Chapter Eighteen
The Bozeman Road, Larkin’s Hardware, and The South Porch at Dusk
“So,” George said presently, settling his hat lower against the wind, “Zoe has begun waving you off in the mornings.”
Wade let the silence answer for him.
“Zoe,” George went on, addressing himself to the cottonwoods at the creek bend, “made you laugh out loud at the supper table on Tuesday, returned a washed and ironed handkerchief to your shirt drawer on Wednesday, and asked me this morning in the corral whether her brother-in-law-to-be took sugar in his coffee.”
Wade kept his eyes on the road between the gelding’s ears. The corner of his mouth pulled once before it set itself flat again.
“Hand me the list, George.”
George, with the contented smile of a younger brother who had landed a hook squarely, drew the folded list out of his coat pocket and laid it on the wagon bench between them. Wade picked it up and read it through.
The line of his jaw set at the corner. He read it again, slower, with his thumb pressing flat against the side of the page. The pale blue of his eyes had gone darker at the third item on the list. He folded the page back along the creases and set it on the bench between them.
George let him have the half mile of silence that followed.
“Two hundred feet of five-strand at Larkin’s,” George said at last. “Forty pounds of staples. The post-driver head from the smithy. Coffee, if Mr. Morrison has any of the Brazilian in.”
Wade’s eyes had stopped at the third item from the bottom of the list. His thumb pressed flat at the wood of the bench.
“Three yards of cream Belgian linen at the back of the mercantile,” Wade went on, the list still in his hand.
“That is what the page says,” George agreed, the corner of his mouth holding very still against the wind.
“Set aside in your name.”
“It is, brother.”
“For the future, Mrs. Greene.”
George tipped his hat lower against the wind.
“The future Mrs. Greene has informed me that the future Mrs. Collins shall require a dress made for the wedding,” he answered. “The future Mrs. Greene has further informed me that I shall provide the cloth.”
Wade glanced sideways at his brother.
“When?”
“Tuesday,” George replied placidly. “Over the wash trough. She came up to the corral last Sunday with her father’s shirt and asked if Zoe might let down a cuff.
By the time the cuff was let down, she had committed herself, and I had committed myself.
Her father has yet to be informed, although I suspect he suspects. ”
Wade held the reins steady for the count of three.
His thumb moved once against the leather. He looked at his own gloved hands on the reins. He looked at the gravel of the road between the gelding’s ears.
Beside him, George let out a long breath that had been waiting since June.
“Well,” Wade answered, his eyes on the gravel ahead. “You had better tell Ben before Saturday.”
George’s head turned sharply. “Why Saturday?”
“The Ladies’ Aid is meeting at the Greenes’.
Zoe is going. Alice is going to tell her mother across the embroidery, Mrs. Greene is going to set the lemon cake down and inform Ben within the hour, and if Ben hears it from his wife with a slice of cake in his hand he will be a harder man to bring around than if you told him over a bridle on his own porch. ”
Wade took the wagon around the bend where the creek path met the Bozeman road. The Bridgers came up sharp and close on the left. The gelding shook its mane against the bit. George pulled his coat tighter against the wind and set his hands flat on his thighs.
Neither of them said anything for the next half mile. Then finally, George spoke again.
“The trial period,” George said at last, his eyes on the gravel ahead. “It’s up on Wednesday, I take it?”
“It is,” Wade answered, low.
He had been counting down the days since the kitchen on the night of the snake, and the count had brought him this morning to six.
Six mornings of Zoe at the back porch with the small wave at his shoulder.
Six suppers of her hand at the rim of his coffee cup.
Six nights of the small bedroom at the south end of the upstairs hall holding her, and his own bedroom across the hall holding him, and the floorboards between them carrying the weight of a question he had not yet found the courage to ask out loud.
The gelding shook its mane. Wade let the reins settle.
George looked across at his brother for a long, careful moment.
Wade kept his eyes on the road.
A small contented sigh escaped George at last. He folded his arms across the front of his coat and turned his face back to the gravel ahead.
“Right,” he said. “I shall mind my own business. Until approximately Sunday, after which I shall feel justified in resuming my inquiries.”
“You are very generous, George.”
“So I have been told.”
The Bozeman road ran south through the last of the gold cottonwoods. The morning frost lifted off the willows along the creek in thin grey ribbons. Overhead, a pair of late geese went south.
Wade drove his father’s wagon along the road his father had broken in fifty-three. Zoe stayed in his head through every mile of it.
Zoe at the back porch with her hand at her brow against the morning sun.
She at the bench at the kitchen table with the linen folded in her lap.
The wet line on the side of her nose that the side of his knuckle had drawn off her cheek.
The set of her forehead against the linen at the back of his shirt for the count of two minutes while the lamp burned even between them.
Lord, I am at the road on a Thursday morning with a list in my pocket and six days at the end of it.
I have little skill at the asking of what I am about to ask You for.
I am asking You for the shape of it anyway.
Show me what to say to her at the porch step on Wednesday morning.
Show me the words. I have small intention of asking with the words I have on hand.
***
Larkin’s hardware stood at the south end of Main Street, between the Gallatin land office and the harness-maker’s shop. The bell over the door rang twice as Wade pushed it open and held it for George to come through behind him.
Old Larkin himself stood at the counter in his green apron with his spectacles down on the end of his nose and a freight ledger open between his elbows. He lifted his head and his hand together at the sound of the bell.
“Wade! George!”
“Morning, Mr. Larkin,” Wade replied.
“The wire came in Tuesday. Two hundred feet of five-strand, the same as last spring. Your name is on it. The boy will bring it up from the back.” Larkin glanced once over the top of his spectacles. “Order for the south fence again?”
“The south fence,” Wade agreed. “And forty pounds of staples. And the post-driver head, if it’s come from the smithy yet.”
“It has. Cord brought it up Tuesday morning. I put it under the counter with your name on the tag.” Larkin set his pencil behind his ear.
“There is also,” he added, “a man in the back examining the same five-strand. He’s been at it the better part of a quarter hour.
I thought I should mention it before you go through, since he was here on Tuesday also, and on Tuesday he was particular about wishing to know whose name was on the wire he was looking at. ”
Wade held still at the counter.
George, beside him, said, “Who?”
“Jameson Dawson.”
Wade glanced once at his brother.
The line of George’s mouth had set in the flat, thin set he carried for funerals. A small ridge had come up between his brows. His hand had moved toward the inside of his own coat at the side where his belt knife rode, and stopped there, and stayed.
Wade laid his gloves on the counter and smoothed them flat.
His own jaw set. The hot anger that had begun under his breastbone at the south fence on the Monday afternoon of the cut wire came up at the back of his throat in a slow, steady rise. He turned toward the back of the store.
“We shall be a moment, Mr. Larkin.”
“Take your time, Wade.”
The back of Larkin’s ran the length of the building, with the heavy goods stacked along the east wall; spools of fence wire on iron stands, kegs of staples, sacks of cement, long heavy bars of plough iron.
Wade saw him at the third spool.
Jameson Dawson had his hand laid flat on the coil of five-strand.
His hat was tipped back on his head. He was a tall, narrow man at thirty-five years of age, with a thin reddish mustache and pale grey eyes set close together at the bridge of a long nose.
The cut of his coat was a year out of style.
The boots had been polished that morning.
He had been waiting at the back of the store for some time, by the look of the small heap of cigar ash at his right boot.
He lifted his face at the sound of Wade’s boots on the boards. The pale grey eyes were set close at the bridge of a long nose. They didn’t blink. The corner of his mouth pulled once in a small smile that had no warmth in it.
“Collins,” he said, voice pitched warm.
Wade stopped at the second spool. George stopped at the third bar of plough iron at his left elbow.
“Dawson,” Wade returned, his eyes on the wire between them.
Steady, he said inside himself. Steady.
Dawson’s grey eyes moved briefly to George and came back.
“Your wire come in on the same freight as mine, I see.”
“It has.”
“The galvanized has been slow this fall out of St. Louis.” Dawson drew his hand off the spool, turned the palm up briefly, looked at it, and let it drop. “I had a man through my fence on Sunday night.”
The hot anger at the back of Wade’s throat went still.
Sunday night. The night of the snake.
He kept his face flat.
“Sunday night,” he repeated.