The Things We Send
The man answering for Ben said he was resting.
He had said it three days earlier too. I had left a message about the truck and asked for a time when Ben would be awake. Now it was November fifth, and Anthony had put a fresh sheet beside the radio log rather than send me away with the old answer.
“Then let me hear him say he doesn’t want to speak,” I said.
The operator across the pass asked me to repeat it. I did, leaving a little space between the words. Behind me a woman waited for news of a daughter. She had taken off her wet scarf and was twisting it over a basin somebody had brought for her. I had already used part of her turn.
A different voice came over the set.
“Your appointment’s on the seventh, Caddel.”
Coben. He sounded less far away than the man sitting beside me.
“Has he been told we’re coming?”
“He knows.”
“I asked for him.”
“And I’ve answered you. Bring your inspection papers.”
The signal broke across the last word. Our operator called East again, got an acknowledgment from the first man, and asked whether Rand was declining the conversation himself.
“Manager’s response,” the man said.
Anthony wrote it. I watched him add the apostrophe, slowly, with his less practiced hand.
There was another message waiting behind the one about rest. East wanted the visitors’ receiving authority confirmed before our arrival. Coben had sent a form for closing the inspection. It was traveling on the truck we would use to get there.
I asked the operator to send back that we had not yet inspected anything. He made room for it beneath the acknowledgment.
The woman behind me put her scarf on again. Water had gone down one sleeve. I moved away from the desk so she could sit, and took my copy of the exchange to the greenhouse.
Lisa had work for my hands. That was fortunate. For a while I had wanted to put them through the radio.
Nell Kerrigan’s sister had crossed out the word home so hard that the paper had split.
There is a bed here, the letter said now. The little room beside mine. You can shut the door.
I held it by the edges while Lisa tied a bundle of cut stems. Water dripped from the stems into the shallow tray between us. The greenhouse roof had clouded overnight, and along one pane the cold had drawn a white border that had not been there in October.
“Did she want me to read this?” I asked.
“She asked you to check that it didn’t sound like an order.” Lisa pulled the string tight with her good hand. “I said you weren’t an expert on sisters.”
“I could have saved her the paper.”
“She knows. She wanted you to carry it anyway.”
I folded the letter on its original creases. Nell’s name was written outside in a hand that had started firmly and grown smaller toward the end. Her sister had waited beside me at the meals hatch twice in the past three weeks. Neither time had she mentioned Nell. Then, yesterday, she had brought this.
The truck Sabrina had booked three weeks earlier was due that afternoon. Tomorrow we could finally leave.
On the bench lay seven more messages. One had been sealed with flour paste. Another was simply a name and a question on the back of a planting notice. Lisa had helped me match their senders to the people on the East Works account. Where there was a connection she could confirm, she had written what she knew. Where there wasn’t, she had left the space empty.
“Eight,” I said.
“Eight messages.”
“Yes.”
Lisa pushed a leaf out of the knot before it could rot there. “You were about to say eight wanted back.”
“I was counting.”
“You’ve counted them three times.”
I put the messages in the oilcloth envelope. Fourteen people appeared on the eastern labor sheet. Six had no one at Alder Reach to offer a bed. Ben was one of those six, unless I counted myself. I had a room with a borrowed mattress and a desk that still lacked drawers. I could offer him a chair. I had been arranging the rest in my head.
June came down the aisle dragging an empty basket. It bumped at every board, although lifting it would have been less work. She stopped by Lisa and put a small potato on the bench.
“This one looks like a hand.”
“It looks like supper,” Lisa said.
“It has a thumb.”
“So do you. Wash yours.”
June inspected the potato from a second angle, then set it carefully apart from the others. She was wearing the blue jacket whose button I had sewn back in Lisa’s absence. Lisa had put a square of stout cloth behind the repair. I recognized the neat new stitches and left them alone.
“Are you going today?” June asked me.
“Tomorrow. Before breakfast.”
“That’s a bad time.”
“It’s the time the road needs.”
“Does Ben have a coat?”
“I don’t know what coat he has.”
She thought about that. “Peter could mend it.”
“If it needs mending. If Peter goes.”
June took her potato to the basin. The important part of the trip, as far as she was concerned, had been discussed. She began explaining to another child that washing the hand off would not improve it.
Lisa watched until they settled at the bench, then picked up my eastern list. “Nell used to help with the seed sorting. She wouldn’t let anyone mix the envelopes. Thea I only met once, before they sent her. I don’t know what she was told.”
“I’m going to ask them.”
“I know.” She touched one name farther down. “This man I never met. Don’t let somebody tell you that means he didn’t live here. People came through the clinic when I was at work. I didn’t see everyone.”
I marked the distinction. Her hand had healed enough for light greenhouse work, but she still turned jars against her apron instead of gripping them with both hands. The wrist that had caught in the annex door had not forgotten it because she was home.
On the shelf behind her stood the old greenhouse book. Its receipt for a vent catch had been one of the first things that proved the office’s account of Lisa could not be true. Now the book was open to watering. A disagreement over the north beds occupied the margin, with Odile’s answer underneath. Both women had used more pencil than the plants required.
“Will you come to the gate tomorrow?” I asked.
“No. June has school, and I’ve got these to finish before the frost.”
“Of course.”
Lisa studied me. “You don’t need us standing there to see you off.”
I slid the envelope inside my coat.
“Give Nell her letter before you tell her anything about the room,” Lisa said. “Her sister means well. Nell will still want to decide what she means by it.”
I promised. At the door June held up the potato, wet now, to show that the thumb had survived. I told her it had improved. She said that wasn’t what she asked.
Outside, the morning smelled of wet leaves and stove smoke. The cottages had become visible through the thinning trees. Lisa’s house was the second along the lane; I no longer turned toward it with my empty water jug.
From the lane I could see the office building. Gaber was still kept there under watch, pending his full hearing before the Compact. He had run Alder Reach, and his signature had sent people east.
I went up to the header tank to find Peter.
The lift knocked before I reached the shed. Once each turn, a brief hard sound followed by the quieter movement of water. Pruitt had the casing open, and Peter stood beside him with the original maintenance request in a clear sleeve. The order for a new bearing was still outstanding. The number had survived the change from Gaber’s signature to the receivers’ and most of a month. The bearing had survived by other means.
“Don’t put your hand there,” Peter told Pruitt.
Pruitt moved his hand. “I know.”
“Then surprise me.”
The two smallest fingers of Peter’s left hand remained supported together. Stowe had permitted gentle use, not heavy gripping. Peter had been testing the difference on every object in his workshop, and every object had given him the same answer.
I set down the small tin of lubricant I had collected on the way. Pruitt lifted the cover clear while Peter checked the exposed assembly. His right hand did most of the work. When he needed something held, he asked. I watched him ask, and tried not to reward an ordinary sensible decision by looking relieved.
“The return guide’s holding,” he said to me. “The bearing is still worn.”
“I heard it from the path.”
“That saves opening a school for it.”
Pruitt gave a short laugh. Peter worked lubricant into the place he could reach, then stood back for Pruitt to turn the mechanism through. Water struck the extended guide and went into the channel. Last month it had been falling short and eating away the bank. One thing had been fixed. The other hadn’t.
“Will it hold while we’re away?” I asked.
Peter wiped his right hand, slowly.
Pruitt bent over the casing as if the answer were written inside it.
“I was going to ask you,” I said.
“When?”
“After this.”
“After you asked whether the machinery would last while I was gone.”
The little tin had left an oily circle on the sleeve around the request. I cleaned it with the edge of my glove. I had written Peter’s name in the driving space the previous evening, in pencil, as though a pencil made assumption courteous.
“You said you might.”
“I said I’d look at the job.”
“I’ve brought the route notes.”
“Good. I’ll look at those.”
Pruitt fitted the cover back with unnecessary attention to the threads. I waited until the last bolt was seated before taking the notes out. We walked down as far as the dry part of the path and stood over the map.
Fifty-seven road miles to Mill Crossing. Another seventy-three to East Works. Two days on roads that had once seemed too short to pack food for. I showed him the return estimate, the stops, the load limit. His finger followed the eastern grade and stopped at a notation about reversing space.
“I’ve driven that model,” he said. “Stowe’s checked the movements I’ll need. When it gets here, Pruitt and I will try it in the yard. Steering, gears, reversing. If the hand won’t manage, we find another driver.”
“Jack wants to come. We’ve set aside time with Penny to agree his part.”
“He’ll want to do mine too.” Peter folded the corner of the map back from a damp patch. “Keep me from letting him.”
“Will you come?”
Peter read the last road note again before he answered. “Yes. For the journey and the loading plan. If there’s skilled machinery work, we need whoever actually knows it. I’m a carpenter who can drive, Steph.”
“You’ve never sounded more attractive.”
He glanced up, and for a moment the map ceased to be the thing between us. Then he folded it, carefully, with his good hand.
“Put that in the terms.”
We went down to his workshop. A coat hung from the doorway peg, one sleeve pinned shorter than the other. The coat Peter had been altering when Sabrina left on the fifteenth had finally gone home yesterday, after two fittings and an objection to the length. This one’s owner had yet to offer an opinion. Peter moved it inside before the wind could catch the sleeve.
Over the bench he had left a list for the people taking his repairs. There were dates beside three jobs and a question beside a fourth. He crossed out nothing when he added his departure. I waited while he explained the awkward hinge to Pruitt, who had followed us down with the tin.
At the foot of the stairs to his rooms, Peter touched my sleeve with the back of his right hand.
“Supper?”
“I still have to see Penny.”
“After Penny.”
“Yes.”
He went upstairs to pack. I took the path to my guest room, carrying the messages and the driving notes. At my desk I rubbed out the penciled name and wrote it again, this time beside the limits he had given me.
Then I moved Ben’s proposed bed out of my room on the lodging sketch and left its place blank until we could ask him.
