CHAPTER 30
Willa
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I woke before the lamp had any cause to be lit, and lay in the southwest bedroom in the cold gray of the last hour before dawn, and listened.
Beck had taken the rocker in the front room for the night, the way a man takes a vigil.
Tate had stayed in the loft. Levi was in the lean-to where Beck's old bed-frame had gone as a guest cot; I had heard his voice low to Ardent through the chink in the boards near three — Easy, love. Easy. Tomorrow she will be ours.
I had asked for the two nights alone. I would have the wedding be the first night in the new bed, I had told Beck on Friday. Sweetheart. As you like.
I counted three pulse beats at the inside of my own wrist. Three at the line of my own throat.
One slow at the bone-cleft between my brows.
I did not weep. I got up. I lit the brass kerosene lamp with the new uncracked chimney I had bought from Hattie on Wednesday for forty cents — the first clean light over the new bed.
The lamp came on even and yellow across the pale wood-shavings still on the cabin floor where the men had planed the bedposts across two weeks. I had told Beck on Sunday: Leave them. The bed is half wood and the floor is half work.
I put coffee on.
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They came in by seven.
Beck first, out of the rocker, his sandy-brown hair flat from the chair-back, the vest with the pocket-watch already on. He came across the kitchen and laid his scarred left palm flat at the small of my back, bent, and put his mouth at the top of my braid. Good morning, Mrs. Carrow.
Good morning, Mr. Carrow.
And the other names.
By eleven.
He laughed once, low.
Tate came down from the loft next, his late wife's father's Highland-cut wedding coat folded across his arm.
He laid it on the rocker. Darlin'. His thumb went once across the back of my hand.
His eyes closed for one beat longer than they should have.
I have stood in three loft-rooms this morning thinking I would find the wagon gone. The wagon is not gone.
You will put on the coat at half past ten.
I will.
Levi came in last, freckled, copper hair caught at the nape.
He was wearing the new shirt I had made him from Hattie's Hudson Bay blanket — cut down the dark blue band, the cream wool beneath at the cuff and collar.
He stopped two steps in. Bloody hell, love.
I have been twenty-eight years on this earth and have not yet worn a shirt that fit me.
I cut it in the daylight.
Then it is a miracle.
He came to me, put his hand at my jaw, looked at my face the length of a breath, and did not kiss me — he had said he would not until the Reverend read the words.
We sat at the table. We did not say much. My mother had sent the second pin by post three weeks back, the parcel wrapped in brown paper, the letter inside reading for the second wedding, mein Liebling. I wore both today.
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The Reverend's wagon came up the freight road at ten-thirty.
Davie Pell drove. Hattie was on the bench beside him with her basket and a small white-iced cake wrapped in linen. Reverend Ezra Pell rode the circuit-horse alongside.
I went to the porch in my apron over the green-and-cream travel dress — the dress I had stepped down from the wagon in on June tenth, mended at the right shoulder. Hattie climbed down, put her big hands at my elbows. Sit down on this porch step, child. Let me see you.
I sat.
You are a wife three times today.
Once. With three names on the paper.
Same thing. Different paper. She bent and kissed me at the temple. Gut Kind.
The Reverend let his gelding drink at the iron pump. He lifted his hat. Mrs. Carrow. The parlor is yours.
Davie came across with his slate and lifted it to show me what he had chalked that morning:
good.
I laughed. I did not weep. I touched the slate with my finger and signed the only sign Levi had taught me confidently — the right hand opening at the heart out toward the person, the sign for thank you. Davie's face went hot pink. He signed back two-handed: good.
We went inside.
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The parlor was the front room.
Beck stood at the head of the kitchen table.
Tate at my left in the Highland-cut coat at last, the silver hazel-nut buttons catching the lamp, the velvet collar a little frayed from a dead man's forty years.
Levi at my back, his hand at the small of my back light enough for the breath to lift it.
The Greer family Bible lay open at Psalm 91, the pencil-mark in Beck's slow hand from two Sundays back.
The Reverend read the words straight.
He read the Psalm. He read the marriage rite.
He spoke our four names slow — Beckett Lloyd Carrow, Tate Owen Halloran, Levi Thorn, Willa Greer — and then the supplement he had drafted under the territorial domestic-partnership clause: cohabitating partners and lawful claim co-owners, joined and bound by mutual affirmation, in the sight of God and the country and the witnesses here named.
He looked at me. Mrs. Greer. Yes or no.
Yes.
Mr. Carrow.
Yes.
Mr. Halloran.
Aye.
Mr. Thorn.
Yes.
He turned the certificate to face us. Then sign.
Beck signed first — his slow hand, Beckett L.
Carrow across the line. Tate next — copperplate, careful, the loop at the T unhurried.
Levi third — the quick left-handed flourish, Levi Thorn without a middle name.
I took the pen last and wrote, in my father's careful seamstress's hand: Willa Greer.
I dipped again. I wrote beside it the hyphenated long name: Willa Carrow-Halloran-Thorn.
The Bear Fork County seal in green wax was at the bottom. The supplement on the verso was in Reverend Pell's careful hand, naming all three husbands.
Hattie signed witness. Davie signed second witness in his careful printed boy's hand — Davie Pell. The Reverend stamped the certificate.
What God has joined, the land does not separate. What the land joins, God has the patience to bless. You are joined.
Beck's hand came onto my right hand. Tate's onto my left. Levi's came up from the small of my back to the back of my neck, light, the way he laid a hand on a horse he loved.
I counted three at the inside of my own wrist with my second finger under Beck's palm where no one could see.
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We ate at noon. Hattie's cake. Boiled chicken, biscuits, bee-balm cordial in four small glasses.
The Reverend said grace; Beck nodded. Davie signed cake good with chalky fingers and his shoulders shook in a soundless laugh and I laughed back.
The Reverend told a story about a Wyoming wedding twelve winters back where the groom had cried in front of God and seventeen drovers, and nobody asked him to finish.
By three the wagon was at the dooryard. Hattie hugged me at the porch step. Gut Kind. Schreib mir. Schlaf gut tonight. Davie signed be well with both hands twice. The Reverend lifted his hat. They went.
The basin took back its silence.
Beck said, Wife.
Husband.
Levi laughed soft. Tate put his hand at the small of my back, and that was what he had to say.
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By five Beck wound the watch.
I had asked him at noon. Beck. After the Reverend goes. I would have you wind your father's watch. He had looked at me a long count, his thumbnail moving twice across the scarred palm. All right.
He took the watch out of his vest now and laid it on the kitchen table between us.
The brass case dull from fourteen years in his pocket.
The hands at IV and II — four-eleven a.m., the hour his mother died in December 1865, the hour his father had laid the watch on the table and never wound it again.
Beck pressed the catch. The case opened. The small ivory portrait of his mother was inside the lid — a pale-haired Welsh-Cornish woman of twenty-three with her hands folded.
He looked at her. He looked at me. He took the small key from the watch-chain, set it in the keyway, turned it slow — three winds, the way his father had taught him.
The mainspring engaged. The small dry click of it.
The hands moved. The second-hand swept. The minute-hand lifted a hair. The hour-hand followed off the IV at last.
Beck closed the watch and set it on the table. It ticked.
His eyes were wet. He did not weep. He scratched the scarred palm once with the right thumbnail. Christ Almighty. Sweetheart. He waited a breath. Mother. It is time.
I lifted the watch with both hands and pressed the back of the case once to my own breastbone. I handed it back. He put it in his vest. The chain caught the lamp-light. The watch ticked against his sternum where it had been silent fourteen years.
Tate turned at the south window at the sound, came across, laid his right hand on Beck's shoulder a count of breaths, went back to the window.
Levi came in from the dooryard. Christ Almighty, foreman. She is alive.
She is.
The watch ticked. The lamp burned even.
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We went to the bed at six.
The big bedroom door was open. The new four-poster against the east wall.
Four lodgepole-pine posts, peeled and sanded to pale gold by Beck's plane and Tate's draw-knife and Levi's hand-rasp.
The slats lashed with rawhide. The new linen mattress stuffed that morning with clean wheat-straw.
The wedding-ring quilt I had been stitching since June — cream and dark-green calico in interlocking circles, finished October eleventh — folded at the foot. The summer quilt under it for warmth.
The wood-shavings from the bedposts were still on the floor.
I walked barefoot across them. The pale curls were warm against the soles of my feet from the kitchen stove that had been burning all afternoon.
I bent at the doorway and gathered a small handful into my cupped palm and crossed to the dresser and emptied them into a clean Mason jar I had set there at noon.
Tate stepped in beside me with a small clay pot. Bee-balm. The bright red of the late wild bloom, the throats of the small tubed flowers showing the faint cream inside.