CHAPTER 6
Tate
◆
I had been holding Eliza's reading-spectacles in my right hand for the better part of an hour before I noticed I was holding them.
The lamp in the loft was burned low. I had set the wick down to a thumbnail of flame because I had wanted light enough only to be sure my hand was still my hand.
I sat on the edge of the rope-bed in my shirtsleeves with the spectacles in my hand.
They were wire-rimmed and the right earpiece was bent half a quarter-inch where Eliza had sat on them one summer in Trinidad in '74.
The lenses were dust-rimmed, a fine pale ring around the wire frame from the windowsill where I had set them last week, the first time in two years and three days I had taken them out of the trunk.
I had not cleaned the dust off. I did not yet know whether I had earned the right.
I turned the spectacles once in the lamp's small light. The dust held its ring.
I thought, Eliza. Tomorrow at eleven my partner is to be a married man, and the woman he is to marry is the woman in the cabin across the dooryard, and I am the third name on the paper, and I had not thought I would feel this in my chest again.
The cabin door fell to across the dooryard and I heard it. Levi going out to the lean-to. The latch had a small soft slap to it on the way home and Levi knew the slap and never let it bang. The dooryard's quiet pulled back over the place where his boots had been.
The iron pump in the dooryard let out a single small noise, the kind of noise iron makes when it cools at night.
It was not Levi's hand on the handle. Levi did not pump water at three of the morning. The sound had come from the wind on the lever, or from the iron itself, or from no hand at all.
I thought, the new wife in Beck's bed.
I thought, the new wife who is not in Beck's bed at all but in the loft alone, by her own term, which is the third term of the paper she signed at the kitchen table.
I thought, the new wife who is signing her name on a paper she does not yet know she has signed for.
I closed my eyes for one beat longer than I should have.
I had been doing that since February of '77.
Eliza had said it once to me on the porch of the high-country cabin, when she was carrying — Tate, my love, you close your eyes too long when something hurts you, and I am going to fix that habit out of you — and I had not let her fix it.
It was hers now to keep, since I had not let her have it then.
I opened my eyes. The spectacles were still in my hand.
*
I do not know what I thought through in the next hour. Eliza came up in pieces.
I thought of the way she pressed her lips together when she read — she did it with the Border Ballads every winter night of the four years we had, the lip closing in on the lip the way a seam closes when you have set the tension right.
I thought of the way she could not see the small print of my freight contracts without these spectacles.
I had drafted the Larkspur Bend contract at the kitchen table of the high-country cabin in '76 and Eliza had sat at my elbow with them low on her nose and said, Tate, the man has writ you a fraction of a cent off.
The contract had been a fraction of a cent off, and Eliza had been right.
I thought of the way her hair smelled of the soap she made herself. Lavender and milk-soap. Hattie Doss had shown her how to render the milk-soap with the lavender pressed in. Eliza's hair smelled of that soap for the rest of her life. Three months. The lavender had not lasted to the spring.
I thought, Eliza, the woman in the cabin across the dooryard has lavender pressed into the lining of her travel coat. I smelled it when she stepped down off the wagon five evenings ago. It is not your lavender. I am telling you because I do not want to lie to you about a thing as small as a smell.
I held the spectacles in my hand and held them.
*
I got up. I had a routine in the dark, and the routine had got me up most mornings since the February.
I went to the chair beside the bed where my coat had been laid across the back.
I put my right hand into the inside breast-pocket and took out the small smooth river-stone Eliza had handed me on the morning her labor began.
Carry this for me until I can carry it again.
The stone was the size of a hen's egg, oval, the color of wet slate with a pale band across the long axis.
A Highland aunt of hers in Argyll had given it to her the year she had come over at nine. It had been in her keeping for sixteen years and in mine for two years and three days.
I set the stone on the windowsill beside the spectacles. The spectacles caught the lamp's small yellow; the stone did not.
I laced my boots. I pulled my coat on. The coat was lighter without the stone in the pocket; I felt the lack of it at the seam of the shoulder the way a man feels the lack of a tooth he has worn down to the gum.
I went down the outside stair on the east gable of the freight stable.
The dooryard was dim. The air had the cold high-country mineral smell of pine cooled all night and the iron of the pump-handle still cold from being iron. The hens were quiet. The cabin's windows held no light. The basin held its own dark.
I went east along the southeast lip.
*
The lodgepole that survived the fire of '74 stood at the basin's southeast lip the way it had stood when Beck and I first walked the ground in April of '77 and Beck said, that one.
That one stayed. The bark on its south face was charred to the depth of a knuckle, the needles at its crown the color of a kept knife.
I had laid Eliza at the foot of the lodgepole on the eighth of February in '77. The ground had been frozen to a foot and a half and Beck and I had cut the grave by axe and pick across a day and a half. The infant had gone under the same blanket. I had not let Beck cut a second grave.
The cross was board. I had cut it from a peeled lodgepole rail Levi had set aside for the corral.
I had painted it with the lead-white Beck had bought at Bayle's, and Beck had said, that will weather to a softer white in a year.
It had. The white on the cross was the color of a dry sheet of paper now, gone soft, no glare.
The carving on the cross-bar was my own hand. ELIZA HALLORAN — JANUARY 11, 1850 — FEbrUARY 4, 1877 — BELOVED.
I had cut the date of her birth because I knew it. Eliza's mother had told me the day in a letter from Argyll in the autumn of '75. I was the only one of the three of us — Eliza, me, and the man who would carve a stone in Denver two summers later — who knew the day for sure.
The infant had no date. I had not been able to give a daughter a date for a life she had never had. The carpenter at Larkspur Bend the May after had said, Halloran, if you would like a small cross beside it I will cut you one, and I had said, no. The man had not asked twice.
I knelt at the cross.
The ground was cold under the knee through the wool. I set my right hand flat on the cross-bar. The wood was weather-grained, the white gone soft. I left my palm there for the count of three breaths.
I said, low, "Eliza Halloran."
I said, "Darlin'."
I said, "I have a woman in my partner's bed."
I had to set the sentence down between us. I had not said it aloud anywhere. I gave it the air now.
I said, "She is the woman in our cabin. She is small.
She has gray eyes. She counts her own pulse beats at the inside of her own wrist when she is afraid.
I count my own breaths through the freight-road switchbacks on a bad day.
I know the look of a person counting against the dark. She is the kind of woman who counts."
I said, "She is not you."
I said it carefully. I did not want to bring up the words I love her near the white-painted board.
"She is not Eliza. She is wholly herself. She is wholly other. She has the seamstress hand for paper-weight. She does not look at me with pity. She does not look at me with curiosity. She extends a dipper and waits. I am the man who fills the dipper."
I said, "I had carried a stone in my pocket for two years and three days and had not noticed I was carrying it. Tonight, with her in this house, I noticed."
I said, "I am afraid I will not be afraid for long."
I set my forehead against the cross-bar. The wood was cold.
*
I prayed.
I prayed in the half-Catholic way my mother gave me.
Margaret Halloran née Macleod out of Argyll, Glasgow-Irish Catholic; my father Scots-Irish Protestant, lapsed, who had let her raise us Catholic on the understanding that we would know the King James cover to cover by the time we were ten.
My prayer carried both. The Mass was the cadence and the Psalm was the meat.
I had stopped attending Mass the week after Eliza died because I could not yet pray with witnesses.
I had said a Hail Mary at this cross every Sunday afternoon since the spring of '77.
I said one now, quiet. I closed my eyes for one beat longer than I should have. I opened them.
I said, "Eliza. Darlin'. Would you be sorry."
I listened.
The lodgepole did not move. The basin did not move. A wind was beginning at the south ridge but it had not yet come to the lip. The hens were quiet. Old Brigham had not yet crowed.
There was no answer.
I had not expected one. I had decided I would listen. I listened until the basin had had its chance to speak.
I rose. I said, low, "I will take the silence for the gift. I will harness the mules at nine."
I crossed myself. I set my right hand flat on the cross-bar once more. I took it off.
I heard the iron pump-handle squeak in the dooryard.
It was the morning's first pump. The earlier sound had been wind or iron or no hand at all.
This one had a slow, careful pull behind it.
Not Beck's pump — Beck pumped from the shoulder, three strokes in three seconds.
Not Levi's pump — Levi pumped left-handed and rough, the lever in a yank.
This was a small-hand pump. The pull was patient.