CHAPTER 7 #2
He split three-quarters of a cord in the time it took me to lose four pages of Wallace Stegner. Then he set the maul against the block, wiped his hands down the front of his jeans, and pulled his T-shirt back over his head with unhurried economy, performing for no one, including himself.
I went back to page 214.
By seven-forty-five, dusk had put its first cool edge on the porch.
Under the west eave, a single house wren began to sing.
Rising note. Rising note. Settling note.
He sang the same three-note call every fifteen minutes on the second.
I knew it was every fifteen minutes because I looked at my watch after the second call to make sure I was not imagining the interval, and then I counted against the porch rocker's tick, and the rocker's tick was not exactly a second so I missed by a hair each time, but the wren did not miss.
Luke was on the porch step below me, boot in his lap, oiling the leather with a rag and a small brown tin of neatsfoot. His hair was still damp from a short shower and lay in wet strands against the back of his neck. He did not look up.
“House wren,” he said. “Nest in the crossbeam. Been here since April. Fledged four in June, then a second clutch. That's the male putting up scale rehearsals for a round three.”
“You know when your wren arrived.”
“I know when everything arrived.”
He does. That is not a boast; it is an inventory.
(and I have been on his inventory since Day 2.)
The wren called again.
I kept the count to myself.
He worked the tin, the rag, the leather.
The signet ring on his left pinky caught the last of the west light.
Silver, small, worn thin on the underside.
He turned it once with his thumb, a small habitual motion I had watched three times now without asking.
His father's, he had told me once at breakfast on Day 6, when I asked.
I had not pushed at the answer. I did not push at things Luke set down as finished sentences.
The wren called.
Rocker tick. Rocker tick.
“Wren nests are complicated,” I said, because I needed to say something. “The male builds a bunch of dummy nests and lets the female pick her favorite. Then the loser nests go for backup. It's an efficient market.”
He looked up at me from the boot. Slow. The evening at the edge of his mouth.
“An efficient market.”
“I know how I sound.”
“An efficient market of nests.”
“I am going inside.”
“Stay.”
I stayed.
We did not talk again for a long while. The wren did the rest of the shift.
At eight-forty-five, I went to the bathroom.
I brushed my teeth at the cast-iron sink in the bathroom with the chipped upper corner in the mirror. I braided my hair loose to sleep in. I put on the T-shirt I had decided was a night shirt because it was old and long. I looked at myself, briefly, and decided not to hold my own eye.
I came out of the bathroom and there, against the east wall of the bedroom, leaning muzzle-up between the dresser and the window frame, one hand's-breadth from the empty side of the queen bed: Luke's Winchester Model 70.
He must have brought it up sometime after the wood-splitting, walked it up while I was on the porch pretending to read.
Oiled walnut stock. Leather sling. Scope.
It stood where a lamp would stand, in the negative space of a room a man is about to move into.
I stood and looked at it a beat.
Luke was at the doorway.
He did not come in. His shoulder was against the jamb. One hand at his side. The other, ring hand, turning the signet ring once on his pinky.
“About the sleeping,” he said.
I sat on the edge of the queen bed. The wool blanket was folded down at the foot. The quilt Marta had made, hexagons of blue and rust, tight even stitches, an old woman's fingers, was turned back at the head. My knees were together. My hands were on my knees.
“I've been on the mattress,” I said. “You've been on the couch. It is fine. I want to talk about it anyway.”
“I know.”
“The bed is a queen. There is a wool blanket, a quilt, and me. There is room for a man and a rifle. I am not proposing anything by saying that.”
He almost smiled. Did not.
“I know you aren't.”
“I need to hear how you want to run it, because I did not sign a contract to sleep on that leather couch and I don't think you want to either.”
He was quiet a full beat.
“Three more nights. Couch. Then I come up here. You take the west side of the bed. There is a rifle on my side.” His chin lifted an eighth of an inch toward the Winchester leaning east. “Don't move it in the dark.”
My thumb touched my palm once.
“Okay.”
He did not say anything else for a moment. He looked at the frame of the door, or at the frame of me, and I could not tell which and did not decide which.
“Goodnight, Celia.”
“Goodnight.”
He stepped back. He pulled the door with him. It clicked. His steps went down the hall, then the sixth stair which is the one that creaks, then the leather couch downstairs receiving him the way a mattress receives a body it has known for six years.
At ten, the bedroom had gone quiet.
I sat on the edge of the mattress a full minute.
The tin roof popped as the day's heat let go: a small metallic settle, then a longer one.
The wren did the last shift I would hear tonight and then went quiet.
The Winchester on the east wall was where it would be.
It was not going to move tonight and it was not going to move tomorrow.
It was going to be there on the third night, when a man was going to be there beside it.
I got in on the west side, per instruction.
The east side of the bed was empty. There was no man there tonight.
There would be no man there tomorrow. There would be no man there the night after.
I pulled the wool blanket up to my chin.
I pulled the quilt to my collarbone. I lay flat on my back in the way I had never fallen asleep in my life.
I closed my eyes.
Three more nights.
He had said “three more nights” the way a man says “three more shifts.” A rotation. An inventory. A calendar he had already looked at and decided about.
He did not want the couch.
And I had already answered.
I wanted him upstairs.
I heard the couch springs give downstairs, once, as he settled under the weight of a decision I had not made and had not stopped.
Tonight, the next night, and the third.
That was the answer.