He had driven the wagon 14 mi from his claim on Alkali Creek, and he had not slept well the night before because he had spent most of it sitting at his kitchen table with a pencil and a piece of paper trying to decide how much it would cost to feed and clothe a child for a year and whether 80 acres of winter wheat and a dozen head of cattle could carry two people or whether he was lying to himself about the math. He had decided it could carry two. It could not carry three. He walked toward the children. The tallest boy watched him come.
The boy had dark hair cut short and a jaw that was already going square the way a boy's does when he is about to stop being a boy. And he stood with his feet apart and his chin up like a young man who had already learned that the people who came to these platforms were shopping and that the ones who stood tallest got picked first. Caleb stopped in front of him. He said, "What is your name?" The boy said, "Edmund Pace."
He said, "How old are you, Edmund?" The boy said, "12, sir." Caleb said, "You have worked before." Edmund said, "I split wood at the home for two years and I can handle a team. I do not complain and I do not steal."
The boy said it flat, rehearsed, every word sanded down to nothing by repetition. Caleb nodded and moved to the next child, a girl of about 10 with red hair tied back with a strip of cloth. She told him her name was Ada and that she could sew and cook and keep a kitchen. The next was a boy of nine named Joseph who said nothing at all and stared at the boards. The next was a girl of seven named Pearl who smiled at him with two teeth missing and said she could read.
The next was a boy of six named Thomas who sneezed twice during the conversation and wiped his nose on his sleeve and said he was strong. The next was a girl of five named Lucille who held the hand of the last child in line and would not let go of it. The last child was the youngest, four years old, maybe less, a girl with dark hair cut rough and a coat that was too large for her, so the sleeves hung past her fingers. She held Lucille's hand with one arm and with the other she held the canvas sack Ruth Ames had pressed into her grip and she did not look up at Caleb when he stood in front of her. She looked at his boots.
He said, "What is your name?" The child said nothing. Lucille said, "Her name is Bess. She does not talk to new people." Caleb said, "Does she talk to you?"
Lucille said, "She talks to me and she talks to Ada and sometimes she talks to Edmund, but only when he is not looking at her." Caleb straightened up and looked down the line. Seven children, all of them watching him now, except the smallest, who was still looking at his boots as though she were trying to decide something about the man attached to them. He walked back to Ruth Ames. He said, "I need a minute."