CHAPTER 5
Willa
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The first paper I touched on the morning of the fourteenth of June was a letter to Mrs. Hattie Doss, and I borrowed Tate Halloran's pen to write it.
I had said yes in my own head in the loft pallet at twenty past five, the way a tailor's daughter says a measurement — once, to the inside of the wrist that is taking the line. The afternoon would carry that word to the porch; the morning would carry the lesser ones.
The pen lay on the front-room writing-table where Tate had set it the night before — a plain wooden barrel, a Gillott No.
290 nib, the steel still wet-shining at the slit.
I had watched him the day before set down a freight bill of lading in a copperplate so clean the letters might have been printed.
I drew a half-sheet of the cheap county paper out of the drawer — the same pale-cream pulp Beck used for receipts, the small green fleck at the corner. I dipped the nib. I tapped twice. I laid the pen on the paper.
Mrs. Hattie Doss / Larkspur Bend, Bear Fork County.
The rasp of the steel-nibbed pen on cheap county paper went up to my wrist and stayed there. The nib caught at the fine grain of the pulp the way the bartack catches at the weft of a worsted, and the catch was the work. I wrote in the small unjoined-letter hand my father had taught me:
I write to formalize the arrangement we discussed at your porch on the ninth instant.
I will take in your boarding-house linen at one dollar and fifty cents the month, paid in cash to my own hand, the work to come up by Mr. Halloran's wagon and to go back down by the same.
I will mend tears, set patches, turn collars, take in seams, and reset buttons.
I will keep your work separate from the household's.
I am much obliged to you for the bread, for the quilt at the foot of my pallet, and for the slip of card on the box in the post office that had three names on it.
I signed Willa Greer. I did not yet sign Carrow.
I sanded the page, tipped the sand back, and folded the half-sheet in thirds. I lit a tallow stub at the kitchen range, dripped wax along the seam, and pressed my thumb's edge into the warm puddle. The print of my own thumb was the seal.
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I went down to the iron pump at half past three with the laundry pail at my feet and my sleeves turned to the inside of the elbow.
I worked the handle three strokes. The squeak came in its two notes — the first rising, the second falling — and the question in the falling note hung in the basin's own time. The water came. I set the pail down and laid both hands flat on the cold iron.
I would say yes on the porch this afternoon, to Beck, alone.
The yes was to the paper. The Reverend's certificate on Monday was for the county and for the patent statute and for the eastern speculator who would one day come up the road; that certificate would belong to the law.
The pact tonight, by the same pen that drafted the freight bill of lading, would belong to the four of us.
Both papers could lie in the same tin together.
One for us, one for them.
The line went up to my wrist and stayed there the way the pen's rasp had stayed at nine o'clock.
I lifted the pail and started back to the cabin. Behind me the iron pump-handle did not squeak again.
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Beck came down off the south ridge at quarter past five. His hands were already washed; his sleeves were buttoned at the cuff. I came out and stood at the porch rail. He took his hat off and held it at his side.
"Mr. Carrow."
"Mrs. Greer."
He had said the rest two mornings ago at the supper table — that he was not asking for himself but as foreman, that the patent law named him principal, that the marriage of record needed my signature, that the marriage of body needed my second word freely after. He said only, low, "Will you say it."
"Yes," I said.
I said it once and clearly.
He closed his hand around the brim of his hat for the count of two breaths, set the hat back on his head, stepped off the porch, and walked to the lower freight gate, where he stood with his back to the dooryard for a long minute while I sat on the porch rail and held the word in my own ear.
I went inside and began the supper.
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I asked at the supper table.
We were the four of us at the scrubbed plank table by the brass kerosene lamp. The cracked chimney threw its thin uneven ray onto the east wall in the place I had begun to know it from. Beck at the north end, Tate at my right, Levi at my left, I at the south.
I waited until the cornbread was halfway broken and Tate had refilled my coffee unasked. I set my hand on the wood by my cup.
"I would like the household pact put in writing tonight."
Beck did not look up from his plate. "Yes. " He laid his palm flat beside his bowl. "We can do it by the lamp."
"I would prefer Tate's pen," I said. "His hand is the most legible on the claim."
Tate said, low, "I will fetch paper from the stable. I will bring both."
Levi laughed once — short, light, surprised. "Bloody hell, lass. The Reverend's two days off and you have not waited a one of them. Put my name where you want it."
"I will draft the language," I said. "The men add what they would add."
Beck said, "Your terms paper from the eleventh is the spine."
"The spine. Tonight we set the cabinet around it."
We finished supper. I cleared. Levi dried.
Beck moved the lamp to the south edge of the table so the wick would not stand over the place where the paper would lie.
Tate went out without his coat — the night was warm — and I heard the freight stable door go on the top hinge, the lower hinge, the catch, and his boots crossing the dooryard going and coming.
He came back ten minutes later with a single sheet of cheap county paper held between the flats of his hands the way a man holds a clean shirt for someone else. He laid the sheet on the table, the pen beside it, and set the pewter inkstand at the head.
I sat down. It was eleven o'clock. I took the pen.
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I drafted the paper in the language of a contract a county court would honor, because a household pact that could not stand in a courtroom was a household pact that did not honor the people in it.
I had read three indenture-papers in my father's tailor-shop drawer between my fourteenth and sixteenth year.
I knew the cadence of the binding sentence. I said each clause aloud as I wrote it.
I dipped the nib. I tapped twice. The first rasp went onto the paper and the room held it.
We, the undersigned — being Beckett Lloyd Carrow, freeholder and principal claimant of the Last Claim Basin; Tate Owen Halloran, freight-pilot and co-claimant; Levi Thorn, horse-breaker and co-claimant; and Willa Greer, of the city of Saint Louis — do this fourteenth day of June, eighteen hundred and seventy-nine, jointly enter into the following household pact, to be solemnized in its civil and legal form by the Reverend Ezra Pell on the sixteenth instant, and to be honored in its household form, separately and at once, from this hour forward.
I read the sentence back. I dipped again.
One. The paper marriage. Mrs. Beckett Carrow of record shall sign the certificate at the back parlor of Mrs. Hattie Doss's Boarding House on the sixteenth instant.
The certificate names Mr. Carrow as principal because the territorial statute names the principal claimant; the household understands the naming as a legal device and not as a slight to Mr. Halloran or Mr. Thorn.
The cohabitation of Mrs. Carrow with the partners is named on the verso at the Reverend's discretion.
Beck said, low, "On the verso. Pell will write it."
Two. Fidelity-of-keep. Each party undertakes to keep the others — in food, in fire, in roof, in honest labor, in honest accounting — by the work of the day, for as long as the household holds.
Tate said, "Yes."
Three. Income-of-her-own. Mrs. Greer shall retain, in coin and cash, all sums she earns by her own hand — including the dollar and a half the month paid by Mrs. Doss for the boarding-house mending — separately from the dust ledger and the cattle-sale receipts. The partners shall not draw upon it.
Levi said, "By the horse, no. We will not."
Four. The loft chamber. Mrs. Greer shall have the loft above the front room as her own sleeping-chamber, with the door her own to close. No partner shall enter without her spoken word of consent given on that hour.
Beck said, "The loft is hers."
Five. Independence-of-her-person. Mrs. Greer's person is her own.
She is not bound by this pact, nor by the certificate, to enter into any act of the body against her own will.
Her word once given may be withdrawn at any moment, freely, without explanation, and without consequence to the household pact or to her place at this table.
I had used person and not body because person was the word that held what I meant.
None of the men flinched. Tate had closed his eyes for one beat longer than he should have at withdrawn at any moment.
Beck had laid his thumb on the scarred palm of his left hand.
Levi had rubbed the cleft scar at his sternum with two fingers in the way that meant steady.
Six. Termination. Any party may dissolve his or her share of the pact upon thirty days' notice given in writing, laid on this table.
The dissolution of the household pact does not dissolve the legal marriage of record; the legal marriage requires a separate dissolution at law.
The leaving party shall depart with the full of her or his earned income and the partnership's share of fare to her or his point of return.
Beck said, "We will settle accounts honorably."
Seven. Witness and seal. This pact is witnessed by the four hands that sign below. The seal is the seal of the household: the table at which it is signed, the lamp by which it is signed, the iron of the pump in the dooryard.
I lifted the pen.
Tate said, "May I read the legal-language clauses aloud for Beck."
"Please."