Chapter 3

The first few days after I moved in, I went around helping to tidy up, though really I was taking stock.

The woodpile in the yard was stacked with a system to it, not just thrown together. One layer standing, one layer lying flat, crossed over each other. That way it wouldn't slide apart, and when it rained only the surface got wet.

That wasn't how we stacked wood back home.

I asked her,

"Did you stack this yourself?"

Her hands didn't stop. She said,

"He used to stack it. I do it the way he did."

I didn't ask anything more.

In the northeast corner of the yard there was a wooden rack, the kind you'd use to dry things on, and the feet of it were set on stones to keep the legs from rotting.

That was the sort of detail a plain farmhand like me would never have thought of.

The more I looked, the more I felt it. This house, this yard, everywhere I turned there was the mind of a man who had lived here.

He was gone, but his mind was still working in this place.

I had moved into a place he'd arranged, was using the tools he'd hung up, was sleeping on the bed he'd slept on.

That strange, pressing feeling started in those days.

I couldn't put a name to it.

Maybe it was this. A dead man, in some sense, seemed more the master of this house than I did, and I was the one still alive.

On the fifth day I lived there, the village came calling.

Three women, and the one leading them was named Lawrence, the village women's affairs director, with two chatterers trailing behind her.

They said they'd come to visit, carrying a bit of homemade tofu.

The moment they were through the door they started sizing me up.

Athena Lawrence sat down, a teacup pinched in her hand, her eyes running over me once before she opened her mouth.

"Where's your hometown?"

"How many people in your family?"

"You got much land?"

She asked it all with a smile, but the smile was hollow. Her eyes were carrying something else.

I answered every question.

When I finished she nodded, then turned to Carla Gray and said,

"Carla, when your husband was alive he was such an honest man. Never said half a word too many."

She paused, then went on,

"This new one, you can tell at a glance he's no easy lamp to keep lit."

I was holding a bowl just then. My hand didn't move, and neither did the bowl.

But there was a ringing in my ears.

Carla sat beside me, nothing changing in her face.

She waited for Athena to finish, then stood and topped off everyone's water, and said,

"Athena, it's cold out and the road's slick. Best get home early."

It wasn't an invitation. It was showing them out.

The three women looked at one another, but she was already standing at the door.

They left.

The yard gate shut.

She came back, filled a bowl of rice from the pot, and set it down in front of me.

She didn't say anything.

I stared at that bowl of rice for a while.

I'd meant to say "thanks."

But by the time it reached my lips it came out as something else.

"They'll come again."

She sat down, picked up her chopsticks, and said,

"Let them. We live our own life."

Around that time, word came from back home too.

My mother had a man from the neighboring town who was going in for market day carry a message over. She said my third and fourth brothers were gossiping behind my back, saying the second son had married into the childless farm village as a live-in husband and brought shame on the family.

My father was so angry he smashed his rice bowl.

Only my sister, Lena Abbott, quietly asked around to find out where I was and walked over ten miles to come see me.

When I saw her come through the gate into the yard, my eyes went red.

I didn't cry, but my throat closed up tight.

Lena came in, looked around the yard, then looked at me, her eyes rimmed red, and opened her mouth.

"Second brother, are you all right?"

Just that one line, and I almost couldn't hold it together.

I said,

"I'm fine, doing fine. Go back and tell Mom and Dad not to worry about me."

After she left, I sat in the yard smoking my pipe, one bowl after another.

The sky went full dark, the moon climbed up, and I still didn't move.

Then I heard something behind me. She had come out.

She didn't ask what was wrong, and she didn't say anything to comfort me.

She just carried over a small stool and sat down next to me.

The two of us sat there, neither of us saying a word.

The moon slid slowly to the west, until at last it went down.

Only then did she stand and go inside.

I sat a while longer, tapped out the ash, and went in too.

That night I slept deeper than any night before it.