A person of Neshiyah
Gilead Harel, carpenter
Carpenter
Gilead Harel
Carpenter, about 98 years old. Born in Neshiyah, like everyone.
Gilead Harel’s hands have outlived the wood they shaped. At ninety-eight, he still steadies a plane along a plank as if the grain were a river he was reading, though his grip has gone to a tremor and his eyes to a squint. He works the yew and ash by the sawpit behind his shed, alone but never lonely, humming a tune he half-remembers. One habit: he wipes his tools with a rag soaked in linseed oil, twice, before he sets them down, no matter the hour. He wants the river to stay where it is. The town sees him as the quiet hinge their days turn on—present, reliable, asking nothing of the fog, which he treats as weather, not mystery. When he sleeps, they say, he sleeps like someone who has already agreed to leave.
Temperament
Content not to ask; trusting, within reason; even-tempered; always in company; given to sitting by the river.
What people say
Gilead Harel believes what everyone believes: the fog is the edge of the world, and the fields need working whether it is true or not.
What the record shows
- day 34 Gilead Harel, the carpenter, died at 98, of old age. In their last days people said they were asleep.
- day 23 Gilead the younger the carpenter fell ill with the valley fever and lost three days to it.
- day 20 Gilead the younger and Nathan came to blows at the square over nothing much.
Gilead Harel died on day 34.