. The ring bounced off the antler base and rolled under a worktable.

"Strong arm," said Dom. "Terrible aim. Baker's shoulders."

"You'd know, would you?"

"Chandelier arms are all about slow. You want the ring to float, like this." He tossed one in a lazy arc and it dropped over the middle tine like it had been mailed there. He didn't even smile about it, which made it worse.

"Okay," I said. "That was obnoxious."

"Thirty-one years of dropping a ring of rag onto a hook without knocking anything loose. It's the only transferable skill I have." He fished my ring out from under the table. "Best two out of five?"

We played, and lost track, and kept playing, and somewhere in there I told him about the bakery, the four a.m. starts, the proofing racks, the year I did two hundred pumpkin loaves in October and didn't want to see a squash again. He told me about the construction sites, the crane in Spokane with the load the size of a car, the time a pigeon got inside the cab and perched on the top tier like it owned the place. He had stories the way some men have furniture, just there, worn in, comfortable to sit on.

The ceremony wound down around us. Kev got up on a milk crate near the press, holding his cup up, and I noticed I was standing closer to Dom than I'd been an hour ago. Not touching. Just closer.

Kev's speech was short, which I respected. "Forty years of ink under my fingernails," he said. "This studio closes tonight for good, and that's all right. Everything prints its last page eventually. So the final toast is this. To everybody who ever pulled a print here, and to everybody who ever bought one out of pity and grew to love it."

That got a real laugh, and everybody drank, and people started gathering coats and saying their goodbyes in that slow way people leave things. Kev caught my eye across the room and pointed at Dom and then at me with his cup, and I realized with a jolt that he knew us both. He'd introduced us once, at a county fair, when we were all young. Thirty-five years ago, give or take. I'd completely forgotten until that second, and judging by Dom's face, so had he.

"He set us up," Dom said quietly, when Kev wandered off to hug somebody. "At the fair. The one with the ferris wheel that had the bad bearing."

"I remember the ferris wheel. I don't remember you."

"You were selling bread at a stall and I was trying to win a goldfish. Kev said, Dom, Casey, Casey, Dom, and then walked away. Very efficient setup."

"And here we are, thirty-five years later, at a funeral for a printing press."

"Romantic as hell," said Dom.

Most of the crowd drained out onto the gravel path. A couple of artists were rolling up the last posters. The generator hummed on outside, patient as a dog. I found myself twisting my empty cup in my hands and saying something I hadn't planned to say.

"I'm moving, you know. Next month. Smaller apartment. I've lived in the same place for twenty-two years and I'm packing it into seven hundred square feet, and I keep telling people it's fine, and it is fine, it's just a big change and I'm nervous about it, which sounds stupid out loud."

"It doesn't sound stupid." He set his cup down on the worktable. "I did the same thing two years ago. Forty years in one house, down to a two-bedroom. You give away half your boxes and you grieve the other half. Then one morning you realize you don't trip over anything anymore and it's kind of great."

"That's very reassuring. Did you practice that?"

"I lived it." He looked at the antlers, then back at me. "The ceremony's over. You want to walk the gravel path? There's a loop back by the generator. Good for the legs, and it's too loud out there to hear anybody's opinions."