CHAPTER 13 #2
I did not say the garden aloud. I said yes to the garden with the side of my face that the three of them saw at the table.
With the side of my face they did not see I did not say yes to it.
I would water the garden in the dark, from the kettle's spent kitchen water, when no one was at the dooryard.
I would let it die last. The seam was holding.
The tension was set before the first stitch of the dry.
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At eleven I was at the chicken yard alone.
Old Brigham was at the iron pump. He had been pecking the iron handle in his small confused way for the better part of the morning the way an old rooster will peck at a thing whose habit has changed in the night.
The pump that had pumped his water did not.
He pecked the handle. He went a half step sideways and pecked at the stone trough.
There was still the inch of standing water in it from yesterday.
He did not lower his beak to it. He cocked his crest and walked off.
I sat on the upturned bucket in the shade of the cabin's north wall.
I thought of my mother. I thought of the alley behind the third-floor window on Soulard Street in the winter of 1862 when the gas company had shut the gas off for three days against an unpaid bill of my father's.
My mother had built a fire of broken crate-wood in the brick angle of the alley behind the building's necessary.
She had brought down a brick from the back of the parlor stove, laid it at the edge of the crate-wood fire, let it heat for half an hour, lifted it with the iron tongs, and set the kettle on it.
The brick had held the heat for the time it took the water to boil for our tea on three winter mornings.
My mother had called it die alte Methode in her dry shopkeeper-Saxon and had not made any complaint of it at the table in front of my father.
I thought: we will boil tea on a brick if we have to.
I was not afraid. I was angry.
I was angry without a single name at the front of the anger to give it to.
The anger sat under my breastbone where the bone pin sat at the dresser at night, and the anger had the small bright edge of the alkali at the lip of the dry creek-bed at the back of my throat the way a tailor's daughter knows the edge of glass at her ear.
I thought of Beck inside me on the kitchen table four days back.
I thought of Tate at the kitchen window at six in the rain that had not come, the night Beck had been with me at the long pine and the storm had stalked north of the divide and not dropped a drop on the basin.
Tate had been at the window. He had not come in.
He had not said the next morning that he had been.
I had seen at his eyes at breakfast that he had been, and I had not said so to him, and we had been at Mr. and Mrs. across the table since.
I thought of Levi on the porch step three weeks back with his hand at my hip and the count of four pulse beats between his thumb and my hip-bone and his step away, and Mr. Thorn and Mrs. Carrow at the porch rail in the dark.
I thought: we have signed for each other in writing. Now the country is signing for us.
I pressed my thumb to the cleft between my eyebrows. I did not weep.
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The next afternoon Tate took the wagon down-pass with two empty freight barrels strapped to the wagon-bed.
I watched him go from the porch. The wagon went down through the lower freight gate at three.
Tate sat on the spring-seat with the lines in his right hand and the burn-mark down his right forearm bare under his rolled cuff and the silver streak at his left temple under the low-brimmed felt hat.
He did not look back. The wagon turned the bend below the gate and was gone.
I stood at the porch rail with my left hand on the unplaned aspen, the rasp of it at my palm, and the hawk that had been over Lookout Rock at this hour in the second week of June was over the rock again.
The hawk was lower this afternoon, and nearer the rock, and the hawk's shadow on the dust of the road below was a smaller hawk-shape than it had been on the day in June when I had stood here with Beck and watched it.
I thought: he saw me four days back through the kitchen window in the rain that did not fall.
We have not spoken about it. He has not stopped speaking to me at supper.
He has not started speaking to me at breakfast. He is the steadiest of the three of them.
He is the most fragile of the three of them.
He is gone down-pass for water for me and for the cattle and for the chickens and for the man whose coat was under my hips four days back, and he has not said a word about it, and he will not. He will do the trip.
The hawk turned at the rock. I watched it turn. I went inside.
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Levi was gone to the upper pasture before sundown.
He took the eight saddle horses at the long lead by Pie, the lead-mare, and Ardent at a separate lead alongside, and a wool blanket rolled at his saddle-skirt and a tin cup at his hip and the bone-and-rawhide charm at his sternum under his shirt.
He would sleep at the upper-pasture lean-to with the wool at him and Ardent at three feet from his head and the dim half-coin of a moon four days off the new, if the moon held in the dry haze.
He raised his right hand at the porch without turning. I raised my right hand. He went into the timber and was gone.
I stood at the porch a count of twenty and went in.
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The third morning of the dry I went out at half past six.
I had carried the kettle to the porch with me.
The kettle was empty. I had banked the range low in the night because I had not had the wood I would need for the day's cooking if I banked it hot.
The dooryard was gray. The east ridge was a thin line of pink that was not yet sun and would be sun in seven minutes.
I laid my left hand on the iron handle. The handle moved silent this morning. The two-note question was gone out of it. I worked it three strokes and let it settle.
I stood at the pump.
I thought of Beck's right hand at my wrist at the kettle-handle in the kitchen on a morning in June, the doubled towel between his palm and mine, the eleven pulse beats he had counted at me before he had let go.
The kettle was empty on the stone of the porch this morning and there was no held heat to count.
I thought of my own hand under my own skirt in the hayloft afternoon, alone, on a day I would not bring out to be looked at in the daylight of the dry.
I thought of Tate at the kitchen window in the rain that had not fallen. I thought of Levi at the upper-pasture lean-to with Ardent at his head.
I laid my palm flat on the iron of the handle. The iron was the same temperature as the dawn.
I said aloud, to the iron pump, "We are here. We are still here."
I worked the handle once more for the form of it and let it settle silent. I lifted my hand.
I thought: the pump is asking a question we cannot answer yet.
The alkali of the creek-bed was a hundred yards behind me down the spring-trail.
I had not gone down to it since the morning Beck had stepped on the lip.
I had the sound of the fired glass at the back of my throat as if I had swallowed a small thin piece of it in the night, and the back of my throat was dry the way the lip of the creek was dry.
I drew my breath in once and let it out.
I walked back to the cabin with the empty kettle in my right hand.
I stepped inside.
Beck was at the kitchen table. He had the open ledger in front of him. The steel-nibbed pen was in his right hand. The dust of the assay shed was on his collar, the gray dust of the south ridge slate. He had been at the shed since before I had been at the pump. He looked up. He had not slept hard.
He said, "Sweetheart."
I said, "Beck."
I did not yet know what we would do.
I knew we would do it.