Where Does the Wood Go?

Mr. Gilgum’s office was too small for August. The 9 year old stared at the wooden floor trying to imagine a football field, but the headmaster’s voice cut through his imaginings.

“Stealing food, fighting, and that insolent way you have of staring at everyone won’t be tolerated at this orphanage.”

August stayed silent as the small and dark painted office began closing in around him. He took his skinny little arms and placed them over his stomach squeezing himself into a ball.  He tried to remember the exact color green of the football field across the street from his bedroom window, but—just as Mr. Gilgum said last week—August had poor imagination and poor concentration and poor--

“Look me in the eye when I’m talking to you! You should at least pretend like you care what I have to say.”

The boy met Mr. Gilgum’s dark brown stare with his green eyes. He tried to pretend like he was one of the children he’d seen the headmaster give presents to. He tried to remember the way Mr. Gilgum had laughed at Nelson Arnoldson’s joke about the piñata and the priest, but instead his mind kept flipping between how good it felt to punch Nelson in the face for making fun of his nightmares and how the wooden walls of the office matched the color of his mother’s casket. His mother would have been proud he’d stood up for himself. 

“You can’t focus. You’ve got no respect. No wonder we couldn’t find any relative who would want you.”

August’s mother had died with her eyes wide open. He could remember shaking her and shaking her. He could remember the social worker telling him that the orphanage was the best place for him because his Grandmother was too elderly and his Aunt didn’t want the responsibility of raising another child.

“There are other children who need to be here and can follow the rules. We just don’t have room here for children like you. We are sending you away to somewhere that will straighten you out. Somewhere you will learn to listen just because someone told you to.”

Tears began rolling down August’s cheek. He wanted someone to rub his back and tell him that he wasn’t a bad kid. The small office was suffocating him.

“It doesn’t matter if you cry. The van is waiting outside for you to leave.”

August never cried again in his life. He didn’t cry when he arrived at the labor camp, or when the saw machine chopped off his pinky finger. He became someone who learned to follow the rules just for the sake of following rules just like Mr. Gilgum once predicted he would. He’d become a vessel with no emotion or thoughts other then his job of building the machine. After 10 years of not feeling anything, August had forgotten it was only natural to have some type of feeling sometimes.

Perhaps this was why August felt different on August 12th, when everything was the same as it had always been. The steam work bell rang with a low whistle, and he walked with no type of excitement or resentment towards the work camp.

The machine hovered high above the workers walking, with their boots scuffing up dirt, and the humid heat pounding unceasingly against their backs. The nearly 200 men and boys felt drained before they reached the work site. The machine—the large mirrored machine—reflecting nothing but light into their eyes stretched, in an awkward spindly angle, to the clouds in the sky and was made entirely out of solar panels.

‘Once the machine is turned on,’ thought August as he neared the saw he’d been using for the past 10 years, ‘It could keep going forever and ever, it could keep moving as long as there is sun.’

A foreign feeling swelled around him. Unused to emotions, he checked his tool belt sure he had forgotten something. Everything was tight in his belt; the way it should be. The feeling didn’t leave his body even after he triple checked his belt, or when he went to work—his life’s work—sawing long pieces of wood at approximately 6 feet, and then in half by 3 feet.

After about an hour, two people came; one with scuffling feet which made an odd crunching sound. August looked up to see a young boy with black hair so dirty that it wasn’t really black but tan, accompanied by a 40 year old man in khaki’s and a silver work shirt.

“This young man has been working here since he was your age,” said the older man in Khakis. “In this very same job. Someone trained this worker, and now this worker will train you.”

The young boy nodded, and the older man turned towards August before walking away “, you will teach him absolutely everything you know about this job, think of it as a promotion.”

“My name is Jeffery Sandoval,” said the boy, jovially, as soon as the older man walked away. “What is your name?”

“My name is August.”

They stood in silence; August’s saw not turning on schedule for the first time in years. He tried to copy the young boy’s smile, and caught his face’s reflection in the machine’s extremely reflective solar panel siding. All that happened in his expression was an annoying smirk that Mr. Gilgum had always referred to as insolent. August let his face resume its normal nothingness.

“What I do is cut the wood,” August said in a monotone voice, as Jeffery bounced from leg to leg in a silent dance. “I cut these strips,” he pointed to the bin with long strips, “into 6 foot strips and then I cut them in half and put them in this bin,” he said pointing to the bin on the other side of his cutting board.

“And after that?” said the boy in an odd fascination staring at the electric saw.

“I do it until the whistle blows and it’s time to go home.”

Jeffrey’s face fell a little, but then perked up as his brown eyes looked more curiously at the machine “, Well—where does the wood go? What part is it in this gigantic thing we’re building?”

“I don’t know,” August said. “At the end of the day someone takes the bins.”

“And you’ve never asked them where the wood goes?”

“No…I haven’t.”

The strange feeling August felt earlier returned, and he could remember—a long time ago—feeling the same uneasiness. An eerie type of curiosity maybe, but more accurately the feeling when he was certain someone was staring at him only to find that no one had been.

“No more questions,” August said not liking the way the new emotion felt “, you’re here to work and learn, and not to ask questions.”

The words leapt out of August’s mouth before he understood why he said them. Jeffery Sandoval’s acorn eyes fell, and August understood the look of disappointment. The downcast angle of Jeffrey’s eyes which were now fixated on the dirt reminded him of his mentor, and the curious question a young August asked 10 years ago.

“What are we building here?” he said to his burly, intimidating and tanned faced mentor, one chilling December day.

His mentor stopped the machine, looked away rubbing a hand against his bald head, and answered August in a gruff voice “, Ain’t that enough questions? I’ve told you and told you that I don’t know…you’re here to work…to learn…not to ask questions.”

Maybe it was the answer which fully resigned August to the importance of his work, or maybe it was a more gradual settling, but he accepted he shouldn’t ask questions which did not pertain to learning the craft of cutting at 6 feet and then in half by 3 feet. Intrinsically, August felt his craft was more important than questions.

Nothing else mattered, but as he glanced at Jeffrey’s curious face—which gazed upward at the loud churning saw—he felt, once more, unsettled. With a deep breath he looked toward the machine, a part of him trying to see to the very top, and was immediately blinded by the hot burning reflection of the loud orange and yellow sun. His head ached, and August saw only spots clouding his vision as he put the 3-foot wood into the bin.

Grabbing a six foot piece of wood August murmured to himself in a boyishly curious voice “, Where does the wood go?”

Part of August expected an answer—any answer—perhaps from a loud booming voice from the machine itself. The work camp—if he ignored the machines whirring and banging and the scuffling of boots—was mostly silent and no answer came.

People asked questions to each other in a dull, lost, single beat monotone. For the first time in 10 years, something about the work camp seemed strange to him.

“Where does the wood go?” he murmured to himself more intently watching a man—the same man who’d always taken the bin full of 3 foot pieces—put a new bin down and walk away, closer and closer to the machine, until August blinked and the man with the bins disappeared; probably lost somewhere among the workers.

‘Where does the wood go? Where does the wood go? Where does the wood go?’ he kept thinking, as he tried to find the man with the bins among the crowd. It seemed he had been asking himself this question for his entire life, but only a minute passed before this thought became too unnatural. August could feel the world closing in around him, as though he was suffocating, and then returned back to his work.

Jeffrey watched in silence and after some time—when the sun began to set with a faint dash of lava orange smudged into the sky—the question had hidden itself into the depths of August’s mind. The only thing he could think about was the singular pattern; cut once by 6 feet and then in half by 3 feet. Then, after getting lost in the familiar routine, the workday was done, and the steam bell rang; low and exhausted.

In the morning August put on his dull tan worker’s jump suit, which he had worn for the past 10 years, and walked to the mirror to comb his hair. He stared at his reflection, was sure he noticed something different about himself, but nothing had changed in his 19 year old face. His hair was the same light brown it had always been and his expression indifferent.

Nothing had changed, but August was sure something had changed. He stared more intently at his face and the shape of his lip—the exact semi-circle curvature in the dip underneath his nose—reminded him, immediately, of his dead mother.

Suddenly, he felt as though he was waking up from a nightmare and his stomach sloshed. August could hear his heart banging and forcing his breathing to become obnoxiously loud. He thought of his old life, and abruptly could remember being 9 and hearing Mr. Gilgum yell “, No one cares if you cry!”

It was the innocence in Jeffrey’s brown eyes that conjured in August’s mind next, and the question began to spread and swell—once more—like an infection: Where does the wood go?

The work bell whistled strangely, and August walked from the 200 single unit aluminum dwellings that looked like a strange mobile home park in the middle of the dessert towards the large reflective machine. As all of the workers walked briskly towards their work stations, August walked quickly but slower than the others; attempting to not be noticed doing anything strange. No one ever told him lagging behind was wrong, but he knew it was dangerous. In the same way he knew pondering where the wood went was also dangerous.

The sun was at the perfect angle, hidden somewhere on the other side of the massive, solar paneled machine which looked like a tower paying homage to some architectural feat of being the tallest machine man could build. August smiled to himself because he was proud he had helped make something grand. He had been apart of something that would do something important in the world. He could almost imagine himself pressing an ON button and seeing the machine extend its body to go shake hands with God.

Jeffrey was waiting for him, next to the saw, dancing about from one foot towards the other with his hair just as dirty as it had been the day before. The color of his hair and the bright tan workers uniform camouflaged him to the point he was nearly invisible.

“I’m going to watch saw again today!” Jeffrey said happily “, the man—the man who put me here said that sawing looks like it will be a good fit for me”

“Have you had other jobs?” August asked curiously putting on his goggles and handing Jeffrey a pair from his tool belt.

Jeffrey laughed “, a ton—painting the wood red, nailing, metal working, glass blowing-”

“None of those worked out for you?”

“No—I made all the other workers mad—they all—they all complained to the—the man who put me here—that I asked too many questions.”

“What kind of questions did you ask?”

“The same questions I asked you—it just seems funny to me—really funny—that no one knows what the machine does. I like to pretend it’s a rocket ship.”

August knew, for some reason he didn’t understand at all, that the nature of his conversation with Jeffrey was approaching a dangerous zone. “It’s time to pay attention to sawing now,” August said “, remember why we’re here.”

“To work, to learn, and not to ask questions!” Jeffrey answered feeling competent.

The questions seemed to leave Jeffrey’s mind, but as the sun rose August’s mind became consumed with what the machine did. Even though August knew letting Jeffrey ask questions about the machine felt prohibited, he had to discuss his new thoughts with someone.

An hour later, August whispered to Jeffrey, ”I wonder what the machine does, too. Maybe it’s helping a lot of people all over the world.”

Jeffrey understood he had to speak the same way August did “, Have you ever wondered if it’s super evil—like once we turn it on—it might—it might kill people?”

The image of a dead Jeffrey lying in the dirt, conjured in August's mind. The boy's wide brown eyes would stare off into nothingness. No Dancing. No Fidgeting. For the first time in years, he could feel tears gathering along his eyelids.

August walked over to the bin and dumped his wood in, he was frightened, and what if it did kill people? What if the machine he was building was responsible for deaths? “What does this machine do,” he muttered to himself concerned.

The two didn’t talk for another two hours because what the machine could be responsible for made the eeriness of the work camp grow.

August noticed that everyone around him had jobs, but none of them seemed relevant to the large solar paneled machine. The man across from him was pounding the letter “Q” with a hammer three times and then throwing it with a clink into a bin, and the man behind August bent metal pieces with a torch, cooled them, and then threw his metal shapes into a bin. Once the bins were full, men with yellow shirts took the bins and walked towards the machine and became so jumbled together that August didn’t know what happened to them because he couldn’t keep his eye on one worker before they became lost in the crowd.

‘If the machine could be killing people my hands and my work is responsible. I have to know what I’m building,’ August thought to himself turning off the saw and staring at Jeffrey with intense eyes.

“I can’t do this anymore,” August said thinking of Jeffrey’s innocent face with open still glossy brown eyes laying in a pile of the dead the machine might one day kill. “I can’t work on some thing—I just can’t keep working on something that could do anything.”

August was frightened, this was the only thing he had done his entire life. If he walked away from sawing the wood by six and then in half by three, what would he do with his life? Who would he be? ‘What if the machine is good’ thought August hoping to have some reason to clutch onto his normal routine, but his thought was quickly infected by the thought of his only friend dead.

The same man who brought Jeffrey passed in front of the saw, and August turned his machine off.

“Sir,” he yelled ”, SIR!”

The man stopped, he was wearing a purple work shirt and khaki pants. His face was weathered and his cool blue eyes looked directly at August.

“Is Jeffrey asking too many questions?” the man asked resigned looking at the boy who stood nervously next to the saw.

“No…no…not at all.”

“Then what is it?” the tone was reproachful and immediately made August want to turn and return to work.

“I just can’t do it anymore! I just can’t keep building something I don’t know anything about! What if I’m killing people? What if I’m killing innocent people?”

“ Calm down you’re not killing anyone,” the man said disgusted.

“Then what does this machine do? What does it do?”

The man sighed and looked toward the spindly machine “, Follow me!”

The man turned on his heel and walked quickly. The men with the bins were walking towards the workers holding empty bins. August took long strides to match the man walking towards the great machine, which seemed more and more infinitely tall the closer he got to it.

The solar panels were reflecting so much bright sun that August was forced to look directly at the man’s black rubber soled shoes, until they approached a small door which melded into the machine so well it looked as though it was a part of it. The man opened the door with a sigh, and August followed him inside.

The floor was tile, and the black rubber soled shoes both August and the man wore squeaked and squelched. August looked up—with purple and black spotting his vision—and noticed he was in a long white corridor with pictures on the wall of groups of workers with dazed and lost faces staring into infinity.

It became very obvious to August, when he and the man passed the grey elevator, that the machine was not a machine. The machine was a building.

After ten minutes of walking down the extensive hallway, August and the man approached a red door. The man opened the door to reveal a small office. If the building fell, August would be crushed and suffocate to death. He was hesitant to cross the threshold, but he had to. ‘This is for Jeffrey,’ August thought.

“My name is John,” the man said sitting behind the wooden desk as August took a seat in the chair on the other side. “Once I tell you about what the machine does—you’ll never be allowed to work on the machine again. You’re old enough to make the decision to leave. So, I’ll give you a thousand dollars to start your life in the real world. The same world where a thousand dollars won’t go that far. You could go back to sawing, right now you could go right back to your job. Trust me, life is easier here.”

August thought about returning back to his rhythm, and didn’t answer right away. Most of his life had been the machine, but he knew, with a sickening thud, that he couldn’t return to sawing knowing he had been too cowardly to learn the purpose of the machine he helped build. ‘I could die here,’ August thought ‘, and never know what I’d been doing my entire life.’

John looked uninterested at August, as though this scene had happened a million and one times before.

“I just have to know,” said August “, I just have to know what the machine does.”

“And if I can promise you it doesn’t kill people?”

“I just have to know, even if it is responsible for saving the world.”

John looked away, staring at his blank white walls, and then meeting August’s bright green eyes. He rubbed a hand on his bald head and blinked twice.

“The machine does nothing.”

“What?”

“It does nothing. It isn’t a machine…it isn’t anything.”

“Then what have I been sawing for?”

“For yourself mostly.”

“I don’t understand,” said August with his eyebrow furrowed and lost. He’d sawed for his entire life. He’d sawed for the machine. He’d sawed for the greater good. August was slowly growing angry.

“There was a program which started 20 years ago designed to keep children who the orphanages, juveniles, and foster care homes did not have enough resources to provide services to make children like you become productive citizens. They thought that some children, because of there circumstances, were just bad seeds. So, our program, gives you hard labor jobs and some greater purpose. Slowly you stop thinking because you don’t have to think, you don’t have to worry about joining some gang or starving on the streets, and society doesn’t have to be in fear of you. We’ve reduced crime and---”

“So you’re saying that I sawed and sawed and sawed…for nothing.”

“You sawed for the greater good. The world is better off without you. That’s what whoever sent you here decided. The world doesn’t need …you.”

The eerie emotion that had lodged in the back of his mind on August 12th, finally took a solid root. As August accepted the money, left the machine, and walked into the ever-infinite world. He didn't turn back to look at the work camp when he began his trek to start his new life. He did not turn to even face the direction of the building that made him saw and saw and saw for no result, no true purpose, other than the world did not need him.

It was a sweltering July, when August was placing fries inside of the deep fryer, and waiting for the beep of the fast food machine. The machine beeped and he placed the fries on the rack, sprinkled salt, and then served them to one of the impatient customers. The customers, once they were finished eating, walked out into the greater world to do something or other, and without thinking August muttered to himself ", Where does the wood go?"

He ran out of the building, his black rubber soled shoes squeaking and squelching, to look toward the machine that had once held him captive. He looked toward the tower and saw nothing but the city and the city’s houses extending and extending to infinity. At this moment, August realized the machine was a mirror so the entire world, in its vanity, could stare back at itself.