The Honing of Blades

He always loved knives. Blades flicking sharp like a snake's tongue. "Knives never lie," he said. The moment depends on honing. A ritual all its own. Scrip. Scrape. Scrip. Scrape. A soothing sound. Oil glistened and carried steel to the end of an Arkansas stone. He would flip it over and slide it back, and forth, and back again. "Mind the angle," he would say. "No more than a nickel thick." All his life he believed a knife truer than his name. From birth he knew by instinct. The cold hard reality of an edge. But his dark eyes held silence like the oil on his stone. Miserable and alone. His left hand gripped the table top. Wrist up and ready. The knife in his right. Waiting unsteady and above. About to fall. He said, "this requires the sharpest blade of all." E.G. Maynard. 46 & 2. 3.