57. At the Barn
At the Barn
The morning after he took Carol up the ridge, Kain rode out to the Martinson farm with the potato fork the McGraths had loaned him for the pull.
It was the McGraths' fork and not Will's, but Will would know whose lane was on the way home from whose, and the fork would get back to the McGraths in a day or so by the kind of route a borrowed thing took in a village the size of Tillamore.
He hitched Roan at the rail and walked up to the barn.
Will was inside with the door slid back to let the light in, brushing down a bay mare with a hand that had been doing the brushing of horses for more years than most men had been alive. He looked up when Kain came in. He didn't stop the brushing.
"Kain."
"Will."
"That's the McGrath fork."
"It is. Headed home by way of your barn."
"Set it against the wall."
Kain set the fork against the wall and stood at the door a beat. Will worked the brush down the mare's flank. The mare leaned into the work.
"You here for a thing."
"For a thing. Nothing that won't keep."
"Then it'll keep."
Will worked the brush. Kain stood at the door.
Outside, the cool of the morning had a bit of edge to it that hadn't been there a week back. The leaves on the trees along the drive had started in on the turn. The country was going where the country was going.
"She tell you about the ridge."
Will didn't look up from the brushing.
"She told me."
"All of it."
"The piece of it she meant me to have."
Kain took that in. Will worked the brush down to the mare's hock and started back up.
"She's her own piece of country, Will."
"She is. Has been since she could walk. That doesn't change the worry of the man who watched her learn to walk."
"It doesn't."
"You'll tell me if a thing changes the shape of what she's walking into."
"I'll tell you."
"You won't keep a piece of it back the way you kept a piece of the gryphon back."
"I won't."
Will moved around the mare to the off side. He started the brush down the new side. The brush worked in long even strokes, no faster and no slower than the strokes on the first side had been.
"That's the asking," Will said.
"That's the asking," Kain said.
Kain stood at the door a beat longer. The mare blew through her lips and shifted her weight. Will set a flat hand on her neck the way Carol set her flat hand on Roan's neck.
"All right then." Kain turned for the door.
"Kain."
Kain stopped at the door.
"The fork."
"Yes."
"It'll get to the McGraths by tomorrow afternoon. Carol's running a basket up there in the morning."
"Appreciate it."
Will didn't say anything to that. He went back to the brushing. Kain walked out into the morning and untied Roan from the rail and rode home down the road the long way around, past the McGraths and past the Dennisons and past the curve where the road came back up to his own gate.
He thought about the conversation the whole way.
He had told Will he would tell him if a thing changed shape, and Will had taken the telling at face value, the way Will took most things at face value, which was the way a man took a thing when the man had decided in his own time what the thing was worth and didn't need the world to confirm the decision back to him.
Will hadn't lifted a hand at Kain at the gate in a long stretch.
Will hadn't lifted a hand at Kain at the door of the barn just now either.
But Will hadn't said no to the asking, and the not-saying-no was a thing in itself.