CHAPTER 19
Willa
◆
Old Brigham crows at a quarter past five on the morning of the seventh of August and I am at the chicken-yard wire with the small tin dipper in my right hand and the dipper holds half what I would have given the hens in June.
The water is tepid. The springbox sheds its cold before the bucket comes up the path; the basin's nights have gone short and the spring's flow has gone shorter, and the dipper at the wire is the small daily evidence of a thing I do not yet say out loud at the table.
The buff Cochin butts my shin. The barred-rocks crowd the wire and the small wing-flap is the kind of dry sound dry hens make when they remember what they used to ask for.
I pour. I tip the dipper twice, once into the shallow pan on the wood-rib and once into the pan against the cabin's north wall, and the eleven of them go at the water the way creatures go at a thing the country has not yet taken back.
The east wall of the cabin holds my left shoulder a moment as I straighten.
There is a knothole in the chinking at the line of my hip, the size of a child's thumb-print, a dark round place where the lodgepole has dried and pulled away from the white lime mortar.
The dry southwest wind that has not let up in two days finds the knothole at that moment, and a thin small whistle comes out of the east wall, one short note then a longer one, the long note holding while I do not move.
Beck said yesterday at dinner that he would plug it with a wad of horsehair and a finger of pine pitch and had not got to it because he had been at the assay shed. He did not get to it last night.
I think of two nights ago because I cannot help it.
I am twenty-three years old and a woman who has been on a kitchen table once and on a saddle-blanket once and on the indigo-and-cream quilt of her foreman husband's narrow rope-bed twice, the third the night before last with her foreman husband and her horse-breaker husband at once on the same quilt.
The bay-rum was on the right side of my throat and the green pine resin was on the left, and the bone pin is on the dresser of the big bedroom where Beck set it himself with the words this stays clean.
We asked Tate, I think, with the dipper still in my hand. We asked him in the dark of the night before last by my mouth at Beck's shoulder, and Beck answered me by my own ear, and I have not seen Tate since.
I count three pulse-beats at the inside of my own left wrist. I press my right thumb to the cleft between my eyebrows once. I take it away.
I go up the porch. The whistle holds.
---
By ten the dough-trough holds half what it held in June.
I have been at the trough since eight: flour from the Pillsbury sack, cornmeal from the smaller yellow sack, a quarter measure of the pine-nut meal Levi found at the upper pasture two Sundays past in a broken-open cone of a fallen limber pine and ground for me himself at the kitchen table while Beck watched and did not laugh.
I have been stretching the flour for nine days.
The biscuits come out smaller than my flat hand, where in June they were the size of my palm with my thumb out. The men eat what is set in front of them and they are grateful.
I knead. I think of Tate.
Tate left at first light yesterday morning with the freight wagon down the pass, a half-load for the Larkspur Bend assayer, the bell-mare in the lead. He was to be back tonight at supper. He was to be back yesterday at supper. He has not been back. I knead.
Beck comes in at ten and stands at the kitchen door. He has ore-dust at the cuffs of his shirt. He says, "I had a rider through this morning. Up from Larkspur Bend with a freight crew bound for Granite Forks. He brought word."
I lift my hands from the dough.
I say, "Word of what?"
He says, "An eastern man at the Doss boarding house. Asking after the Last Claim deed."
His right thumbnail goes to his scarred left palm. He scratches the long pink crescent once, the slow short scratch I have learned to read at supper for two months.
I say, "Has he been here?"
He says, "No, sweetheart. He has not."
He looks up. The hazel-green is at me steady. I let my hands lie at the trough.
I say, "Will you have it told to me when there is more?"
He says, slow, "I will."
He stays at the door a half-step closer than usual. He says, "Tate was to be back last night."
I say, "I know."
He says, "I will be in the assay shed. " He goes.
I press my thumb into the cleft of my own eyebrows and I leave it until the pink half-moon stings, and then I lift it away. I lift the dough and turn it and slap it down. The biscuits will be small again at dinner.
---
The freight crew comes up at three on the eighth.
I am in the dooryard with the porch broom when the south-ridge ear of the road throws the first sound up: a slow mule-creak and a small bell I do not know on the lead mule's harness, then the freighter himself, four mules and a heavy wagon and a single rider beside him, neither face one I have seen at Hattie's porch in June. The wagon is not for us.
They are passing through with a load for a different claim down-basin off the long fork, and they are using the freight road because the freight road is the only road there is.
Beck comes off the assay-shed step with the lime still on his hands.
I do not go down to the gate. I lean on the rail of the porch at the silver-weathered place I have leaned twice a day for fifty days. Beck takes the bridle of the rider's horse a moment to steady it. I hear the word Granite Forks. I hear smoke. I hear eighteen. I hear dawn.
I do not move from the rail.
The freighter turns his head once and looks up the porch at me.
He touches the brim of his felt hat. He does not say anything to me.
He says to Beck, low and slow and country-clear so the country can hear him, "Smoke north of Granite Forks.
Eighteen miles from town when we left at dawn.
Wind from the north today. Wind from the northwest tomorrow. "
Beck does not say fire.
His right hand goes to his left palm.
He scratches the scar. He scratches it once. He scratches it twice. He says to the freighter, "Obliged."
The freighter touches the brim again, clicks his tongue at the lead mule, and the wagon goes. The bell fades up-pass into the noon-wind and is gone behind the south-ridge shoulder, and the dust the wagon lifted stays in the air an hour.
Beck stands a long minute at the dooryard.
He turns. He says, not loud, "Levi."
Levi has come out of the corral; he is at the rail with the long line over his elbow. He says, "Aye."
Beck says, "Saddle. We are going up the north ridge to count cattle."
Levi says, "Aye."
They go.
I count three pulse-beats at the inside of my own left wrist. I press my thumb to the cleft of my own eyebrows once and I take it away. The whistle in the east wall behind me lifts a half-note. The southwest gust is up.
I do not let the word fire into my mouth. I let it sit at the back of the throat.
---
The men come back at dusk.
The cattle are at the lower pasture, twenty-six head, all calved and standing.
The horses are at the upper pasture at the snowmelt seeps that have not yet failed.
The wind has shifted while I was at the kitchen, northwest by the time I lit the brass kerosene lamp at sundown, the cracked chimney's thin ray on the east wall at the angle it has held since June.
Beck washes at the basin in the lean-to.
Levi pulls his boots off at the porch step and leaves them.
We sit at the long pine table — Beck, Levi, me — and the lamp is the only steady thing.
Beck says, at the bowl of stewed dried apple I have stretched with cornmeal, "If the wind holds northwest and the smoke is at eighteen miles north of Granite Forks, the smoke can be at twelve miles from us by dawn.
We do not see it yet because the south ridge is in our way. We will see it tomorrow if it comes."
Levi nods. He is at his second half-biscuit.
I nod.
We eat slow.
Beck looks at me. He says, "He is fine. He is in town with the wagon. He will be back tonight."
I say, "Yes."
I count my pulse at the wrist under the table.
---
The ninth is the long day.
I sew Beck a new shirt-collar by the porch light from breakfast through dusk: gray linen from the trunk Hattie sent up the ninth of June, the collar of his old work-shirt frayed where I mended it on the second of July, the mending given because the linen had gone too thin to hold a second pass.
I baste with the navy thread first; I will run the small stitches with gray once the line lies straight.
The dry southwest gust is up by noon. By two the wind has shifted northwest at the high ridge and is dry and steady.
The whistle is in the east wall. I have not asked Beck to plug it.
He has not plugged it. At midmorning Beck goes out to draw water and the iron pump in the dooryard squeaks once, hoarse, two strokes pulling air before the water comes; I hear it through the open kitchen door and do not name it.
Levi is at the corral with Ardent. He has the long lead-line at twelve feet now; the chestnut takes the line well.
From the porch I watch the long shift of the horse along the rail, the long line slack between them and the chestnut walking willing at the four-beat.
Levi does not laugh. Levi has not laughed since the morning Tate left.
The shadow of the south ridge takes the porch at seven and the basin goes the slow dim of August's longer dusk, and I sew through the smaller light by holding the collar two inches closer to the open kitchen door.
Tate is not back at four. He is not back at six. He is not back at eight.