Some of the neighbors came, she said. Mr. Toiver from the East Valley. The apprentice family, a few others. She went back to her mending.
They brought lumber. Bram turned his head and looked at her. She was 10 years old and she said they brought lumber the way you'd say they brought potatoes. Just a fact. Just a thing that had happened.
Why? He said. Mama organized it. Nell said. She pulled the thread through carefully.
She went out the morning after you went down and she drove to the Tovers because she knew they had the wagon and she came back with Mister Toiver. And then she went out again and she came back with the apprentice men. She paused to examine her stitching. She said, "If you were going to need a storage building to live in yourself, somebody needed to make it a proper room. " Bram said nothing. He got up 20 minutes later over Nell's mild objection, moving slowly and holding the wall for the first couple of steps until his body remembered how this worked.
He found his boots. He found water and drank it. He found the door and opened it and stood on the porch and looked at his ranch. There were seven people in his yard. Ephraim Toiver, who Bram knew from 10 years of neighborly dealings and occasional shared fence maintenance, was directing two men Bram recognized as Toiver's hired hands in laying fresh lumber beside the storage building.
The apprentice brothers, both of them, which meant somebody had asked Caleb apprentice specifically, because Caleb didn't come to things he hadn't been asked to, were working on the storage building south wall with tools from their own wagon. A woman Bram placed after a moment as Marjgery Dale Mertendale's wife was sitting on a crate near the well talking to Maisie who was sitting beside her with a look of intense concentration that suggested Marjgery had said something interesting. Eleyn was at the center of it, not directing exactly, but moving between the groups with the assurance of someone who knew what needed doing and had communicated that clearly enough that other people also knew. She had her sleeves rolled up. Her hair was pinned differently than usual, more practically.
She was carrying a board when she came around the corner of the storage building, said something to frame Toiver that made him nod immediately and then saw Bram on the porch. She stopped. They looked at each other across the yard for a moment. Then she walked over, still carrying the board, and stood at the foot of the porch steps and looked up at him. "You're up," she said.
"So I am. " He looked at the yard. You organized this. I asked for help. She said there's a difference. Doesn't look like a lot of difference from here.
Mr. Toiver said your father helped him in a bad year. She shifted the board in her grip. He said he'd been looking for a way to return it. I just gave him a reason to come.
She looked at him steadily. You've been working this place alone so long you forgot that people will show up if you let them know you need them. Bram leaned against the door frame. He wasn't sure if he wanted to argue the point or not. He suspected she was right, which was the main reason he wasn't arguing.
"How are the horses? " he asked. Silas went back for them yesterday afternoon. "They're fine. She set the board against the porch railing. Eat something and then stay out of the way.
We've got the work handled. It's my ranch, and in 2 days, it's going to have a proper second room and a new wall on the storage building and some timber repair on your south fence line. " She tilted her head. So eat something. He ate something. The day unfolded in a way that required Bram to do something he was constitutionally not designed for, which was accept help while standing still.
He managed it by making himself useful on the edges, fetching water, handing tools, holding boards while Ephraim's men nailed them, and and by paying close attention to what was being built and how. Because even in an impaired state, his brain kept trying to plan ahead and think about maintenance and what would need doing next. The storage building was getting a proper dividing wall to separate a sleeping space from a work area, and the new timber on the southace was going in with better joint work than the original. Ephraim Toiver did most of that himself, and he worked like a man who'd spent 40 years putting up buildings and had opinions about the right way to do it that he was happy to demonstrate. He didn't say much while he worked, but every 15 minutes or so, he'd make a comment about the lumber or the joinery or the sight placement that wasn't really directed at anyone, just his running conversation with the work itself.
At some point, Bram found himself standing beside Ephraim, both of them looking at the new wall going up. "Your father let me use his mule team when mine went lame," Ephraim said without preamble, driving a nail with two strokes. Winter of 71. I was behind on everything. He didn't ask for anything back.
He drove another nail. Told me I'd find my own way to pass it along someday. Bram looked at the wall. He never told me that. He wouldn't.
Ephraim picked up another nail. That's how that kind of thing works. Caleb Prrentice came around the corner at that point with a question about the window placement and Ephraim went with him and that was the whole conversation and somehow it was enough. By the end of the day, the new room was framed and halfwalled, and the south face of the storage building was solid again. The apprentice brothers left first with the specific efficiency of men who had other things to get back to, but had prioritized this one.
Marjgery Dale left with a jar of Eloin's preserved tomatoes that Eloin pressed on her, which Marjgerie accepted with the grace of someone who knew the offer wasn't charity, but reciprocity. Ephraim's men went last, loading their wagon, while Ephraim had a final walk around the building to check the work. Ephraim stopped beside Bram on his way to his horse. "Room needs two more days to finish right," he said. "I'll send my man Curtis back Thursday.
He knows what to do. " "Ephraam, you don't need to Thursday," Ephraim said and got on his horse and left. That night, with Tobin propped up on pillows in the storage building, still not allowed to do anything strenuous, and Finn asleep with his rocks arranged carefully beside him, and the older three at the table with the remains of dinner. Bram sat on the porch alone for a while after everyone else went in. The sky was enormous out here. It always was.
That was one thing the drought and the debt and the loneliness couldn't touch. The sky was as big as it always had been, full of more stars than any city person ever believed until they saw it, and the air at night had a slight coolness to it. Now that meant summer was already thinking about autumn, even though it was still August. Bram sat with that. He heard the door open behind him and didn't turn around.
Elo settled into the other chair. There were two chairs on the porch, had always been two, which Bram had always thought was an oversight his father made. Building a two-chair porch for a man who lived alone. He'd never moved the second one. They sat for a while without talking.
I need to tell you something, Eloin said. All right. When you came back carrying Silas, she stopped. I've seen men do things like that. Not many.
My father did something like that once. She was looking at the sky. I knew what kind of man you were before that, but after that I knew differently. Bram didn't say anything. I'm not saying that to flatter you, she added.
I'm saying it because it's relevant to what I'm going to say next, which is she turned and looked at him directly, which was something Eloen Harrow did when she meant business and didn't want there to be any ambiguity about it. I've been thinking about the problem. She said your problem. Our problem now, I suppose, because we made it our problem when you took us in, and we don't intend to leave you worse off than you were. You don't owe me.
I'm not talking about owing, she said, with a patience that had a slight edge to it. I'm talking about practicality. You're running one man's worth of operation on land that could support more. You've been trying to keep a ranch alive by shrinking it down to what one person can manage, and the drought made that worse, and the debt made that worse. And by the time we showed up, you were down to your last viable season.
Bram looked at the stars. You don't have to be quite so direct about it. I'm always direct about it. She didn't apologize for that. Here's what I've been thinking.
We've already improved the garden and the chickens. We know that's working. What I can also do, what I'm good at, is sewing, not mending and patching, which I can do in my sleep. Real work. Custom dresses, alterations, work shirts, good quality.