Chapter 7 What Joy Looks Like
The fitting at the Caldwell ranch on the seventh day produced, in addition to significant progress on the navy linen dress, an opportunity for Mercy to observe Nora Caldwell in the full complexity of her opinions about the sheriff of Larimer County.
This was not something Mercy had sought. It arrived the way Nora arrived at most subjects, which was with the thorough, comprehensive attention of a child who had been thinking about something privately and had decided that the time for private thinking was concluded.
"Sheriff Horne came to dinner once," Nora said, from her position on the settee, where she was watching Mercy pin the sleeve with the focused interest of someone who considered all activities within her visual range to be her legitimate concern.
"Did he?" Mercy said.
"For our first Christmas. He was there at the church service too." Nora turned her carved horse over in her hands. "He sat in the back by himself."
"People sometimes prefer to sit in the back," Mercy said.
"He came to the dinner after," Nora said.
"Mama and Papa invited everyone and he came.
But he sat at the end of the table and he was polite to everyone and he didn't talk much, which is not the same as not wanting to talk.
Some people don't talk because they don't have anything to say.
Some people don't talk because talking would mean letting someone in and they've decided not to let anyone in. "
Mercy stopped pinning and looked at the eight-year-old across the room. "That's a very precise distinction," she said.
"Mama taught it to me," Nora said. "She said you could tell the difference by the eyes. People who don't talk because they have nothing to say have flat eyes. People who don't talk because they're keeping someone out have full eyes. Their eyes are full of things they're choosing not to say."
"Your mama was wise," Mercy said.
"She was," Nora agreed. "Sheriff Horne has full eyes. He has a lot in there. He just never lets it out." She looked at Mercy with the direct, measuring attention that was characteristic of her family. "You had supper with him last night."
Mercy looked at the sleeve she was pinning. "News travels," she said.
"Mrs. Connelly's nephew told his mother and his mother told the Pearce woman at the store," Nora said. "And the Pearce woman told Clem when he picked up the order this morning."
"Remarkable," Mercy said, not without admiration.
"Did it help?" Nora asked.
Mercy looked at her. "Did what help?"
"Having supper with him. Did it help — whatever it is that needs helping with him."
Mercy considered the question seriously, because Nora asked questions seriously and deserved serious answers. "I'm not sure anything needs helping with him," she said. "He's a capable and decent man. Whether he's living fully is a different question."
"That's a distinction like the one about talking," Nora said.
"Yes. The same principle applied differently."
Nora was quiet for a moment, turning her horse over in her hands. "Mama used to say that some people need permission," she said. "To live fully. They know how to manage. They don't know they're allowed to do more than manage."
Mercy looked at this child — this eight-year-old theologian, this small inheritor of her mother's particular wisdom — and felt something move in her chest. "Your mama said a lot of very right things," she said.
"I know," Nora said. "I try to remember all of them." She looked up. "Are you going to give him permission?"
Mercy turned back to the sleeve. "I'm going to mind my own business," she said, pleasantly.
"That's not a no," Nora said.
"It's certainly not a yes," Mercy said.
"Hmm," said Nora, in the tone of a scientist recording a data point.
* * *
Clara appeared from the kitchen with coffee and looked at the two of them and immediately identified the quality of the conversation that had just occurred.
"Nora," she said.
"I was being observational," Nora said.
"Observational," Clara said.
"Not intrusive. Just observational."
"There's a line," Clara said, "between observational and intrusive, and the line is whether you've been invited to observe."
"Miss Alcott didn't ask me to stop," Nora said.
"That's true," Mercy said. "She didn't ask anything I minded."
Clara looked at Mercy with the expression of a woman who had spent fourteen months managing a precocious eight-year-old and had developed, from this experience, the ability to quickly assess how much collateral had been produced. "I apologize," she said. "She gathers information."
"So do I," Mercy said. "We were having a conversation. It was interesting." She looked at Nora. "Your daughter is remarkable."
"So people keep telling me," Clara said, with the warmth of someone who was told this regularly and never stopped being glad of it. "Nora, go see if Clem needs anything in the barn."
Nora went, taking her horse and her data points with her.
Clara set the coffee down and sat across from Mercy. The fitting had reached a natural pause. "She's not wrong, you know," Clara said. "About Nathaniel."
"I didn't think she was," Mercy said.
"He's been here eight years and he's — good.
He's genuinely good. Not performed goodness, not the kind that requires an audience.
He helps people and he keeps the county orderly and he shows up when things go wrong.
" Clara looked at her coffee. "But he's alone in a way that I recognized when I first came here, because I was looking at the same thing in a different man. "
"Elias," Mercy said.
"Elias," Clara agreed. "The capable man who has decided that capability is sufficient. It isn't. It's necessary but it isn't sufficient." She looked at Mercy. "I'm not suggesting anything. I'm simply telling you what I've observed in a year of living in this community."
"I appreciate it," Mercy said. She did. She received Clara Caldwell's observations the way she received good material: for what it was, without embellishment, stored carefully for when it would be needed.
She thought about a man with full eyes. She thought about permission, and whether it was hers to give, and whether she was the right person to give it, and whether the right person would know themselves to be the right person or simply find themselves in the position.
She thought about what her father had looked like when he was in the right place. The quality of his presence. The way a room felt different when he was in it — more itself, more settled, as though his being in it confirmed something about the room that was not otherwise entirely certain.
She thought: what would the right place feel like, if I found it?
She thought: something like this.
She went back to the sleeve and pinned the second side with the precision she brought to everything, and the afternoon was good work in a good setting and outside the mountains were doing their December thing, and in the barn Nora was explaining the day's observations to Clem, who was listening with the patient wisdom of a man who had heard many observations and found all of them instructive.