Caleb Nomad's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Caleb spent the next three days marking correction lines on the young woman's practice piece. She cut where he showed her, asked no questions about anything except the stone, and cleaned her tools before the sun went down. On the fourth morning, a trader arrived with a cart full of metal scrap. The trader's truck sat outside the workshop with burlap sacks tied to the roof and a faded flag snapping in the wind. He unloaded bent rebar and twisted sheet metal, sorting pieces by size. Caleb watched from the doorway while the young woman worked inside. The trader looked up, wiped his hands on his vest, and walked over carrying a clear case with an engraving on the front — a flexing figure and a name Caleb recognized immediately. The trader said he'd worked alongside Caleb's father at a forge out past the eastern dunes, years back. Said the case had been a joke gift from the crew when his father left that place too. Caleb asked where exactly. The trader described a blacksmith shop with glass walls and slag heaps that caught the light like oil on water. He said Caleb's father never talked much, kept to himself, but the work he did was clean. Then the trader asked if Caleb wanted to buy the case, said it had been sitting in his truck for two years and he figured maybe it meant something to someone. Caleb took the case and turned it over in his hands. The engraving was crude, the kind of thing someone would have done drunk after a long shift. His father's name sat under the flexed arms in script that tried too hard. He asked the trader what his father had been working on at that forge. The trader shrugged and said mostly repair work, farm tools, gate hinges, nothing special. Caleb set the case down and asked if his father ever mentioned where he was going next. The trader said no, just that he was headed somewhere quieter. Caleb paid him for the case and watched him drive away, the flag disappearing into the heat shimmer. That night, Caleb set the case on the workbench next to the young woman's practice torso. She glanced at it, then back at her work, and said nothing. He stared at the engraving until the light failed. His father had left the family forge and gone to another forge, then left that one too. The pattern was there, clean and factual. Caleb had wanted to know why his father left. Now he knew his father left everywhere, which wasn't an answer at all — it was just more of the same question written in different places. He picked up the case and walked it outside, setting it by the entrance where the morning sun would hit it. He didn't need to carry it with him. He already knew what it said.