CHAPTER 27
Willa
◆
The first full rain has held two days. The sound is at the cabin roof at six on the nineteenth of September with the open kitchen door letting the smell come in.
Fresh rain on hot pine. The basin's wood gave up its resin all summer to the heat and the resin is wakening now under the wet, the smell coming up sharp and clean off the lodgepole bark the way the smell of a press-iron comes up off cloth in my father's shop the morning he wet the broadcloth.
I stand at the door with the bone pin in my braid and the gold band on my fourth finger. I do not move. I have learned how to wait for a smell.
Beck says, behind me at the table, "Willa. Shut the door if you will."
"I will not."
He laughs once, dry. "Then leave it."
---
The four of us sit at the table.
The cast-iron kettle is on the warming shelf with chamomile in it.
The brass kerosene lamp throws its thin ray across the east wall from the crack at the chimney.
The rain is steady on the cabin roof, the long soft fall the basin needed.
Beck has the Greer Bible open at Genesis twenty-four.
He has been reading it the two evenings since the burying.
He reads slow. His lips move on the longer words.
"And he said, O Lord God of my master Abraham," Beck reads, "I pray thee, send me good speed this day, and shew kindness unto my master Abraham."
Tate is across from me. His right hand is around the tin cup; the burn-scar at the inside of the forearm is at the rim. He is watching me by lamp-light — gray-blue at my gray, the steady freight pilot's look he learned reading weather on the switchback. He does not look away when I find him.
Levi is in the rocker by the south window with Ardent's bridle across his knees.
He is mending the brow-band — the rawhide has worn at the buckle keeper.
The bone-and-rawhide horse-charm is tied at the off side.
He has set the bridle's brow-band on the rocker arm for the mending; the bone bead lies on the maple.
Beck reads, "Let the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac."
Tate says, low, "Yitzhak."
Beck looks up.
"The Hebrew," Tate says. "Yitzhak. Eliza's grandmother taught her the Hebrew in Argyll. The name means he laughed. The boy did, when he was named."
Beck nods, slow. "Yitzhak."
The cabin holds the saying. The rain holds. Levi sets the awl down.
I think of my father at the kitchen table on a Walnut Street Sunday in '67 with the Lutheran hymnal at his elbow.
Lobe den Herren. I have not opened that hymnal since June 1869.
The Greer Bible has German marginalia in his iron-gall hand at the Psalms. He read Genesis in English to me.
He read the Psalms in German to himself.
The rain holds at the cabin roof.
I think — clean as a tailor's chalk-line on broadcloth — I am at home.
---
In the morning the basin is dim with the rain. The pump-handle squeak has shifted pitch since the rain came; the long question-note of the summer has gone soft at the second draw. Beck wrote in his ledger Wednesday evening the pump answers now. He underlined it once.
It is the twentieth of September, a Saturday, and Sheriff Owen Mahon rides up-pass himself at nine o'clock.
I see him from the kitchen window. The bay mare has her ears at the rain and Mahon has his oil-skin to the wrist and his ginger beard going gray at the chin under the brim of his hat.
Beck is at the door before the mare stops. Tate at his shoulder.
"Sheriff."
"Beck. Tate."
Mahon swings down. He grunts at the cold knee — the Sand Creek-era kick — and walks the bay to the iron pump. He works the handle two strokes. The pump pulls clear at the first stroke and squeaks the soft answer-pitched note.
"Hattie sent word at first light. Mosely left the boarding house at four.
He has been seen on the upper road with a man not from the country — a long-jawed rider in a black slicker.
Hattie has seen him twice at Granite Forks; he hires out to the eastern crowd.
They are not at the freight stable. They are not at the church.
They are not at the smithy. Hattie's belief is that Mosely means to come up-pass tonight or tomorrow and occupy the cabin while you are out.
He would 'establish residency' under the territorial statute.
Lawler departed Granite Forks on horseback. He is three days out."
Beck says, "Christ Almighty."
"I have no man to spare. I have come myself because I would not have you surprised. You will have to hold the basin tonight. I will write to the Granite Forks office to push the marshal. He may be at Larkspur Bend by tomorrow night if the rider rides fast."
Tate says, "Owen. We thank you."
Mahon lifts his hat to me at the window. "Mrs. Carrow."
I lift my hand.
He mounts. The mare turns. He rides down. The freight road takes him at the second bend below the porch.
---
The four of us come back into the cabin. Beck closes the door.
He lays the protocol on the table — not a paper; the protocol is in his head and in our four heads. He sets his palms flat on the wood.
"Tate. The porch through the night with the Spencer carbine across your knees. Six p.m. to two a.m. I will spell you at two."
Tate nods.
"Levi. The lower pasture. The dry creek bed is the only flat ground a man could ride a horse up. You take Ardent and your father's twelve-gauge."
Levi nods. "Ardent at three feet. The shotgun at four. I do not sit further from a horse than four feet when the horse is the watch."
"I take the assay shed. The dust is there.
The lockbox. The patent papers. Mosely will move on the dust. I take the Colt.
44 and the hunting rifle. I will light the kerosene at five a.m. and keep it lit.
If you see the light go out at the shed window before dawn, the light has gone out for a reason and not for the lamp. "
Beck looks at me.
"Willa. The cabin. The Bible. The lockbox at your feet.
The spare shotgun is at the door. The patent papers, the marriage certificate, the gold band's receipt, the small pouch of dust I have not moved to Hattie's safe yet because we did not get the chance.
You hold the household's legal life on your lap. "
"I hold it."
He puts his scarred left palm flat on the table. "Sweetheart."
"I hold it," I say again.
Levi laughs once, low. "Lass. You are the cabin tonight."
Tate looks at me across the table. He closes his eyes for one beat longer than he should.
---
Six o'clock the watch begins.
Tate goes out with the Spencer carbine across his back and the canvas hood pulled up. I bring him a tin cup of coffee at the porch step. He takes it with the hand of the burn-scar; the rim is at the scald.
"Darlin'."
"Tate."
He drinks. He gives me the cup back. He puts the cup in my palm and his fingers brush the inside of my wrist for a half-second.
"Sleep if you can."
"I will not."
Levi goes down to the lower pasture with Ardent at three feet. The bone-and-rawhide charm is at the brow-band of the bridle still; he has not taken it off. He looks up at me at the dooryard step. "Lass."
"Levi."
Beck takes the Colt.44 in his hand and the hunting rifle on his shoulder. He kisses me at the kitchen door. Closed-mouth. His mouth at the corner of mine the way his thumb has been at the corner of my mouth since the long July kitchen.
"Sweetheart. Bar the door at my back."
"I bar it."
He goes. I bar the door.
---
The night is the long night I knew it would be.
I sit at the kitchen table with the Greer Bible on my lap and the small spare shotgun against my chair and the iron lockbox at my feet.
Beck has put the patent papers and the certificate and the receipt and the pouch of dust in it in the afternoon.
The bone pin is in my braid. The gold band is warm at the knuckle of my fourth finger.
The brass kerosene lamp burns low; the cracked-chimney's thin ray reaches the threshold of the front room and stops at the rag-rug I have pieced across July and August from old shirts and a torn loft sheet.
The rag-rug is on the floor in front of the cold stove.
The wool is dark with sweat-and-pine from a summer of bare feet.
I read Genesis twenty-four to myself. The steward at the well. Rebekah at the pitcher. Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink. I read it slow. The country tonight is the country of the well.
I count pulse beats at the inside of my left wrist. Three. The rain holds at the cabin roof.
I do not sleep.
---
At five-thirty on the morning of the twenty-second of September the back door's latch lifts.
I have heard a step before I have heard the latch. The step is heavy, off-balance at the second foot — a man cold to the bone. The shotgun is in my left hand before I have made the decision.
Tate comes in.
The rain comes in with him as a smell — fresh rain on hot pine, the second night of it, the basin's wood having given up the last of its summer resin to the wet.
His coat is heavy with the rain. His hat is dripping at the brim.
His boots are soaked through. He has the Spencer carbine across his back.
His mouth is set in the line a man sets it in when he has been cold for the eight hours of a watch and has not been able to feel his hands for three of those hours.
I set the shotgun against the wall.
"Darlin'."
"Tate."
I go to him.
I take the Spencer carbine off his shoulder and lay it against the kitchen pegs.
I unbutton his coat. The coat is heavy in my hands.
I lay it on the back of the chair. His shirt is wet at the shoulders where the rain ran in past the hood.
He is shaking — small shakes, the kind a man does not show his men but shows a wife.
"To the stove."
He follows me into the front room. The cold stove. Cast iron. We have not lit it tonight; the cabin has held warm enough at the kitchen lamp. The rag-rug is in front of the cold stove. I have stood barefoot on it across August.