Chapter 4 Mara — Day 7 #2
He's in shirt sleeves, coat off, and the bare bulb doesn't do him any favors and does him plenty at the same time — makes the shadows under his cheekbones look longer, makes the dark blond in his hair look like it needs a cut he isn't going to get, makes the shape of his shoulders inside the shirt matter more than it ought to.
His forearms are the parts of him the sun's caught in six days, a shade darker than the rest, corded from work he isn't used to.
His hands hang loose between his knees. Careful hands.
Not soft. Not calloused the right way, either.
I've been on this ranch six days with him and I've been careful not to look. Under this bulb it's harder.
“You wanted to say something,” I say.
He tips his chin. Not a nod. An acknowledgment.
“I want to ask you something. Privately.”
“Ask.”
He works the second boot on. Sets his foot down. Puts his hands on his knees.
“What do you need?”
“I've got a foreman and three hands and a woman who feeds us. I don't need another—”
“That's not what I asked.”
I stop. He waits. He's not looking at me hard. He's looking at me like a man who's asked a question and would like the actual answer, whichever answer that is.
“You've been here five days.”
“Six.”
“Six.”
“And I'm asking.”
I lean against the doorframe. Cross my arms because I don't know what to do with them.
The mudroom's small enough that if he stood we'd be closer than I've stood to any man since I signed my divorce papers, and my stomach knows it before my head does, which is a whole other problem I'm choosing not to have tonight.
“What can you actually offer, Beau?” It comes out tireder than I meant.
“Hands and hours. And what I know.”
“Which is what?”
He thinks about it.
“Numbers. I'm good with numbers. If you want somebody to go through your books with you before Wednesday, I can do that.”
“My books are none of your business.”
“No, ma'am. They're not.”
That ma'am lands funny. It's not Orin's ma'am. It's not a nineteen-year-old scared-to-please ma'am. It's a man about my own age using the word like a boundary he's setting for himself. Reminding both of us where the line is.
I want to be annoyed. I'm not.
“What do you need from this place, Beau? Because a man doesn't roll in on a Tuesday and offer to look at a stranger's books on Monday for no reason.”
He's quiet a second.
“I needed a wall,” he says finally. “And a job. That's all I came for. I didn't come to be useful. But I've got skills that aren't cattle skills and if you have use for them I'd rather you took them than didn't.”
“Skills.”
“Numbers. Contracts. Reading a lender.”
“You a lawyer?”
“No.”
“An accountant?”
“No.”
“What were you before you decided to bale hay for me, Beau?”
He doesn't answer that. He doesn't look away either. He holds my eyes and lets the silence be the answer, which is a whole answer, just not a useful one.
“All right.”
“All right?”
“All right, I heard you. I'll think about it.”
“Thank you.”
I push off the doorframe. Then I stop, because his question's still in the room and I haven't actually answered it, and he asked it plain and he deserves a plain thing back.
“You asked what I need.”
“Yeah.”
“Time I can't buy.”
He nods. Once. Slow.
“Yeah.”
That's it. That's the whole thing. Neither of us dresses it up.
He doesn't try to give me a speech. I don't try to take it back.
The bare bulb hums over our heads and the kitchen behind me clatters with plates and Opal murmurs at Orin and somewhere out in the yard the wind moves through the cottonwood and sounds like water.
He stands. He's tall in this room. He picks his coat off the peg — the barn coat I lent him on day one because he showed up in a jacket that wasn't going to make it through a Marfa night — and shrugs it on.
“Good night, Mara.”
“Good night, Beau.”
He goes out the back door. The screen taps shut behind him. His boots crunch on the gravel and get farther and I stand there in the mudroom with my arms still crossed and listen until I can't hear him anymore.
Opal calls from the kitchen. “You want tea, honey?”
“No.”
“Whiskey?”
“No.”
“Bed?”
“Working on it.”
I push off the doorframe and go upstairs.
My room's the one over the kitchen. Warmer than the rest of the house in winter, hotter than hell in summer, but it's the one I picked at twelve and I don't intend to trade it.
I don't turn on the light. I sit on the edge of the bed and pull my boots off one at a time and set them under the window and stand up and cross my arms again like a person who doesn't know what else her hands are for.
The bunkhouse is two hundred yards across the yard. From this window I can see the small yellow square of its one lit lamp. I don't know why I'm looking at it. Yes, I do.
I make myself think about what's on my desk for tomorrow. Fence line on the south pasture. The vet coming for Junior's hoof. Selene at the bank on Wednesday. What I'll say. What I won't. What I'll do if she says no, which she will.
I don't move away from the window.
I remind myself I've been through worse than a stranger with quiet hands and a history I can't read. This is not a problem I get to have. Not with seventy-seven days on a clock and a bank meeting Wednesday. Not with everything else.
I don't move away from the window anyway.
I think about the way his knuckles went bone-white on the coffee cup and the way he made himself let go, slow, so nobody would see.
And the way he took the second bite of stew for Opal, and the way he said please for the bread, and the way he said “time I can't buy” back at me like he'd caught it in both hands.
Across the yard, the bunkhouse lamp burns over the last bunk. I picture him sitting on its edge with his coat and boots still on, elbows on his knees, staring at the wall.
I don't know if that's what he's doing. The lit window only gives my worry somewhere to stand.
Still, the picture feels as certain as weather.
The light in the bunkhouse doesn't go out. I check twice. The lamp burns steady and small and stays lit.
Standing at the dark window with my arms crossed and my whole ranch on a ninety-day fuse, I think—very quietly, so I don't have to answer for it in the morning—
please, whoever you are.
Please.