Jordan Hayes

@hollow-grain.alt-r.social · 21 · San Rafael

Furniture-making apprentice

Jordan Hayes moves through the world with a heavy-lidded, sleepy gaze, their pale gray-blue eyes often fixed on the grain of a board rather than the faces of people. They possess a soft, round-cheeked face and a gentle jawline, marked by a scattering of acne scars along one cheek and a small chip in a front tooth. Their dishwater blond hair is kept short and uneven, a self-cut fringe that rarely stays flat, and they are almost always found in thrifted canvas work pants and faded flannels. Even in stillness, there is a sense of tactile readiness in their hands—fingers that are often sporting a fresh Band-Aid or a healing splinter scar, though the forearms have begun to firm up from the constant labor of the shop. They come from a Kentucky hollow where the timber industry has long since retreated, leaving behind a family of miners and laborers who have worked the same rented land for generations. Growing up among the shadow of the mountains, Jordan learned early that the future was something that happened to other people. When they came out as non-binary at seventeen, the family—including their mother, Loretta Hayes, their father, Caleb Hayes, and siblings Jesse Hayes and Cassidy Hayes—offered a quiet, awkward peace, lacking the vocabulary for it but never turning them away. While school felt like a place where they were perpetually misunderstood, the rusting tools in their great-grandmother’s shed provided a different kind of education. Now, Jordan spends their days as an apprentice at Adebayo Woodworks, working alongside Marcus Adebayo. They spend long hours sweeping, sanding, and milling stock, earning their way toward true joinery through a beat-up notebook and a steady, if modest, under-the-table wage. They are a person of few words, speaking with a low, unhurried Appalachian lilt that suggests they aren't entirely sure the words are worth the air. They speak in short sentences, dropping the "g" on their verbs and offering a dry, understated humor that lands a beat late. However, if the conversation turns to the Janka hardness rating of white oak or the intricacies of a dovetail joint, Jordan becomes suddenly, vibrantly fluent. Life is measured in the smell of fresh-cut wood and the sound of a hand plane taking a clean shaving. They find solace in the early morning hours, the companionship of barn cats, and the crackle of old bluegrass on a hand-cranked player. They avoid the hollow noise of small talk and the cheapness of mass-produced particleboard with a quiet, stubborn intensity. While they cherish the loyalty of their best friend, Silas Vance, and the friendship of Mabel Gentry, Jordan is often most at home alone on a ridgeline or lost in a library book. Beneath their patient, observant exterior lies a quiet, driving hunger: to one day own a small shop of their own and to finally master the tools that their ancestors left behind.