But the news that Calder Boon had taken nine orphan children off a train and installed them on his ranch had given the town something new and vivid to form opinions about, and it was doing so with genuine commitment. The feed store opinion was that it wouldn't last a month. The opinion at the barbers was divided. Half thought it was a decent thing that would fall apart for practical reasons. The other half thought it was a foolish thing that would fall apart for different practical reasons.
The opinion among the wives who gathered at the dry good store on Thursday mornings was more complicated, harder to summarize, which was usually a sign that the situation was more complicated than the men were crediting. Calder heard all of this secondhand through Wesley, who had ears like a bat and a habit of not mentioning what he'd heard until it became operationally relevant. "People think you can't do it," Wesley said. One evening when they were fixing the East Water Barrel seal and the sky was going purple and cold behind the barn. "I know.
Does that bother you? " Calder thought about it. "Only if they're right," he said. Wesley picked up the mallet. "Are they? Ask me in a year.
I'm asking you now. " Calder looked at him. Wesley was holding the mallet and looking back with that flat, careful gaze that was his default setting for conversations that mattered to him. His face gave nothing away, but the question itself gave everything away because Wesley did not ask questions he didn't need the answer to. No, Calder said. They're not right.
Wesley said nothing. He brought the mallet down on the barrel ring and it seated properly and he checked the seal and it held. Okay, he said. He didn't say I believe you. He didn't say thank you.
He said it say and picked up the tools and headed back toward the barn and Calder watched him go and understood in the way you come to understand things about people when you live alongside them that for Wesley okay was not a small word. It was the biggest one he had. 4 days later the town sent its official opinion in the form of a delegation. Three men from the county welfare board arrived on a Tuesday morning. Not Agnes, but the men who supervised Agnes, and they came with the specific and purposeful energy of people who have decided that something needs to be corrected and are being very official about correcting it.
Their leader was a man named Prescott who wore a good coat and carried himself with a confidence of someone who has never been wrong about anything important enough to matter. Calder met them in the yard. Mr. Boon Prescott said the board has become aware of the placement situation here and has concerns about its long-term suitability. What concerns?
Calder said. Multiple concerns. Prescott had a list. Of course, he had a list. The absence of female guardianship.
The lack of formal schooling arrangements. The financial capacity of a single income ranch to support. We have female members of the household. Calder said. Clara is 12 and capable.