A Place at the Table
By the time they reached Calder’s place, Eddie had worked a hole through the bread with his thumb.
He did not remember doing it. He looked down when the wagon slowed and found the piece flattened in his palm, its middle crumbled across his trousers. For a moment he studied it as though somebody had handed him a tool whose purpose he ought to know.
“You can eat that,” Calder said.
Eddie brushed the crumbs into his other hand.
“Wasn’t thinking.”
“Figured.”
The wagon turned between two leaning fence posts. Beyond them stood a small house of weathered boards, a shed with one corner propped on stacked stone, and a corral enclosing more dust than livestock. A windlass hung over the well. Someone had planted beans beside the house and rigged an old flour sack above them for shade.
Ordinary things. Eddie tried to keep his attention on them.
A bucket hung from a nail. A broken rake leaned against the shed. Beside the kitchen door, somebody had worn a shallow hollow into the wooden step.
He could understand those things. A person could pick up the rake and mend it. Lower the bucket. Replace the step when it split.
Behind his eyes, a shovel scraped stone.
Eddie closed his hand around the bread.
Calder brought the mule to a stop and set the brake.
“Stay there a minute.”
He climbed down with the stiff care of a man who had spent too much of his life climbing down from things. Eddie watched him cross to the house and push the door open.
“Ruth?”
There was no answer.
Calder stood in the doorway a moment before glancing back.
“My wife’s at her sister’s. Won’t be home till tomorrow, most likely.”
Eddie nodded.
“Probably just as well,” Calder added. “She’d make you drink something terrible.”
He said it with the practiced ease of a husband accustomed to having his complaints overheard. The empty doorway seemed to trouble him afterward. He rubbed the back of his neck, then returned to the wagon.
Eddie tried to climb down without help.
His boot found the wheel hub. His knee folded beneath him.
Calder caught his coat and hauled him sideways against the wagon, grunting under the weight.
“Going somewhere in a hurry?”
“No.”
“Then let’s take our time.”
They crossed the yard with Eddie’s arm over Calder’s shoulders. Black Jack followed as far as the step and stopped there, ears forward.
Inside, the house smelled of coffee, stove ash, and soap. Two plates stood drying beside a washbasin. A blue dress hung from a peg near the back door. There was a Bible on a shelf above the table, its cracked leather cover held together by a strip of cloth.
Calder eased Eddie into a chair.
The wood creaked beneath him.
“Now,” Calder said, catching his breath. “Let’s get some of that road off you.”
***
The first basin of water turned brown.
Calder carried it outside and returned with another. Eddie sat with his coat on the chair beside him and his sleeves rolled above the elbows. Dust had worked into every fold of the cloth. There was dirt beneath his collar, inside his cuffs, and along the ridge of his spine.
He could feel more of it when he moved.
Calder set down a clean rag.
“I can manage,” Eddie said.
“I expect you can.”
The older man went to the stove, giving him room.
Eddie dipped the rag and wiped his face. Water ran down his neck. He scrubbed behind his ears, then worked carefully around his mouth. His lower lip was split. When he pressed the cloth against it, he tasted blood beneath the grit.
He held the rag there longer than necessary.
Blood meant something was still working.
At the stove, Calder struck a match. Sulfur sharpened the air.
Eddie’s hand stopped.
A lamp swung beneath a timber beam.
Somebody was laughing.
He saw a sleeve rolled above a thick forearm, a pale line of old burn tissue crossing the wrist. Then came a sound so loud it seemed to fill the kitchen.
The basin rattled against the table.
Calder turned.
Eddie was standing. Water had spilled across his boots. The chair lay behind him, one leg still trembling where it struck the floor.
For a moment neither moved.
Then Calder laid the match in the stove.
“Just lighting the fire.”
Eddie looked at him. At the stove. At the water spreading between the floorboards.
“I know.”
Calder waited.
“I know,” Eddie repeated, more quietly.
He righted the chair.
His hands had begun to shake. He pressed them against his thighs, but Calder had already seen.
“There’s no hurry here,” the farmer said.
Eddie sat.
Outside, Jack struck a hoof against the step.
***
Calder found a tin of salve in a drawer and set it beside the basin.
“Ruth uses that on everything from fence cuts to stove burns. Can’t speak for the taste.”
Eddie managed something close to a smile.
He soaked his fingers until the dirt softened, then began picking it out with the corner of the cloth. The work required his full attention. That helped.
Most of the splinters were small.
One was nearly an inch long.
He eased it from beneath the torn edge of his thumbnail and laid it on the table.
Calder had been cutting potatoes. His knife paused.
The wood was dark on one side and pale where it had split. A little dirt clung to the pointed end.
Eddie looked at it.
There had been wood above his face.
He knew that now.
Close enough to touch with his nose when he lifted his head. Close enough that the first time he tried to move, his forehead struck it.
He gripped the edge of the table.
“Son?”
Eddie could hear his own breathing. The kitchen seemed too warm, its ceiling too low.
“How far?”
Calder set down the knife.
“How far what?”
“From where you found me. To that ridge.”
The farmer’s expression changed almost imperceptibly.
“Few hundred yards, perhaps.”
“Did you see anybody?”
“No.”
“Tracks? Another wagon?”
“Road’s full of tracks.”
Eddie swallowed. His throat hurt.
Calder drew out the other chair and sat opposite him.
“Tell me what you remember.”
Eddie looked down at the splinter.
“I was under something.”
The farmer said nothing.
“Boards.”
A fly moved along the rim of the basin. Eddie watched it wash its forelegs.
“I couldn’t sit up.”
Calder’s eyes lowered to Eddie’s hands.
For a while the house was quiet except for the stove beginning to draw.
“You might’ve been in a wreck,” Calder said at last. “Somebody could have—”
“No.”
The word came out harder than Eddie intended.
He tried again.
“No. I heard them.”
Calder waited.
“The dirt.”
The farmer leaned back slowly.
Eddie wanted him to offer another explanation. A collapsed shed. A mine accident. Anything solid enough to put between himself and the memory of that first mouthful of earth.
Instead, Calder reached across the table and turned the tin of salve so its lid faced him.
“Let’s finish with your hands.”
***
There was a small mirror hanging beside the back door.
Eddie noticed it when Calder went out to unharness the mule.
He stood before it with one hand resting against the wall.
The glass was old, dark at the edges, and flawed by a narrow ripple that bent the doorframe behind him. His face appeared in pieces as he moved into view.
He knew it.
That should have comforted him.
Dark hair. A faint scar near the left eyebrow. A jaw he remembered shaving, though he could not have said when. His eyes looked sunken, and the skin beneath them had a bruised appearance.
He pulled open his shirt.
The scar below his breastbone was still there.
He touched it with two fingers.
A sudden certainty rose in him: there ought to be pain.
He remembered the pain.
A deep blow that had knocked the air out of him. His knees striking something hard. One hand reaching for a belt buckle because it was the nearest thing he could see.
Eddie turned sideways and lifted the back of his shirt.
Another scar.
Higher than the first, just to the left of his spine.
He let the cloth fall.
For a long moment he stared at the reflection without recognizing the expression on its face.
Then he pressed two fingers beneath his jaw.
He had seen men do that after accidents. At the mine. Beside an overturned wagon. Once in a saloon, while somebody held a chair against a door that would not stay shut.
He moved his fingers.
Pressed harder.
There.
A beat.
He waited.
Nothing.
His mouth went dry.
He shifted his hand again, searching beneath the other side of his jaw. The skin was cool. He could feel the pressure of his own fingertips and the slight movement when he swallowed.
At last, another beat came.
Slow. Heavy.
Eddie pulled his hand away.
Outside, Calder spoke softly to the mule.
The animal snorted. A buckle rang against wood.
Eddie stood listening to those small sounds until he could make himself leave the mirror.
***
They ate late.
Calder set a plate of potatoes and beans before him, along with a spoon and another piece of bread. The farmer bowed his head briefly, murmured thanks, and began.
Eddie watched him for a moment before picking up his spoon.
The beans tasted of salt and onion. He could taste the iron of the spoon as well, and the faint char where something had caught against the bottom of the pot.
He ate three mouthfuls.
On the fourth, his stomach tightened so suddenly he bent forward over the plate.
Calder lowered his fork.
“Too much?”
Eddie nodded.
“You haven’t had food in a while, likely.”
Likely.
Eddie set the spoon down.
“How long?”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
“What day is it?”
Calder gave him the date.
Eddie repeated it silently.
The numbers meant nothing. He searched for a remembered morning to place beside them: the day he had risen, the last meal he had eaten, the last person he had spoken to before the lamp and the gun.
There were fragments everywhere.
A wrench warm from his hand.
Music coming through a wall.
A woman standing on a porch, holding something against her chest.
He reached for that one and lost it.
“What do you do, Eddie?”
He looked up.
“For work,” Calder said.
“Machinery.”
The answer came readily enough to surprise him.
“What sort?”
“Pumps. Engines. Hoists.”
“A mining man?”
Eddie nodded slowly.
He could picture the machinery better than he could picture his own room. A drum wound with cable. Bearings needing grease. A valve someone had tightened too far.
“There’s a pump behind the shed that could use an introduction,” Calder said.
“I could look.”
“Tomorrow.”
Eddie rubbed his thumb along the table’s edge.
A short nail had worked loose beneath it. He pressed it back without thinking.
Calder noticed.
“Family?”
The question stopped his hand.
A woman’s voice surfaced, speaking from another room.
*Edward.*
Not angry. Calling him in.
He saw dark red hair in lamplight.
Then nothing.
“I think so.”
Calder looked at him for several seconds before returning to his meal.
“Well,” he said, “we’ll start there when you’ve rested.”
Eddie glanced toward the darkening window.
He did not want to rest.
***
Calder made a bed for him on a narrow cot in the small room off the kitchen.
There were sacks of flour beneath a shelf, a sewing basket, and a wooden chest with a quilt folded across its lid. The cot had evidently served other visitors. Its blanket was worn soft, and a shallow dip marked the place where someone’s shoulder usually lay.
Eddie stood in the doorway.
Calder set a lamp on the chest.
“Window sticks a little. Lift the left corner first if you want it open.”
“Thank you.”
“Water’s in the kitchen.”
The farmer lingered, looking at Eddie’s hands.
Then he took a small pocketknife from his trousers and placed it beside the lamp.
Eddie stared at it.
“Door’s got a latch,” Calder said. “But it doesn’t lock.”
He left before Eddie could answer.
For a while Eddie remained standing.
The room smelled of folded cloth and dry flour. Through the wall came the quiet sounds of Calder putting the house to bed: plates stacked, a chair moved, stove doors closed.
Eddie sat on the cot.
The ropes beneath the mattress gave a little under his weight.
He took the pocketknife and opened its smallest blade. It was clean and worn thin from sharpening.
He set it within reach.
Then he lay down with his boots on.
The ceiling was close.
He turned onto his side.
Closer still.
He shut his eyes.
The darkness changed.
***
At first he thought somebody was holding a hand over his mouth.
He tried to turn his head, but there was nowhere to turn it. His shoulder struck wood. His knees struck wood. When he raised his arms, his knuckles met a board so close above him that he could not draw them back far enough to hit it properly.
He called out.
Dirt fell between his lips.
He spat and called again.
Above him came a muffled scrape.
A weight settled across his chest.
No. Not his chest.
The lid.
He could feel it bowing.
He shoved both palms against it and heard a nail complain somewhere near his ear. Hope came so suddenly that he almost cried out again.
Then the earth shifted.
The board pressed lower.
He tried to draw breath and found none.
There had been words after that. He knew he had spoken them, though he could no longer hear what they were. A prayer, perhaps. A name.
His nails caught beneath a split in the timber.
He pulled.
Something tore.
***
Eddie struck the floor beside the cot.
The lamp rocked on the chest.
He crawled backward until his shoulders hit the wall, one arm raised across his face.
Footsteps came from the kitchen.
“Eddie?”
He could not answer.
The door opened.
Calder stood there in his undershirt, a lamp in one hand.
“You’re in the house,” he said.
Eddie stared at the light.
“Look at me.”
The farmer crouched slowly.
“You’re in my house.”
Eddie dragged air into his lungs.
It hurt.
That helped.
He took another breath, then another, until the room began to hold still.
Calder stayed where he was.
After a while Eddie lowered his arm.
“I’m sorry.”
“No damage.”
The farmer glanced at the cot, then at the untouched pocketknife beside the lamp.
“Kitchen’s cooler,” he said. “I was thinking of sitting up awhile.”
Eddie nodded.
Neither mentioned that Calder had already gone to bed.
***
They sat at the table with the back door open.
The night air carried the smell of dust and livestock. Jack stood beyond the step, half visible in the lamplight. Every so often he shifted, and the boards gave a small answering creak beneath his weight.
Calder poured water into two cups.
Eddie wrapped both hands around his.
“I need to go back.”
The farmer did not ask where.
“Tonight?”
Eddie looked out into the yard.
He could not see the ridge from here. That did not matter. He felt its direction as surely as if a string had been drawn between it and the scar beneath his shirt.
“No,” he said at last. “Morning.”
Calder nodded.
“I’ll go with you.”
“You’ve done enough.”
“Probably.”
Eddie looked across the table.
The farmer lifted his cup.
“Still going.”
For the first time since the ditch, Eddie felt something loosen inside him.
It lasted only a moment.
Then he noticed the sound.
A faint metallic ticking came from beyond the open door.
He turned his head.
Calder drank.
The ticking continued, irregular but persistent.
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
Eddie listened.
There was a small wheel turning somewhere. A loose piece tapping with every revolution. He could almost picture it: a pin working out of its hole, wearing bright along one side.
“Outside.”
Calder frowned toward the yard.
“Windlass, perhaps.”
“No.”
Eddie stood.
The ticking stopped.
He waited.
Then, from somewhere beyond the corral, a chain drew slowly over metal.
His cup slipped from his hand.
Water spread across the table.
He knew that sound.
Not from the grave.
From before.
A cage rising through a shaft. Guide wheels whining. Men waiting on the landing while the machinery labored overhead.
And a voice close behind him.
*Leave it, Bone.*
Eddie gripped the back of his chair.
Calder rose.
“What is it?”
Another fragment came, clear enough to hurt.
A hand caught the back of his coat. He turned, irritated, already beginning to speak.
The gun was lower than he expected.
So close he could see oil collected around a screw in its frame.
Then the face above it—
Eddie shut his eyes.
“Rusk.”
The name seemed to change the room.
Calder waited until Eddie looked at him.
“Who’s Rusk?”
Eddie felt the scar through his shirt.
He could remember the man’s face now. Not all of it at once, but enough. The heavy brow. The pale skin where his hat usually sat. His mouth moving after the gun went off.
There had been no surprise in that face.
No effort to help.
Only impatience.
Eddie drew out the chair and sat before his legs could fail him.
Outside, Jack came up to the doorway.
“Eddie,” Calder said gently. “Who is he?”
Eddie looked at the water moving between the table boards.
“The man who shot me.”