Part 2
She studied him for another moment, then rose and fetched paper from beside the biscuit tin.
“Quantities, prices, delivery day. Both our names. And I keep a copy.”
A small crease appeared beside his mouth. “I’d have insisted on the same.”
They worked through the terms at her table. She corrected one figure; he added the date. When both copies were signed, Lydia entered the advance in her ledger, and Silas counted forty dollars into her open hand.
She closed her fingers around the coins only after checking the ledger once more. Silas drank the coffee, cold by then, and left with no cow behind his horse.
On Monday, Lydia paid the bank.
The clerk’s pen scratched across a receipt while she watched his sleeve brush the counter. Outside, she unfolded the paper to be certain the sum was correct. Then she slipped it into the biscuit tin at home, between the deed and the divorce decree.
Her first delivery required a borrowed wagon and a start before sunrise. She wrapped the butter in damp cloths, nested the cheeses where they would not bounce, and turned to find Eli waiting with Mallow’s rope.
“No,” she began.
The boy stood firm. The cow waited beside him with the untroubled patience that had defeated Lydia before.
“All right. But you’ll be responsible for watering her.”
They traveled slowly. Twice Lydia pulled off the road to rest the animal, and Eli carried water while his mother checked the cloths around the butter. By the time they reached the Mercer gate, the sun was well up.
Silas came out to meet them. His gaze passed over the cow, then returned to Lydia without comment.
Beyond him stretched a log house longer than she had expected, a broad-roofed barn, corrals, and a bunkhouse with smoke lifting from its chimney. Men paused at their work as she drove in.
“Our dairy supplier,” Silas told them. “Mrs. Voss.”
A lanky man with a mustache hanging past the corners of his mouth removed his hat.
“Amos Fitch, ma’am. Foreman. You’ve arrived none too soon.”
Lydia uncovered the basket. Someone fetched biscuits. By the time she had set up her brass scale, a line had formed at the kitchen door.
Amos spread butter with such care that she wondered whether something was wrong. He took a bite, stopped chewing for a moment, then slowly finished it.
“Well?” Silas asked.
Amos held up one hand. “Let a man have his minute.”
The others laughed, and Lydia found herself smiling while she weighed the next pound. She wrote every measure in her notebook. Silas stood clear of her work and waited until she closed it.
“We’ll look for you next Thursday.”
“You’ll have your order.”
By the following week, the men had appointed themselves authorities on cheese. Amos reported their discussions with a solemnity Lydia could not quite meet with a straight face.
For a while, he also arranged the wagon and helped with the journey. Then, toward the end of June, Silas began arriving at the farm himself.
There was always some reason. He wanted to look at a wagon wheel. The cook had questions about the cheese rind. An unnecessary sack of flour had turned up in the ranch stores. He could make each errand sound sensible until he remained on the porch long after it was finished.
Eli watched him from the upper step.
Silas did not press him to talk. One afternoon, he sat on the lowest step, leaving a space between them. Eli moved down one tread, then another, and began explaining why Mallow preferred the creek pasture.
“Will you show me?” Silas asked.
The walk should have taken ten minutes. They needed nearly half an hour. There were three barn cats to account for, a place where Eli had seen a fox in April, and a particular stretch of gravel that supplied the proper skipping stones.
At the creek, Eli chose a flat one, bent sideways, and sent it across the water. It struck five times.
Silas let out a delighted laugh.
“Who showed you how?”
“I kept trying till it worked.”
“Don’t let anybody improve your method.”
Lydia stood outside with a dish towel folded over her wrist. Eli was laughing now, arguing that Silas had chosen a stone much too thick. She stayed until she heard the splash of the failed throw and her son’s triumphant shout.
Over the summer, Silas supplied pieces of his history as slowly as Eli had supplied his confidence.
His father had driven cattle and considered tenderness a defect best corrected early. Silas had left for the West at nineteen. He had built the ranch through bad winters, borrowed money, and work that left little room for anything else. There had been a girl in Kentucky once. While he was away, she married another man.
“At twenty-six, I decided an empty house suited me,” he told Lydia.
“Does it?”
He rubbed a thumbnail along a seam in his glove. “I’ve had thirteen years to reconsider.”
His house had ten rooms, he said, though he used only two.
“What do you do with the others?”
“Keep the doors shut. They’ve always seemed to be waiting for somebody.”
Lydia shook out the dish towel and folded it again.
She still refused his offers of help. A hand sent over to mend fence returned with a pie and instructions to leave her posts alone. A proposed barn door met the same answer without the pie.
One evening Silas found her coming from the spring with two full buckets. He reached for the nearer handle.
“Leave it, please.”
He stopped so abruptly that water slopped over her wrist.
After a moment, he asked, “Have I offended you?”
“I’m able to carry my own water.”
“I haven’t doubted that.”
She waited, breathing hard from the climb.
“I’d like to walk up with you,” he said. “Would you let me carry one while I do?”
She looked from his empty hand to the path ahead. At last she lowered a bucket far enough for him to take it.
They climbed without speaking. At the porch, Lydia set hers down and rested her fingers against the handle.
“It matters that you asked,” she said.
His coat was still dusty from the range. When he bent to wash, she saw how slowly he straightened and guessed he had missed supper. She put cold chicken and bread on two plates, then sat opposite him instead of returning to the stove.
“You’ve work enough without feeding me,” he said.
“I’m feeding myself, too.”
“I don’t want to make more work.”
“Then eat before I decide you require waiting on.”
His laugh came out so unexpectedly that Eli lost his spoon into his bowl with a clatter.
In July, Eli brought news of the church social as though the congregation had entrusted him with its announcement.
“Music,” he said. “And pie. Mr. Mercer ought to go.”
“Mr. Mercer has business of his own.”
“You could find out…”
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