David Black

A sleeper , they used to call it— four passes with the giant round saw and you had a crosstie, 7 inches by 9 of white oak— at two hundred pounds nearly twice my weight and ready to break finger or toe— like coffin lids, those leftover slabs, their new-sawn faces turning gold and brown as my own in the hot Virginia sun, drying toward the winter and the woodsaw and on the day of that chore I turned over a good, thick one looking for the balance point and roused a three-foot copperhead, gold and brown like the wood, disdaining the shoe it muscled across, each rib distinct as a needle stitching leather, heavy on my foot as a crosstie.