Chapter Nineteen
The Kitchen and The South Porch, Collins Ranch
Wade came in from the corral, setting his hat on the peg. He went to the table with no hurry, ran a thumb along the bow, and weighed the parcel left there earlier in his palm a long second before he spoke.
“What is it?”
“Open it and find out.” Zoe said.
A faint smile pulled at one corner of his mouth. “What if I guess?”
“You would have to be a better guesser than you are.”
“Open it, Uncle Wade,” Sadie said, the note at the back of her voice gone unsteady.
“Auntie Zoe and I worked on it together. I did the chain stitch. She did the lettering. Mr. Morrison did the leather. Mrs. Greene did the lining. George did nothing whatsoever, but he wishes to take credit for it anyway.”
“I have provided moral support throughout,” George agreed, from the door frame.
Wade reached for the parcel.
The brown paper came away under his thumb. The twine fell to the pine. The leather inside was the same dark brown his father's Bible had been bound in, soft to the inside of his palm. He turned it over in his good hand.
It was a Bible cover.
The leather had been worked by Mr. Morrison at the saddle bench.
The lining was the same cream Belgian linen that had been at the end of George's list. The chain stitch around the four edges of the cover ran in the yellow thread Sadie had been working with for the better part of a fortnight.
The lettering at the center of the front, in Zoe's small clean script worked in the same yellow chain stitch, read:
J. W. Collins · Mary Collins · the keeping of the household
Wade’s hand closed once at the leather.
“Your mother's Bible has been on the parlor shelf since sixty-two without a cover, Wade,” Zoe said unevenly. “Sadie noticed it on Sunday afternoon in the parlor when she was reading the Psalms. She decided the matter on her own. I was given the commission.”
The anger from Larkin's that morning had been at the back of Wade's throat for the better part of six hours. It eased by a careful quarter inch and stayed eased.
Lord, he said inside himself. I have little skill at this kind of thanking. I am thanking You anyway.
He set the Bible cover down on the pine in front of him.
Sadie was already at his elbow with her chin lifted and her wooden spoon held in both fists, watching his face.
“Will you bring the Bible down from the parlor shelf, sweet girl?” Wade asked, rough. “We’ll fit the cover at the table before supper.”
Sadie set the wooden spoon down on the pine with a small, flat thump. She turned on her heel and went through the kitchen doorway at a run before Wade had finished the sentence.
Sadie came back into the kitchen at a slower pace, with the Bible held flat against the front of her pinafore in both arms.
She set it down at Wade's right elbow.
Wade laid his hand briefly at the back of her yellow head.
Across the pine, Zoe watched him with the dish towel still folded between her hands. The small, unsteady smile at the corner of her mouth had not moved. The late afternoon sun fell across the side of her face from the south window.
“Thank you,” Wade said, holding her eyes across the pine.
“You are welcome, Wade,” she answered, the wetness at her lashes coming through her voice in spite of her. “It has been a pleasure to set the chain stitch down. Mary's hand was at the back of every stitch. I have little intention of taking credit for any piece of it.”
The corner of his mouth pulled at her once.
“Mary will have to share the credit, Zoe,” he answered, his voice gone uneven at the back of it. “The chain stitch is yours.”
The wet at her lashes came down at the side of her nose.
She put the dish towel briefly to the corner of her own eye and let it stay there a count.
***
Alice and her father came up the creek path on a single horse at twenty past five, the late sun across their shoulders, a jar of new butter and a covered basket between them. Alice slid down at the gate and called over her shoulder for Sadie.
Sadie reached her at the squash bed.
Ben tied the bay without comment. He set the butter on the porch step beside his hat. He came up the boards with a slow, patient stride.
Wade met him at the rail. “You’re early.”
“Mrs. Greene was throwing me out from under her feet,” Ben said. “I had two choices. The boarding house, or your porch.”
“I am flattered I beat the boarding house.”
The corner of Ben’s mouth twitched. “It was close.”
They shook hands. Ben’s grey eyes went past Wade’s shoulder to the open kitchen door, where Zoe stood at the threshold with her sleeves rolled to her elbow and a smudge of flour at the wrist of one. He touched the brim of his hat. “Miss Preston.”
“Sheriff.”
“I smelled the pie from the creek bend.”
Zoe gave him a small wry look across the doorway. “Your daughter is to blame for the cinnamon. She brought it down from her mother’s tin on Tuesday and stayed for half the morning making sure I used it correctly.”
“That sounds like her.”
“It was instructive.”
That earned her a small dry sound at the back of his throat, which from Ben Greene constituted a laugh. He turned to Wade.
“A word. Around the side.”
They went.
On the east side of the porch, the two men stood at the rail and looked out toward the dry wash where the southeast quarter ran down to meet the Dawson line.
“Talk.”
“Jameson was at Larkin’s this morning. Says his fence was cut Sunday night. Made sure to mention that was the same hour my own fence was worked. Then offered to buy the southeast quarter at any price I cared to name.”
Ben was quiet a long count. His pale, hard eyes were leveled at Wade across the corral rail.
“What did you tell him?” Ben asked at last, low.
“I told him no,” Wade answered. “I told him there is no price, and there will not be one.”
“How did you tell him?”
“In front of Old Larkin and the boy on the loading ramp.” Wade’s hand stayed flat on the wood of the rail. “With small grace.”
Ben’s mouth pulled once at the corner. The corner of it did not finish into a smile.
“Good,” he answered. “If you had told him with grace, he would have taken it for an opening.”
Ben turned his hat a quarter turn in his hands. The grey eyes stayed on the dry wash.
“Cord rode Dawson’s line on Monday. On my errand.
The cut was there. So were the plier marks.
Wade, the lower jaw has a notch in it. Cord saw the same notch on the wire pulled from your fence Sunday afternoon.
Same pliers. He went back yesterday on his own time.
The cut on Dawson’s wire had been mended Monday evening or Tuesday morning.
Mended clumsily, on the inside, the way a man would do it if he wanted a rider going past at speed to see the repair. ”
Wade said nothing for a long moment. “His own fence.”
“His own fence.”
Ben nodded once, slow. “To make a story he could tell you at Larkin’s before he made an offer for the southeast quarter.”
From the kitchen behind them came Alice’s laugh, a sharp, small one in response to something Sadie had said. Underneath it ran Zoe’s voice, lower, with a thread of dry amusement in it. A pewter plate touched the table.
Wade laid both palms flat on the rail.
“Not tonight, Ben.”
“I was about to say the same.”
“Thursday next. You, me, Cord. Ride the wash before the dark.”
“Suits me.”
Ben set his hand against the top of Wade’s shoulder. Then he turned them both toward the kitchen door, and the matter was closed for the duration of the evening.
***
They took supper on the porch. The evening had come in soft, with the south boards still warm from the late sun, and Alice and Zoe between them carried out the long pine bench and threw the woolen blanket along the seat for comfort.
Sadie sat between Alice and Zoe, plate on her knees, the tortoiseshell combs Alice had brought her holding her braids back.
She made it through Grace with her hands folded. She made it through the first helping without spilling a drop. She handed her empty plate up to Alice for the second helping.
“Thank you, Miss Alice,” she said.
Wade kept his eyes on the cottonwoods past the kitchen garden for a long count.
When he looked back, Zoe was already looking at him across the porch.
Her dark blue eyes had a small, private smile in them. Her mouth had stayed steady. The smile was in her eyes only, and the smile was for Sadie, and the smile was meant for Wade to see and for no one else.
Their look held a beat above the pewter plates.
He held her eyes one beat longer than the look had any business holding. She held his.
Lord, he said inside himself. I am at the porch on the evening of my thirty-fourth birthday with a woman at the bench across from me who has set a Bible cover into my hands with my mother's name on it. Thank You.
Zoe’s smile moved an eighth of an inch at the corner of her mouth.
Wade looked back down at the pewter plate on his knee.
At the far end of the bench, things had begun shifting against the order of seating.
Ben had placed his daughter and George separately at the start of supper.
Two helpings and one passing of the bread later, however, the two of them had ended up shoulder to shoulder under the woolen blanket, two fingers laid over two fingers.
He was still eating, slow, methodical, with the look of a man holding several large feelings in their proper compartments by the simple discipline of chewing thoroughly. He laid his fork down at last and set both forearms on his knees.
“George.”
The conversation at the south end of the bench died.
“Sir.”
“You have been calling on my daughter since June.”
“I have.”
“Tuesday and Saturday. Clean shirt. Shaved jaw. I noticed in August. It is now October.”
George, very carefully, set his pewter plate on the blanket beside him. He took Alice’s hand out from under the wool and laid it on his own knee in full view of the porch and everybody on it.
“Yes, sir,” he said. His voice had dropped a register.
“So, what is your business with me?”
A small breath went out of Alice.