The Mountain Man Started Buying Baby Clothes — But Everyone Knew He Lived Alone
Chapter 6
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
Lucy followed him everywhere: she followed him to the stable, where he taught her to brush a horse and to stand where it could see her; she followed him to the woodpile; and once, at some length, to the privy, from which he had to ask her to withdraw.She discovered that he could carve, and he made her a cedar fox, and a little elk with a floppy ear, and a horse with a long, solemn face that she named Mr. Bishop and carried in her apron pocket. She discovered that he could answer "Why?" 11 times in a row with 11 different answers.Hannah noticed all of it: when she was cold, there was more wood by the hearth; when she was tired, there was hot water ready and the good chair pulled close to the stove.She came in one evening and found him on the floor: he was sitting cross-legged with his back against the wall. In his lap lay Lucy's rag doll, whose ear had come away at the seam when it caught on a nail. Between his thumb and forefinger was a needle; it looked very small. His tongue was clamped between his teeth.Hannah put a hand over her mouth and made a sound she could not stop.Thad looked up, deeply injured. "I have faced wolves," he said with dignity, "that were easier than this."She laughed until the tears ran. The doll's ear sat crooked on its head. It was the first time she had laughed in five months, and it took him by surprise: he sat very still with the needle in his hand and listened."Give it here," said Hannah, wiping her eyes. "You are doing it wrong."That night, when Lucy was asleep, she finished the ear by the lamp. Thad sat across from her with a block of cedar and did not look as though he was watching."What did you want to be?" she asked. "When you were a boy? Before the mountains?"He thought about it for some time. "A riverboat pilot.""What happened?""I was sick on the first boat and the second." He turned the cedar. "What would you choose if you could choose anything?"Hannah bit off the thread; she had not been asked that in years. "A table by a window," she said, "and a stack of orders for dresses, and nobody's child to hold but my own. And money in my own purse.""That is a good choice.""It is a long way off."She began to hum as she worked—some old hymn with the words worn off. Thad's knife stopped: he had not heard anyone hum in that cabin in 20 years, and he held very still in case she noticed and stopped.She looked up. "Does it trouble you?""No.""Then why have you stopped carving?""I was listening," said Thad.She went on humming; it was a long time before either of them said anything else.Snow came early that year and stayed. By December, the cabin was shut in, with the path to the creek cut like a trench. They lived by the stove. Hannah taught Lucy her letters in the evenings, and Thad, listening from his corner, found that he had begun practicing his own. He could read slowly and write when he had to, but his hand was crabbed and small. By Christmas, it was clearer, and Hannah had stopped wincing.