The Mountain Man Started Buying Baby Clothes — But Everyone Knew He Lived Alone
Chapter 4
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
And at night, by the stove, with a sheet of fine sandpaper, he made a cradle. It was a poor cradle at first: the sides sloped wrong and the rockers did not meet. He took it apart and began again. He could skin a bear in 20 minutes, and he spent four hours on the curve of one rocker. On the last night, he carved a row of pine trees along the headboard—one for every year he had lived alone. There were 20. He looked at them a while and left them as they were. Then he covered the cradle with canvas and put it in the loft, where it would be a surprise, or at least not a reproach.On the Monday before they came, he went down to town once more."Company?" said Clara, who had waited three weeks with every muscle in her face under strict command."Yes.""May I ask who?""Neighbors.""You have no neighbors.""Then new ones." He set a jar of peppermint sticks on the counter. "Is a yellow dress better than a pink one?""For what?"He considered it with terrible seriousness. "For a person," he said.Clara, who had been about to say something clever, found she could not. She wrapped the peppermint sticks and put in an extra one.They came on a bright afternoon, Wednesday, the 10th of October, in a hired wagon from the depot.Thad was on the porch. He had been on the porch since dawn. He had washed twice, combed his beard, and put on the clean shirt he saved for funerals; then he had decided it looked like a funeral and changed back.Hannah climbed down first, steadying herself on the wheel. She was tired in a way that did not come from a day's travel. Her hair had come loose from its pins. She looked up at the cabin and the big man on the porch, and straightened her back before she said a word."Mr. Rourke.""Mrs. Whitmore." He had practiced this; it came out like a rock rolling downhill. "You are welcome."Behind her, a small figure climbed down with a carpet bag nearly as big as she was. Lucy Whitmore was eight: thin, with brown braids and a gap where her front tooth had been. She stopped dead at the foot of the steps and looked up. And up.Thad had never thought of himself as large; standing above her in the door of his own cabin, he saw for the first time what a child would see. He had faced bears and blizzards, and not one had made his mouth go dry."Are you," Lucy asked, "the good giant my papa told me about?"Nobody had ever called him good. He opened his mouth and found nothing in it. He lowered himself onto one knee on the porch boards and held out his hand, palm up."I believe that is me," said Thad.Lucy put her hand inside his; it disappeared to the wrist."I wrote you a letter.""I know. I read it six times.""Did you read it right?"