The Wooden Porch Swing on Its Chains

The wooden porch swing hangs on its two chains, and June is the first month the chains are asked to work. The hooks are set one over each end of the seat, and the two chains run parallel with the width of the swing between them. Through the cold months the swing hung where it hangs now, under the porch roof, and nothing moved it. Then the first warm evenings come, somebody sits, the seat takes the weight, and the chains turn in their hooks for the first time since autumn.

The seat is three slats of pine, the back four, all of them painted white so many times that the paint has built up and the edges of the slats have gone round. The paint has crazed into a net of fine lines, each coat showing through the one above it. The slats are set a finger's width apart, and the seat slats are angled back a few degrees so the whole swing leans toward its chains. In June the air is heavy, the wood swells, and the gaps close until the slats almost meet. On the dry days between rains the wood gives the moisture back, the gaps open, and the joints creak with the change.

The chains are galvanized, each link a closed oval of steel, and the wear is all at the top link, where it rides the hook sunk into the ceiling joist. All winter the same link hung in the same place. In June, swung every evening, the link turns in its hook and the zinc wears to a bright patch of bare steel no bigger than a thumbnail. Below the hook the chain runs straight down, and at the bottom the last link is pinned to the side rail by a bolt whose head has pressed a shallow seat into the wood.

The porch roof keeps June rain off the swing, but not the damp. Every June morning the seat is wet with dew, the moisture beaded along the grain, and by afternoon the surface is dry while the damp has soaked deeper into the slats. Underneath, the rails were never painted; the wood there is bare and grey, the grain raised rough by seasons of weather, and the checked ends of the slats close in the wet of June and open again with the dry spells.

The chains hold the swing at a fixed length, so what moves is the whole thing riding a true arc. At the top of each pass the chains slacken for a moment and the links settle with a single clink, one on each side. The creak comes from the hooks, where the top links and the steel have ground each other smooth — a short creak at the start of the motion and a shorter one at the turn. In the last of the month the dew falls earlier, and the seat is wet again before the swing has stopped moving.