Fig

Carpenter

"Measure three times. Cut once. Then never mention the cut again."

Fig, the carpenter, has built or rebuilt nearly every roof in this town, and said perhaps forty words about it. He agreed to this interview on the condition that we not "make it a whole thing." We made it a whole thing.

The Town Daily: People say you never build the same house twice. True?

Fig: A house isn't a thing you copy. It's a thing that has to stand where it stands. This ground slopes, that one doesn't. Wood remembers where it grew. You listen, or you build a house that argues with itself for forty years.

The Town Daily: There's a rumor about a leaf carved into every beam. Care to comment?

Fig: ...Who told you that. No. I don't want to comment. [long pause] A house should have one thing in it that belongs only to the house. That's all I'll say. Write down that I said nothing.

The Town Daily: You and Nib the tinkerer bicker constantly. Yet you keep working together.

Fig: Nib fixes a pump and now it plays a tune every seventh bucket and won't stop. I build a door. It opens. It closes. That's the whole argument. He calls it 'no imagination.' I call it 'a door.'

The Town Daily: Anyone in town whose work you actually admire?

Fig: The Farmhand. Pia. Nobody's watching her out in the far field and she still stacks the hay square. You can tell a person by what they do when the counting stops. She'd make a fine carpenter. Don't print that, she'll get ideas.

Resident file

Temperament: Quiet, exacting, warm under a hard grain. He'll fix your sagging porch step before you notice it sagged, and get gruff if you thank him for it.
Obsession: That a thing should be built true — plumb, square, and honest — even in the joints no one will ever see.
Relationships: Old sparring partner to Nib the tinkerer. Quietly admires Pia's diligence. And on every beam, a secret only the house keeps.

As seen in the Town Daily

LOCAL CARPENTER MEASURES CHURCH DOOR THREE TIMES, CUTS ONCE, SAYS NOTHING FOR ELEVEN DAYS
"IT'S JUST A DOOR": FIG DECLINES CREDIT FOR TOWN'S ONLY DOOR THAT HAS NEVER STUCK
TINKERER DEMANDS CARPENTER'S SHELVES "DO SOMETHING"; CARPENTER DEMANDS THEY "HOLD BOOKS"

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