Part 6
By March of 1889, the springhouse was in use, and a sign Lydia had painted hung beside the dairy entrance: Mallowmere. Beneath it, in smaller letters, she had written L. Mercer, proprietor.
Their daughter June was born that March, during a storm that drove snow against the upstairs shutters. Her eyes were gray, like Silas’s. Lydia recognized the chin before anyone spoke.
Silas held the baby as though the smallest movement required deliberation. He had gentled horses and turned stampeding cattle, but when June stirred in his hands, he looked toward Lydia for instructions.
Eli, nine now, stood beside the bed in his nightshirt. He offered one finger, and his sister gripped it.
“I’m your brother,” he told her. “I’ll show you how everything works.”
“Begin with feeding hens regularly,” Lydia said.
Silas laughed, and the baby startled. He apologized to her in a whisper.
That November, the family joined the crowd in Valdren to hear the news of South Dakota’s admission to the Union. Lydia held June on one arm and Silas’s hand with the other. Eli worked his way forward until he could hear every word of the announcement, then hurried back to tell them what they had all just heard.
Beth was born in 1892. She walked at ten months, climbed anything she could reach by her first birthday, and by three had earned the ranch hands’ nickname, Tornado. Keeping her in clean stockings required more attention than managing a butter order.
June preferred books, cats, and quiet places. She often sat beside old Mallow while the cow chewed, turning pages with careful fingers. Sometimes Lydia would look into the barn and remain at the doorway until June looked up.
The dairy grew by modest stages. Another customer brought the money for another cow; another good season paid for more equipment. Lydia’s agreements accumulated in the biscuit tin, and Silas learned to ask which clause applied before offering a suggestion.
Eli continued to call him Mr. Mercer.
Silas never corrected him. He answered as readily as he answered the girls’ calls, but Lydia noticed the brief stillness whenever the boy used the formal name.
The winter Eli turned sixteen was bitter. In January, the pump froze, and he and Silas took a sledge down to the creek to haul water. They were gone until dusk.
Lydia was setting supper out when the door opened. Cold air swept across the floor, followed by two red-faced figures laughing at some mishap she had missed.
“We got it, Mama,” Eli said through chattering teeth.
“I see that. You could have come in to warm yourselves.”
“Dad wanted to finish. He said you’d be watching for us.”
Silas stopped with one glove half removed.
Eli turned toward him.
“Let me hear that again,” Silas said quietly.
The boy’s grin softened.
“Dad.”
Silas pulled off the glove and laid his hand against the back of Eli’s neck. Lydia turned to fetch two more plates.
On May fourteenth, 1927, the table set across the lawn required extra boards, borrowed chairs, and a considerable argument about where to put the youngest children.
Forty years had passed since Silas rode into the Voss yard with forty dollars in his coat.
The dairy was Eli’s responsibility now, and at forty-seven he had a wife and four children as well. His mother’s painted sign remained at the entrance; whenever old ranch acquaintances saw him there with his hands clasped behind him, they glanced toward Silas and smiled.
June had come by train from Ardell with her husband. She taught school there and still carried a book whenever she expected to wait for anything. Beth arrived late from her own ranch across the valley, bringing mud on her boots and an explanation delivered so fast that nobody could interrupt it.
Eleven grandchildren spread over the grass and beneath the table. A young cow with a white blaze stood among them, tolerating their attention while she worked on a mouthful of greenery. She was Mallow’s great-granddaughter. Eli’s children had rejected every proposed name except Mallow.
Lydia watched from the porch swing, her cane propped where she could pretend she did not need it. At seventy-one, she still resented the thing. Silas sat beside her, seventy-nine, his beard white and his back as straight as ever. His hands moved slowly now, but he reached for hers without searching.
Amos had been gone for years. So had Everett Dace. Before his death, Dace had become one of the dairy’s best customers. Among his papers was a note left for Lydia, brief enough to fit beneath his name on a receipt: The account is settled. I never forgot that ledger.
She kept it in the old biscuit tin.
Out on the lawn, Beth retrieved a small child from under the table. June rescued a book from a plate. Eli stood beside the young cow, explaining to a grandson where she preferred to be scratched.
Lydia nudged the swing with the toe of her shoe.
“Do you remember how still you sat that morning?”
Silas turned toward her.
“When you first saw Eli and Mallow,” she said.
“I remember every bit of it.”
“What comes back to you most?”
He lifted her hand and rested it between both of his.
“I went to fetch a cow. You gave me a whole life.”
She leaned against his shoulder. On the lawn, young Mallow raised her head at a burst of laughter, considered the company, and bent to crop another mouthful of grass.