A Builder's Tale

Beginning of a builder's Tale

I am contemplating syndicating my 2nd novel, a builder's tale, on substack, chapter by chapter, one or two a week, there are 54 chapters. Would anyone have any interest in reading ? The beginning- Observing from above, an eagle on the wing, or watching from some all seeing satellite at this precise location of space and time, zooming in like you might on Google earth, had Google earth existed, you would have seen a man—Wilson Abernathy on his back, arms extended, settled into a pile of snow. You would have observed that he was thin, angular, fortyish and fit with a tan face nascent in progression towards the inevitable portrait of a life—Joy and woe just beginning to form fissures in his face, a slight hollow at the edges of his cheeks, small furrows at his forehead predicting a countenance that will someday hold bagged eyes and deep grooves from life’s passage. But not yet, for in early middle age he looks at life from deep blue eyes, the skin about them slightly wrinkled and creased from smiles. Weathered skin—a testament to a life lived as much outdoors as in. It is an acceptable face, sometimes handsome, sometimes not, depending on his mood or the angle of his head, or whether he is in repose or alert with thought. At this moment he wears no hat and the flipped curls at the ends of his hair have gone dirty blond from a winter in the sun. He rests supine—observing a sky impossibly blue, squinting from the light of a sun brighter then it might have been had he been at sea level— spread as Leonardo might have placed him had he set his image of man on his back in snow at 11,000 feet, clothed, with cross-country skis splayed acute at the ends of long stretched legs and feet. With the slightest movement of arms or legs Wilson might have made a snow angel. But, he was quiet, staring skyward, surrounded by one of those Colorado mountain spring days when you can see and sense the glitter in the air, flashes from the corner of the eye and gone as if tiny particles of the oxygen itself were expanding into thousands of small explosions. However; it was not this light that held his thoughts, rather it was clouds drifting slow above him, their puffed white shapes transforming into rolling hills and houses. He could have easily imagined these structures anywhere and without the need of clouds, but his mind and eye patterned them to that purpose. Wilson Abernathy was a builder and an architect. This was the reason for his cloud shaping. At various times in his life he had worked most every construction trade from the filthy to the clean. This day he employed himself in none of these. Instead, he was a backcountry skier, by himself, alone in the mountains near Aspen Colorado. He lay where he fell not because he was tired or hurt but because of the clouds above him, and these were his musingsexcuse for tracing houses in the sky. The tracing an attempt to hold off his wandering mind’s analysis of his life choices. He had needed the winter off. He had thought he needed years, and perhaps he would have taken them if he could. Left Michigan forever and never returned if his sculptured flowing residence of glass and stone and massive beams and high soaring space had sold. It and his boat, the mooring, and the water...Sell it all. That had been the plan. Sell out... quit...escape for a time...reexamine...live modestly. But he wondered, staring at these clouds: even if it all went tomorrow, and he found himself financially secure was that what he wanted? It had already been five months, and he was thinking again of houses. Waking up in the middle of the night from dreams of spaces he had never seen or walked or lived in. Dreams of stairs just so and beams just right and windows the proper height, and ridge beams not too high or low but perfect in proportion. Dreaming of residences where the spaces soared enough to be grand but not so much to diminish. That fine balance which was almost never right, but easy for him if he had the dreams. And he was dreaming again those dreams of houses…