“I’ll see how the floor suits me tonight.” Before the semblance of comfort was completely gone, I said, “I’m going to need a few things for the cottage. Tools, mostly.”
“There’s work for you to do there, sure enough,” Moa replied. “Some of your things are in the closet off the kitchen. You best have a cup of coffee first. There’s ham and biscuits, too.”
“Wait—” But Moa was gone through the screen door, and Maggie was lying on the walkway as though my word were for her.
“There’s all sorts of confusion,” Wilson was saying. “All you can do is make sense of the pieces in front of you. It was the same when I got back.”
“And when was that?”
“A bit ago.”
“Marie was here?”
“Yes.” He held the screen open for me. “Come on in and have some breakfast.”
“Wait,” I said, even though Maggie was already waiting.
The dining room was swept clear of any memory of our dinner, and the door to the kitchen stood open. The worktable was the only thing I recognized, though it was as shiny and polished as the rest of the house. An icebox thrummed loudly against the wall. The sink had a lever and a faucet. The electric cookstove had coiled burners circling round the black dots at their centers. New, white cupboards lined the walls, top and bottom, and several cooking gadgets sat on the countertops. I didn’t even know what they were. Mixers? Grinders?
“Lovely, isn’t it?” Moa said. “Marie had it done over like this for me, seeing as I spend so much time in here. She let me pick the paper.”
There was only one wall of it — a pattern of lacy squares framing miniature men offering miniature women disproportionately large tulips. The women’s faces looked out at the room, surprise on their features, the men in profile, expressionless. That paper still rings desperate to me, and pointedly sad.
“Mr. Roscoe,” Moa said, “the closet is over here.”
I remembered the closet, a narrow shaft of a room used for storage of strange or useless things, often with sentimental value. We’d rarely go in with the mind of taking something out, as opposed to putting something in.
It was packed tight with everything I once owned.
“Wilson’s parked one of the wheelbarrows out the kitchen door for you to use for the hauling. I’ll get you some breakfast. Suppose that dog’ll need to eat, too.” She dropped a pile of meat scraps into a metal bowl. “You can call it round back if you want.”
Maggie and Wilson hadn’t moved from their spots.
“Tried to call her up here, but she’s not interested in listening to me. Figure she’s used to treeing men my color.”
“There weren’t that many men your color at Kilby.”
“Why put a man in prison when you can sell him to the mines for a few bucks.”
I could only look at Wilson, his empty, pinned-up sleeve, the scars on his remaining hand, and imagine myself saying something that righted it.
“Once you take stock of what you have in the closet there, you let me know what else you need.”
“Thank you. Come on, Maggie.” I gave her the bowl to sniff, and she followed eagerly, sticking her nose into my leg a few times, nudging me.
Wilson laughed at us from his height on the porch. “I think that dog’s got a good retirement in front of her.”
I remember chewing on that word—retirement.
MAGGIE lay flopped on her side in the grass outside the back door of the big house while I sorted my belongings into piles on the lawn. I imagined Marie collecting the big things first — my toolboxes and my clothing — and the small pieces last. I could see the stages of stashing away. The first layer — the last Marie had added — was made up of items of questionable ownership. I found the ashtray her father gave me one Christmas, one of the only gifts I’d ever received from him. “It was his father’s before it was his,” Marie had told me, and not only had it belonged to her grandfather, it had been made by him, too. Her grandfather had been a silversmith, the house full of his platters and candlesticks, the family silverware, the tea service. Marie had a silver-handled hairbrush and hand mirror that he’d made for her when she was a girl. That ashtray was likely put in the final layer because Marie couldn’t decide whether it was mine.
A framed photo of our wedding was stacked next to a painting done by my mother that Marie had admired, a silhouette in profile of my own head that Marie had commissioned and hung next to a matching one of hers, a small relief map of the state, hand-painted by the cartographer, a friend of Marie’s father. I found a carving knife, also the work of Marie’s grandfather, a silk handkerchief. Toward the back, I would find my electrical texts, but at the front I found an almanac from 1923 and a cookbook. I found a stuffed bear of Gerald’s with blue button eyes and a red plaid jacket. I didn’t know why these things were mine, but I sorted them all the same. Clothing and sitting-room things and trinkets and books. By the time I reached the back wall, I’d uncovered my rifle and three boxes of cartridges, all my tools, several jars of nails and screws, nine long coils of wire, and a remaining box of ceramic insulators.
MAGGIE was chewing on a bone when I carried out the last items.
“She’s got that face,” Moa said, hanging sheets on the line. “Puts those ears down and she can get ’bout anything she wants, can’t she? Wilson got two deer last week. There’s only so much stock I can make with the bones. Set you a bagful by your boots.”
“Next thing you know, you’ll be letting her in the house.”
“Careful, Mr. Roscoe.”
It was almost nice standing there, my dog gnawing a bone, the hint of humor between Moa and me, the warm sun, the leafy oaks, the fields stretching off behind them.
Moa took a clothespin from her mouth. “I’d like to see this lawn again before nightfall.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I’d never before said those words to Moa.
Maggie trotted along behind me as I pushed the first load to the cottage, the bone a prize in her mouth. She was already calmer than she’d been when we arrived, shrugging off that nervous need to run and sniff and hunt.
“Better not get too comfortable,” I told her. “We won’t be here long.”
My arms and legs were worn-out by my second run, and I took a rest after the third. It was dusk, and the air was crisper, but my shirt was wet through with sweat. I still hadn’t retrieved my jacket from the foyer. I pumped water at the sink in the cottage and filled a small cup. Maggie poked her nose into my knee.
“Thirsty?” I filled a bowl to set on the floor. She let the bone down gently and lapped at the water with her long tongue. She’d always been a dainty drinker. Even after a tough chase, she’d keep the same gentle motion, the other dogs nearly drowning themselves in their frantic thirst.
My jacket sat on a crate of jarred food in the yard, a towel-wrapped package on top of it. Moa had brought me dinner and something for the pantry. I loaded the painting and map and photo, the silhouette, the ashtray, the bear, having saved them for the end in the half hope that they’d disappear. I added my jacket and my food, and Maggie and I started for our home.
We’d already knocked the trail back down, the grasses flattened underfoot, but I wouldn’t clear the brush or trim the branches. I’d rather duck to avoid those limbs overhead than open up a view to the big house.
Ten yards from the cottage, Maggie stopped, pointing as she’d been taught at the figure who ran toward us. Recognizing Wilson, she relaxed her pose and wagged her tail. He bent down to rub her head with his half arm, running it along the ridge of her skull. His right hand held an old thermos and a burlap sack.
“Moa thought you’d do for some coffee after your labors. Said you can keep that thermos. And there’s beans in the sack there.”