Chapter 3 Kane
The house I bought when I came out of the service is twelve miles north of Blackwood Falls, on a road that turns to dirt for the last part.
Single story, board-and-batten siding, dark green roof, a porch with two chairs, one of them I've never sat in.
Inside there's the kitchen, the living room, my bedroom, and the guest room down the hall.
Nothing about it was decorated by a woman, because no woman has ever spent a night here.
On the road out of town I think to ask her about the rental. "Anything in the car you need tonight?"
"No. Just clothes and books. They can wait."
"Toby can drive it out in the morning with the rest of your things. If that works for you."
"It does. Thank you."
We don't talk for the rest of the drive.
I pull up the gravel drive and kill the engine. Callie has her bag in her lap. She's been quiet for the last ten minutes, watching the road. I get out, come around, and open her door, but she steps down before I can think to offer her my hand. I take her bag from her and lead her up the porch.
"Boots come off when you come in, if you don't mind," I tell her at the door. "The floor's pine and it picks up marks from anything harder than a sock."
"Okay."
Inside, I add a log to the stove. She stands in the middle of the living room and takes it in: the couch, the chair I sit in by the stove, the bookcase, the small carved animals on the side table by the couch, the workbench against the back wall with the half-carved pieces of pine in a row, the kitchen through the doorway on her left, the hall behind her.
"Sun goes and the cold comes in fast up here," I tell her.
"You'll be glad of this in a couple of hours. "
"Guest room's at the end," I tell her. "We'll share the bathroom. I'll show you the trick to the heater dial."
"Thank you."
I take her bag down the hall and set it on the foot of the bed.
The room is small and plain. For five years it sat empty.
When Jaxson asked once why I didn't furnish it, I told him nobody was coming.
Then I called her, and inside of a week the bed, the dresser, the chair, and the lamp were all in the back of my truck on the road home from Bozeman.
She follows me down, clocks the simplicity of the room, and doesn't say a word. Considering I picked out every piece of it, I'll take her silence as mercy.
Back in the living room I ask her to sit down. "For your safety while you're here, there are a few rules I need to walk you through."
She takes the couch, and I sit in the chair across from her, with the coffee table between us, the closest thing to a bench I have in this house.
"Three things. One. You stay inside or on the property unless I take you somewhere.
That isn't a request. The property runs back about twenty-eight acres with a creek at the far end, so you shouldn't feel locked in.
There's room to move. Two. You don't open the door if I'm not here.
If anyone knocks, you go to the back room and stay there until I'm home.
Three. If your phone rings and it isn't me, you let it ring until you check the number against the list I'm about to give you. "
She listens with both hands wrapped around her own forearms and her ankles crossed under her chair.
"Anything you want to add?"
"How long is this list?"
"Six names."
"And the rest of the time? When I'm in the house and you're not?"
"You read. You eat what's in the kitchen. You sleep when you're tired. You stay off the porch after dark."
"I have an exam in about two months. Will I be back in time for it?"
"That's the goal. If it runs longer, your advisor can probably push the date."
"I'll need to call him at some point either way. He'll notice I'm gone."
"Tell him you had a family thing. Tell him you'll be back when you can. Don't say where you are."
She nods, takes it, lets a beat go before she speaks again.
"I'm going to follow your rules. Don't mistake that for me agreeing with all of them."
"I won't."
"Good."
Her voice changed for that line, and she means every word of it. From a girl this sharp, I'd expect nothing less.
***
At the small kitchen table we eat the bowl of leftover stew Mama Lou sent home with us, across from each other. She asks about the house, when I bought it, from whom. I tell her about the widow who'd lived here forty years before she moved closer to her daughter in Bozeman.
She nods over a spoonful and glances past me at the workbench. "Did you start the carving recently?"
"After I left the service. So no, not recently. My hands needed quieter work than they'd been doing."
"Do you sell any of it?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't make them for anyone."
We've stayed on safe ground so far, and her questions are smart without being nosy. She knows where to stop pushing.
After we eat she carries her plate to the sink before I can get to it. She rinses both, sets them in the rack, dries her hands on the towel hanging from the oven handle. The whole thing takes her a minute. She does it without thinking.
I stay at the table and tell myself I won't watch her. Fuck, who am I kidding. I'm watching every move she makes, and I couldn't look away if my life depended on it.
Danny's sister.
She walks down the hall and comes back with a textbook and a highlighter.
"Can I study in the living room?"
"You can do whatever you want in any room that isn't mine."
"Then I'm studying in the living room."
She goes. I take the folding knife out of my pocket, pick up a piece of pine from the workbench, and sit in my chair by the stove.
She sits at the far end of the couch with one leg folded under her and the lamp on low.
Six feet of floor between her end of the couch and my chair. Six feet too far. Six feet too close.
I work the knife while she turns the pages of her textbook. The piece in my hand is going to be a small bird. I don't decide that. The wood does.
She stops on a page and her eyes go to the side table next to her, where a small carved dog sits at the foot of the lamp. She picks it up, turns it in her fingers, and asks without looking up: "Did he ever tell you about my dog?"
"Caesar."
Her head comes up. "He told you about Caesar?!"
"He talked about him a lot. About the fence you built out of pallets when you were thirteen. About him sleeping on Danny's bed the week before he shipped, and not eating after Danny left."
I hear my own voice when I stop. I've said more in those three sentences than I meant to. Caesar was Danny's, given to me brother to brother in the dark of a tent at three in the morning, and I just used Caesar to bring her closer. That's not what I'm here to do.
She is looking at me with her book closed on her finger. There's a softness in her face I'm not prepared for.
"He told you a lot."
"He did."
I close my mouth before I give her more. The next thing in line is how Danny died, and I told her earlier that part would have to wait.
She doesn't turn a page for a long minute, keeping a silence I'm terrified she'll break with another question.
I don't look up from the bird until I'm sure she's reading again.
***
She goes to bed at half past nine and thanks me from the doorway. I tell her good night. I sit by the stove for another hour after the light goes out under her door.
The bird is mostly done, small enough to fit in a palm, head turned, one wing tucked. I've made dozens of these over the years, and this is the first one that came out looking alive.
I put it down on the table next to my chair, close the knife, and watch the door at the end of the hall.
Danny's sister.
The rules are going to hold. The rules have to hold.
I watch the door until I can stop wanting it to open.