World Made by Hand

Fifteen

In the days that followed Shawn Watling’s funeral, everyone made an effort to attend the needs of his widow and their daughter. There were no official safety nets in our little society, no more social services, no life insurance, nothing but the goodwill of neighbors. I went over twice: once with Todd Zucker, to get in stovewood for her, using his horse cart to bring maple cut from his dying sugar bush; the second time on my own, bringing five pounds of cornmeal from Einhorn’s store. It was eight o’clock in the evening when I came by, after working a full day on the cupola.

I could see Britney through a front window sitting in the broom shop, but she didn’t come to the door after I’d knocked twice, pretty loudly the second time, so I let myself inside and went to the shop.

“Excuse me for barging in,” I said.

She turned to me as if shaking off a reverie and leveled a gaze my way, as fierce as a kestrel. It was unnerving.

“Just checking to see if you’re okay?” I said.

“I’m okay,” she said, and she turned her gaze back down to her handiwork.

“How’s your little girl getting on?”

“She’s over to the Allisons,” Britney said with a sigh. The Allisons had an eight-year-old girl and a boy, six. Tom Allison operated the only livery in Union Grove in a time when most of us did not yet own our own horses or rigs. The family had a nice household untouched by personal tragedy, apart from Tom’s never again working as the vice president for administration of the Washington County Community College, which had closed its doors, and his wife Linda’s losing her graphic design business.

“The world seems to be burning up out there,” I said.

“It might as well,” Britney said.

I glanced down at my sandals, made by our cobbler, Charles Pettie, out of old automobile tire treads and leather straps.

“How are you doing for food?” I said.

“All right.”

“I brought you some meal.”

“Thank you.”

“Anything else you short of?”

“People have been very kind,” she said and put on a wan smile, as if speaking from inside a globe of loneliness. I knew what that place was like. Maybe I was projecting my feelings too much, but it was troubling to think what would happen now, with no one to care for her. Less than a week after her husband’s funeral, it seemed indecent to imagine who she might eventually pair up with, but that was the direction my mind went in and I couldn’t help it. There were few single men in our town. The absurd Heath Rucker. George Murdlow, the candlemaker, who never washed. Perry Talisker, who lived in a shack by the river and made bad corn whiskey and decorated the outside walls of his shack with the stinking pelts of beaver, otter, and raccoon. Buddy Haseltine, who was “slow” and helped out at Einhorn’s store in exchange for a cot in the storeroom. Wayne Karp’s tribe. Myself. We were the single men in town. What a sorry bunch we were, I thought. Yet I was shocked to imagine for a moment having a young woman such as Britney in my care, and then to take that a step further into the dark territory of conjugal relations. It was a fugitive thought but I was ashamed of myself. Her father, who did not survive the Mexican flu, had been younger than me when he passed on.

“Are you getting any meat?” I said.

“We could stand some.”

“Ben Deaver mentioned he would slaughter a kid for me. You like goat?”

“I’ll eat it,” she said.

“I’ll bring some by when I get it? You like smoked trout?”

Watching her sit in a beam of evening light, I couldn’t fail to notice how well formed she was. A troubled look came over her. She stood up and brushed bits of broom straw off her apron.

“They came around here,” she said.

“Excuse me? Who came around?”

“That New Faith preacher and some of their women.”

“A lot of damn nerve, after how he behaved at the funeral.”

“What I thought too.”

“What did they want?

“Trying to get me and Sarah to move over to the school.”

“They’re a weird bunch. Why would you consider that?” I said.

She shook her head. Then her features crumbled. She tripped forward into my arms, weeping. Her hair was full of the spice of fresh grass and childbearing. It made me a little dizzy in the heat. I held her until she was cried out. “You don’t have to put in with them,” I said. “You have this fine place here.”

“Maybe,” she said and drew away, pulling herself together. “But this making brooms and baskets won’t do all on our own. People have all they need of those things.”

“We’re your people and we won’t let you go hungry,” I said.

“This being alone is something else,” she said and squeezed her eyes shut as if to keep more tears from coming out. But they did, of course.