over his years of travel. Not particularly valuable items, but sentimental ones, effective at reviving memories of various chapters of his life.
Ben fancied them more as three-dimensional photos than clutter. Carefully selected items that triggered his senses and took him back in time and place: Carnival masks from Venice adorning the walls of his hallway, a porcelain tea set from Baghdad resting on a coffee table, an elaborately decorated beer stein from Germany above his refrigerator.
As Ben scanned the wares in Morgan’s shop while reflecting on his intentions, a purpose came to mind. A validation for his intended purchase. He would find something for his barren fireplace mantel. Something other than a timepiece, or a ubiquitous model sailboat, that would fit in with the rest of his décor.
Currently the space was empty. And honestly it could just as easily remain empty. There was no desperately compulsive need to scratch that itch. If the space went unfilled, Ben would still somehow manage to find a peaceful night’s sleep.
But in this singular realm where Ben allowed impulsive purchases to occur, he was inclined to fall for Morgan’s pitch. If not for her selling prowess, then just because. Just because it was the farmers’ market. Just because she was starting out. Just because she was Morgan.
And where the “just because” arguments lacked merits, needing a mantelpiece proved to be reason enough to assuage the rational, pragmatic counterarguments that so often occupied his mind. The fact that all of her items had ash woven and mixed-in from the volcanic eruption also appealed to Ben to be sure. The items carried a bit of uniqueness, a bit of history, and a story to boot.
With his “just because” goal determined and validated, the search continued for the precise object.
Having moved on from the watches, his eyes settled on Morgan’s collection of jewelry boxes. They were more practical for Ben in the sense that they were designed with a specific, functional purpose. As storage devices they could hold a variety of items of actual value, rather than just the limits of what their namesake implied. One such toaster-sized box with a threaded border and gold-hinged lid caught his eye and he began searching for a price tag when he spotted the lamp.
It was of blended grey and blue porous rock and its texture resembled that of a tombstone. In size it compared to a small potted plant container or an elongated coffee mug, somehow flattened without losing its essence.
The lamp’s lid dropped loosely into place atop a center hole, but was otherwise unattached to the main frame. Within the darkened patches of stone along the center width was etched a scene of four forest animals navigating a river aboard a canoe. To top things off, each of the four animals was smoking a long, thin tobacco pipe.
Whether intended or not, Ben found humor in the scene. What else would forest animals do while riding a canoe down a river but have a smoke?
He found the depiction to be dry and funny, but not tasteless. In time it might very well serve only to collect dust on the mantel above the fireplace, but Morgan didn’t have to know that.
He raised the lamp slightly toward the sky as if making a toast, confirming his decision and letting Morgan know that he’d take it.
She commented on his wise choice, that he had picked one of her favorites. He blushed. She was talented at all aspects of her trade.
She blanketed the stone lamp into sheeted bubble-wrap with deft hands, taped the edges, and gently laid it in a custom brown store bag bearing the “Lawetlat’la’s Treasure” logo.
He retrieved cash from his wallet and handed it to her to complete the transaction. Their hands touched. They both smiled.
And that was it. Ben briefly wandered through the market, stopped for a fresh cup of coffee and a bag of warm roasted nuts, and then made his way home.
It wasn’t planned that way, or even the reason he went to the market that day, but meeting Morgan was an added bonus all the same.
Arriving at home, Ben set the bag with the wrapped lamp on the kitchen table, and there it stayed until the following day.
As he waited for his morning coffee to brew, Ben turned on the television to the channel that did 24-hour coverage of regional northwest news. When the headlines verified that the world hadn’t ended since he went to bed, he dimmed the volume to just above mute and shifted his focus to the lamp.
After pulling a pair of scissors from his kitchen drawer, he removed it from the bag and began to cut away at the plastic wrapping.
Before the air gurgled with the final gasp of the dying coffee pod, Ben had the lamp completely unwrapped.
After grabbing his coffee from the machine Ben sat at the table, staring at his newly acquired piece of potential clutter. It looked oddly different now in the morning light, although nothing had changed but the setting. Perhaps it seemed more fitting, more at home, next to its counterparts at the booth, surrounded by the energy of the market. Perhaps just nearer to Morgan.
His thoughts reflected back on yesterday’s purchase. The internal debate still raged on in his mind as to whether he had simply fallen into the same shopping trap he so often criticized others for doing. But was parting ways with a few dollars for a bit of joy, no matter how temporary, really all that bad of proposition? His previous answer would have been a clear and decisive “yes,” but now he was having second thoughts.
It wasn’t the best purchase he’d made, but it certainly wasn’t the worst. On the plus side, the four canoeing animals engraved on the center of the lamp, still busily smoking their pipes, seemed even more stylized and less tacky than he remembered.
The carving had a subdued and almost minimalistic look to it. If he had not been aware of its origins, he might have assumed it to be a museum piece from a First Peoples’ native tribe…or at least a decent replica previously perched as a decoration in some hotel lobby.
On the down side of it all, as he suspected there wasn't really a practical use or purpose for the lamp other than filling an empty space on the mantel. If it had some sort of time piece attached to it, it would at least be as useful as his watch.
Ben thought briefly, but seriously, about getting some oil, wax, and some wicks and turning the lamp into an emergency candlelight device. But in the end he decided its value lay not in its practicality, but in the realm of aesthetics, and the history of Mount St. Helen’s ash, and a brief moment with Morgan.
He tilted the lamp back and forth in his hands, examining his purchase from various angles, admiring the craftsmanship of its creator.
The volcanic stone was noticeably porous upon touch. As his fingers grazed the surface there was an unexpected smoothness to the friction that made the feeling not altogether unpleasant, like dragging one’s feet through beach sand.
As he tipped the lamp to a vertical point where it was nearly standing on its stout, the untethered lid spilled off onto the table, rattling momentarily before coming to a stop.
Clearly it wasn’t meant to be moved about. Thoughts of useless clutter stirred again through Ben’s mind. He replaced the lid and carried the lamp over to the fireplace mantel, to its new home and new life, collecting dust.
Once he was satisfied that the lamp was centered and aligned properly on the brickwork trim, Ben took a step back and evaluated his efforts. It wasn’t the best find in the world, but was still better and more unique than a decorative sailboat could ever be. Cheap cookie-cutter models straight off conveyer belts offer little in the way of conversation pieces, hold no memories, and as far as Ben knew, were not made from volcanic ash. At least with his lamp there was a story. There was a girl. There was a charming local market and a volcano’s destructive power rechristened as art. And that would work just fine for Ben.
He returned to his coffee and began to think of potential things to talk about with Morgan, should he encounter her again at the following Saturday’s market. Maybe he would even use the camera on his clock/phone to capture an image of the lamp to show her its new abode.
/> Such thoughts quickly vanished, however, when his gaze set upon the television screen.
The scrolling ticker with headline news updates streaming across the bottom was gone. Gone as well was the duet of network anchors, who only moments ago had been hard at work repeating the same teleprompter-driven script in 30-minute cycles.
Replacing the channel’s featured programming was an elderly man wearing a blue blazer and white fedora hat with black trim. At first Ben figured the scene in front of him to be nothing more than a poorly developed local commercial for some bargain discount store just around the corner.
The noise of the old man knocking against the glass screen caught Ben’s interest. It was a cheap “I’m trapped inside your TV” gimmick that had been played out countless times throughout the years. It seems some things never get old, he thought, and even some things that get old still get used.
What struck Ben as odd about the whole thing was that the old man’s rapping was noticeably audible. At first he thought it just the annoying attention-getting ploy advertisers used by bumping the volume base of their commercials. The sudden loud noise effectively alarming unsuspecting viewers and forcibly drawing their focus unwittingly toward the pitch.
The old man stood alone on screen and continued knocking with nothing but an empty white backdrop for