I know. I meant figure out what to do with the noise. Like maybe put it to use. Maisie looked at him sideways. How do you put noise to use?
I don't know yet. I'll think about it. He leaned his back against the seti. You want to tell me what's actually keeping you up? She was quiet for a long moment.
Four-year-olds were not in Calder's limited experience, known for articulating complex emotional situations. But Maisie had a way of being still and then saying the exact true thing which he was beginning to suspect was specific to her. "Are we going to be here tomorrow? " she said. "Yes. " "And the day after? " "Yes. " She picked at a loose thread on the hem of her night gown. The last place said, "Yes, too," she said.
And then we weren't there anymore. Calder felt that land somewhere in his chest, slow and heavy. What happened at the last place? He said carefully. I don't know, Maisie said.
Wesley knows. But he doesn't like to talk about it. All right. He didn't push it. I can't tell you what happened at the last place or the place before that.
I can only tell you about this place. And in this place, yes is yes. Maisie looked at the fire. How do I know? She said.
It was such a direct question, so cleanly put that Calder took a moment before answering. "You don't," he said. "Not yet. You'll have to watch and decide. " She turned and looked at him fully for the first time since he'd sat down beside her. Her dark eyes were very serious.
Wesley says that too, she said. "Watch and decide. " Wesley sounds like a smart kid. He is. A pause. He worries too much.
Somebody has to. Maisie almost smiled at that. Almost. That's what he says about me. She looked back at the fire.
My name means something, she said out of nowhere. The lady at the first house told me. She said it means a pearl. That's right. She also told me I was too much trouble.
Maisie said it without visible distress, just factually, the way you report the weather. So, I don't know which thing she meant more. Calder looked at this 4-year-old child who had just summed up in two sentences what it felt like to be told, "You were precious and disposable at the same time. " and he thought about several things he could say in response. And then he decided none of them were right. I think you can be both, he said.
A pearl in a lot of trouble. Doesn't cancel each other out. Maisie thought about this with appropriate seriousness. Okay, she said. Okay.
She stood up, apparently satisfied by something, though it wasn't entirely clear what, and walked to the bedroom doorway and then stopped and looked back at him. You didn't tuck me in before, she said. I didn't know you needed it. I don't need it," she said with four-year-old dignity. "I just like it. " Calder got up off the floor and followed her to the bedroom and tucked her in, and she was asleep before he got back to the main room.
He stood in the quiet for a moment, listening to the ranch settle around him. The fire had burned low. Above him, the loft had finally gone silent, even Benny eventually ran out of things to say. The night wind came under the east door, the one with the gap at the bottom he'd been meaning to seal for two winters. He sat down at the table and looked at his hands.
One night he had managed one night. He had no earthly idea how he was going to manage the second one or the hundred after that or the thousand after that. He had been a man who planned carefully and acted slowly, mostly except for the one moment on the platform when something inside him had moved faster than his planning could follow. He pulled out a piece of paper and started a list. Beds, mattresses, blankets, at least six more, larger cook pot, flour, 50 lb, sugar, cornmeal, lard, dried beans, salt, pork, lamp oil, more nails, rope, boys clothing, ages 6 through 13.
Girls clothing, he stopped and thought. He had no idea what sizes. He was going to have to ask Clara because Clara clearly knew these things, and asking Clara seemed likely to be more efficient than guessing. He added, "Ask Clara about sizes to the list and kept going. " He wrote until midnight. Morning came harder than he expected.
Not the waking up Calder had been rising at 5 in the morning for 20 years, and his body did not consult his preferences about that. What was hard was the moment he stepped out of his room into the main room, and nearly walked directly into Nelly, who was standing in the exact center of the room in her night gown with both fists pressed to her mouth, making no sound. "Nelly? " He stopped. "What is it? " Nelly looked at him with enormous eyes. "There's a sound," she whispered.
What kind of sound? Outside near the chickens. Calder was out the door in 12 seconds. The coupe was on the east side of the barn, and when he got there, the source of the problem was immediately apparent. One of the boards on the south wall had come loose at the bottom.
It had been loose for weeks. He'd noted it and then gotten distracted by the fence, and something had been added in the night. One hen was dead. The others were fine but agitated, clustering in the far corner of the coupe and raising a noise that Nelly from the house had heard of as something wrong even before she understood what it meant. Calder stood and looked at the dead hen in the loose board and thought about the fact that he had meant to fix that board two weeks ago.