CHAPTER 25 #2
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I went down onto the saddle-blanket on my side.
Beck lay behind me, fully clothed still, the work shirt at my back, his right arm across my hipbone.
Levi shifted along the wall and put his back to the planks and his hip to my hip; he reached for my left hand and laid both hands on his own bare ribs.
We had not undressed. The bodice was buttoned to the throat; the chemise untouched; my skirt at my hips still, the cotton folded at the small of my back where Beck had pushed it. I could feel the slow seep at the inside of my thigh.
The ash was on the planks above us. Ash in Levi's hair. Ash in Beck's shirt. Ash on the men's mouths still — I had felt the ash on Beck's mouth at the back of my neck and I had felt the ash on Levi's mouth at my temple — and the cooled barn wall was above us where they had braced.
"We are alive," I said. Soft. Not a question.
"Aye. " Levi. The English aye, low.
"Aye. " Beck. The Welsh-Pennsylvania aye, lower.
I lay between them on the blanket, and I thought it the seamstress's careful way, with my thumb and my eye.
We have done this here, in the ash, in the barn, while the fire skirted the basin.
I am the gravity of this house, and the house is the four of us, and the country has not killed us today. The seam held.
After a long while Beck rose and buttoned his trousers and got up. He held out his scarred left palm. I put my hand in it and rose.
Levi stayed on the blanket, his head back, eyes closed. "I'll be a quarter-hour," he said.
"Take half. " Beck picked Levi's shirt off the rail and laid it across the bare shoulders.
"A quarter."
I shook my skirt down, picked up the two tin buckets, and followed Beck out into the dooryard with the first long slant of the September sun on my left shoulder.
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I went to the cabin. I stripped at the wash-basin in the lean-to and washed myself with a clean cloth — careful at the inside of my thigh where the seep was, careful at the line of my throat.
I put on the gray button-front blouse and the dark wool skirt.
I left the leather lace in. I would pin my hair at noon.
I put the kettle on. I cut bread. I worked.
A little past noon I heard the wagon.
It was Hattie's — the cream-painted side-rails, the chicken-crate stacked at the wagon-bed. Old Brigham was on top of the crate, the eleven hens behind him in the slatted dark. Tate had left in the small dark hours to fetch them back from Hattie's yard at first light.
I came down the porch step with a tin cup of cold water in my hand.
Beck was at the dooryard. He had washed his face. Levi was at the corral with Ardent on the lead — the bay had come down off the upper pasture; the bone-and-rawhide horse-charm was on the bridle at the brow-band.
Tate climbed down off the seat.
The ash was on his coat at the shoulders. The dirt was up the inside of the right trouser from the wagon-brake. The early silver at the left temple was bright above the ash. His gray-blue eyes were the eyes of a man awake too long.
He stopped two yards from me.
He looked at me. He looked at Beck. He looked at the south corner of the barn where the ash had settled into the cooled planks. He did not look hard. He looked the way Tate looked at weather — the easy careful read of a man who already knew the answer.
He looked at Levi at the corral. His shoulders dropped a quarter of an inch.
"Christ. " Soft. The ch at the back of the throat and the t not finished. It was not a curse. It was an old reverence laid down at a door.
He did not need to ask.
He walked past me. His shoulder brushed mine; his knuckles brushed the back of my left shoulder once. The I see you, darlin' of his hand.
The pump squeaked.
The squeak was back. The water came in a clean cup-thick stream. He put his hat under the run and let it fill, set the hat on the porch-rail, cupped the cold water in his two hands and brought it up to his face.
He washed the ash off his jaw and worked the gray out of the seam at the inside of his right wrist, with his left thumb, and the gray went out into the run-off and the dust at the pump's base took it.
He shook the water off his hands and stood up. His gray-blue eyes were clear of the ash now.
He looked at Beck. He looked at Levi at the corral. He looked at me.
"Tonight is mine, then. " Low. Even. Not a question. The voice of a man whose turn at the watch had come round.
Levi laughed.
The laugh was ash-cracked, low, the same dry laugh I had had in my throat in the barn an hour before. It came out of him at the corral with Ardent's lead in his left hand and the singed side of his beard catching the sun.
Beck nodded.
One nod. The Welsh-Pennsylvania aye in a single dip of the chin.
Tate's mouth went soft at the corner. He picked his hat off the rail. He set the wet brim on his head and the cold water ran down his temple into the silver streak at the left.
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I stood at the iron pump in the bright noon.
The smoke had thinned to a thin haze at the divide. The basin's sky was blue at the south for the first time in two days. The wind was from the southwest, cold and dry off the snowfield. The fire was east of the basin and falling on the far side of the divide. The country had not killed us today.
I had a hand on Beck's scarred left palm.
I had my other hand on Tate's right wrist where the burn-mark was; my thumb was at the long shiny edge of it.
Levi walked up from the corral with Ardent on the lead.
The bone-and-rawhide horse-charm at the brow-band caught the sun.
Levi stopped at the pump beside me. The singed side of his beard was still singed; it would be singed two weeks; he carried it down to the pump and stood with it in the noon light without trying to hide it.
The four of us stood at the iron pump.
The pump squeaked once. Tate had laid the handle down a careful inch and let it come up under his palm. The water came in a clean cup-thick stream and ran over, and the dust at the pump's base took it.
The ash was on the men's mouths still. It would be there through the noon meal; it would be there when Tate took his turn after dark.
The ash was on Beck's mouth at the corner.
The ash was on Tate's mouth at the inside of the upper lip where he had drunk the cold cup.
The ash was on Levi's mouth at the singed side of his beard.
Tate's "tonight is mine, then" hung in the noon over the pump like a small clean line of stitching in a clean cloth.
I counted three at Beck's pulse at the heel of his thumb.
I counted three at Tate's pulse at the inside of his right wrist. I did not count Levi's; Levi's hand laid Ardent's lead across his own shoulder and his right hand came down on the back of my neck under the leather lace where Beck's had been, and the four of us made the small quiet shape we made.
The wind shifted a hair to the south.
The pump squeaked once more, and the water came.