CHAPTER 8 #2
I had not meant to. I had meant to reckon the noon by the sun where it stands over the south ridge saddle.
But the vest-pocket weight is heavy at the heel of my left hand and I draw the watch out without thinking.
The silver case is open-faced. The dial is dirty.
Owain Carrow / 1854 is engraved at the inside of the case-back.
The hands are at four-eleven a.m. The watch has not run in fourteen years.
My father put it down on the kitchen-mantel of the row-house at the No.
4 patch the morning of December fourth, 1865, when he came up from the night shift to find my mother gone of pleurisy and the mantel-clock at four-eleven.
I close the case and put it back. Tate does not look up.
Tate has been with me at the assay shed for nineteen months and I have not once taken the watch out here, and Tate has known me long enough to keep his eyes on the brass.
I say, "We are square on the wife clause. We have a wife of record."
Tate weighs out the next quarter-ounce. He says, "Aye. A wife of record."
There is a pause. I do not look at Tate.
Tate does not look at me. We have been brothers of the claim for nineteen months and we know what is not yet to be said.
He knows because of Eliza; I know because I have given a woman my mother's quilt without telling her it was my mother's and I have left a candle burning on a kitchen table two nights running.
I scratch the scarred palm. He weighs out the next quarter-ounce.
He says, finally, "The patent application goes in by August fifteenth."
"By August fifteenth," I say.
We close the iron door at noon.
---
In the afternoon I ride up to the upper pasture to count the herd.
I am alone for the first time since the ceremony, on the old bay gelding I have ridden five years.
The bay knows the trail without me telling him.
The wind is dry by three and the basin smells of warm pine.
I count the herd at the pasture's lower edge — twenty-six head, two new calves, the old cow with the broken horn at the salt-block.
I sit the bay in the saddle for a long minute at the pasture's high lip looking down at the basin.
The cabin is a small shape from up here.
I cannot see Willa but the smoke from the kitchen range is going up in a thin clean line, and the woman who started that range this morning is the woman who has cooked supper for me three times in two days and a half.
I scratch the scarred palm.
I think I have a wife I have not lain with and may not lay with. I have a wife who pumps with one hand. I have a wife I would like to lay with. Christ Almighty.
I say, "Christ Almighty," low, into the bay's right ear. The bay flicks the ear and shifts his weight to the off hind.
I have not said the word wife about a living person in any sentence in my own head before this afternoon.
I am thirty-two years old. I have a wife who has cooked my supper and lit a candle on my kitchen table and gone up the loft ladder eight rungs and not come down, and I am the man who has sat with the candle two nights running because the candle is the only thing in the cabin I can keep at her side.
I turn the bay for the trail down.
---
I am at the kitchen table the third married night with the King James open at Ruth and the candle on the saucer at my elbow.
The wax has built up on the saucer over three nights into a small uneven flat dome. The candle is the third she has lit; the first burned down by dawn of the first night, the second by dawn of the second. Tate is up at the freight stable. Levi is in his lean-to.
I have the tin lockbox out from the cupboard at my left elbow and the household-pact paper out of the lockbox and on the table by the candle.
Five terms, each in her hand at the foot, signed Willa Greer on June fourteenth, with my counter-signature beside hers.
The marriage is paper. Touch will be asked for and answered by her and freely given.
The loft is hers. The men will not be drunk in her presence; will not lift a hand at her; will not raise a voice. The pact stands by her word.
I have read it twenty times in five days. I read it now. I scratch the scarred palm.
The candle drips.
The loft floor-board above the kitchen ceiling creaks once. I do not look up.
The eight-rung ladder creaks.
She comes down in her green wrapper — the spring-green flannel with the bone buttons that goes to her ankles — her hair in a loose braid past her shoulder. The bone pin is on the loft pallet; she has left it there. Her feet are bare. She steps off the ladder and stops at the foot.
I set the King James aside. I do not stand. I keep my hands at the table-edge.
She stands at the kitchen door.
She says, "Are you asleep, Mr. Carrow."
She says it soft, not whispering, the way a woman who has counted the pulse beats at her own wrist before she spoke says it. I scratch the scarred palm under the table-edge. I say, "Beck. If you would. And no, Mrs. Carrow."
She says, "Beck."
She says it the way a tailor's daughter says a word when she has decided to set the seam by it. She does not move from the doorway. The candle on the saucer is between us and the wax is at one drop every six seconds.
She says, "I am cold."
I say, "Take my quilt."
I have the wild-goose-chase across my knees still — Tate's, the brown-and-rust — and I take it off my knees and stand at the table and walk three steps to her with the quilt folded once over my forearm.
Her hand comes up at the quilt's edge and I lay it into her hand, and her fingers and mine meet at the wool's edge for one second exactly.
We are both careful. I am careful not to take the hand.
She is careful not to take the hand. Her fingers brush the back of mine at the binding-tape and she keeps her hand still.
I keep mine still. Christ Almighty, I count the pulse at the side of her throat where the wrapper-collar is open at the bone of her clavicle.
Her pulse is fourteen by the look of the small movement at the throat.
She closes her hand on the quilt. The Bear-Paw squares of brown and rust and the one cream center are at her wrist.
I say, "You should go back to bed, Mrs. Carrow."
She says, "Thank you, Beck."
I say it because I cannot trust myself with her given name tonight.
The formal name is the half-step of distance I can hold and still stand close enough to give her the quilt.
I do not move. She does not move. Then she turns.
Her bare foot is on the first rung. The loft ladder creaks under her. Eight rungs going up.
I sit down at the kitchen table.
The candle drips.
I do not snuff it.
I scratch my palm. I say aloud, low, into the candle, "Christ Almighty."
I do not say what I mean. I do not name it.
The wax falls onto the saucer in a single round drop the size of a small pea.
The dome of cooled beeswax is the size of a child's palm under it and the new drop slides down the side of the dome and joins it.
The candle is for her, I think. I am leaving it burning.
I sit with the dripped wax on the candle.
I sit until the basin's deepest cold comes in through the kitchen door which I have left on the latch.
I sit until Old Brigham crows at first paling.
I sit until the east window is gray. The cooled wax is layered in the saucer like the strata of slate at the south ridge, and I could read the three nights of my marriage at this table in the layers if I cared to.
I do not snuff the candle until dawn.
When I snuff it at last with the back of my thumb the wick hisses once and the small thread of smoke turns south at the open kitchen door, and the basin is gray with first light. She came down. She said she was cold. She took the quilt. She went back up.
That is a fact. That she came down at all is a second fact.
Mrs. Carrow, I think. Willa, I think.
I do not say either name aloud. The candle is snuffed. The dawn is here. The pact is on the table. I scratch my palm.