T. Boyle - San Miguel

For the next hour she sat there with him, just the two of them, and she felt a great peace settle over the house. The rain kept up, but the dripping was intermittent now, the tar having done its job — or mostly so — and she left the door of the stove open so they could watch the play of the flames. Ida was in the kitchen, busy with the meal, Edith shut in her room still, the hands out in the bunkhouse — she could see the soft glow of their lantern in the window there and it was as if they were miles away, as if they were on a ship and the ship was a beacon at sea. When the dark came down, she didn’t bother to get up and light the lantern on the table.

“It’s pleasant, isn’t it?” she said. “To sit here like this. Everything’s been such a mad rush.”

“I know,” he said, “I know. But things are settling down now. I feel like we’re actually making some progress — on the road especially. Or at least we were until this damned rain came along.”

The whiskey eased the rawness of her throat. She’d expected it to be harsh, but it was just the opposite — it was silken and cool and had the placatory effect of her medicine, only it tasted so much better. And it wouldn’t turn her tongue black. At least she hoped not. “Damned?” She tossed the epithet back at him, but lightly, because she was feeling good and she didn’t want to nag at him, but really, how could something soulless, an element at that, be damned?

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t be thankful for the rain — it’s just what we want if we expect the animals to thrive, and it’ll replenish the spring and fill the cisterns, and that’s all to the good. It’s just that I expected something more gradual, a good soft soaking rain—”

“Not a deluge.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head and reaching for the bottle. She watched him pour himself a measure, then lean forward to pour for her too. “The devil of it is to think of the work we put into that road, and all for nothing — it’s washing out right this minute, the banks caving in, rocks strewn everywhere, worse than it was when we started on it. Much worse. I tell you, I’m half-mad just thinking about it.” He took a long sip of the whiskey. “At least Curner brought the dynamite. At least there’s that.”

“But not the dishes.”

“It’s just like the war,” he said, waving a hand in disgust. “The Engineering Corps was bloated with men like Curner, half-wits and incompetents who couldn’t follow a requisition form if their lives depended on it — matériel would be wanted for an assault and it was sitting useless on one loading platform or another somewhere up the line and no one could say where or why. And none to take responsibility, you could wager on that. It was always the fault of Sergeant Such-and-Such or maybe his brother. Or some officer sitting behind a desk somewhere. But don’t worry — we’ll spell it out for him, make a list, item by item. And what do you think we’ll put right at the top?” He gave her a grin. “Minnie’s dishes.”

“And cutlery. And my linens — where are my linens, I’d like to know?”

“Yes,” he said, tilting his head back to drain the glass, “all that.” In the light of the fire he looked solid, looked young again. Or younger than he had when he came through the door. “But the dynamite’s the thing. Because without it we’re never going to be able to make a road of that footpath before the shearers come, there’s just too much rock. And Mills lectured me on the subject, you know that — those wool sacks can weigh three hundred pounds apiece and they’re apt to catch on any of the turnings and take the whole lot over the side of the ravine, mule, sled, driver and all. I wouldn’t want an accident,” he said, shifting in the chair so that his wet socks left two broad dark stripes on the floorboards. “Especially not out here, with the nearest doctor eight hours away.”

The nearest doctor . She meditated on that a moment, seeing herself prostrate in the saloon of Charlie Curner’s schooner, all sensation gone from her fingers and toes, the blood trailing away from the corner of her mouth and the black waves beating like fists at the hull. Did Will even know what he was saying?

There was a smell of cooking from the kitchen. Everything was still. She could feel the liquor inside her, a new kind of medicine, medicine that lifted you up instead of driving you down. “I don’t like that man,” she said.

“Who? Mills?”

“No,” she said, and the mood was soured now, “ Curner . Did you see the way he looked at Edith? He was leering, Will, that’s what he was doing: leering. A man his age. It was obscene. I don’t want him in this house, ever again, and I don’t care what he does with my plates.”

He said her name, whispered it, pleadingly: “Marantha.”

“And Jimmie,” she went on because she couldn’t stop herself, all the worries she’d bottled up spewing out of her now, “he’s no companion for Edith. Have you seen them together? Have you seen the way they, the way he—?” It was all too much, too mean and petty and low. “She doesn’t belong here, Will, that’s the truth of it. And neither do I.”

A long moment passed between them. The bucket in the far corner began to drip again, the gutters rattled, the rain tore at the roof like a flail. Then he pushed himself up from the chair without a word, took the bottle by the neck and moved heavily up the hall toward the kitchen.

In the sequel, she stayed on in the dark, bringing the glass to her lips every so often, the rising chemical scent of the liquor in her nostrils, the taste of it on her tongue and in her mouth and the back of her throat. She meant to get up, light the lantern, help Ida set the table for dinner — rouse Edith; where was Edith? — but Will’s whiskey, which had pushed her so high, weighed her down. She shouldn’t have gone off on him the way she had and she regretted it now, already thinking of ways to make it up to him, to help rather than hinder. He was under a strain too. All the troubles of the place devolved on him, one worry chasing after the next — a week ago he was stalking through the corridors muttering darkly about the disaster they faced if the rains didn’t come and now here he was with his hands tar-stained and his back aching and the road washed out. He was fifty years old, soon to be fifty-one. This was no kind of life for him. He was an educated man, skilled in his trade, one of the few men in the country who could reliably run a big printing operation the way he had on his brother’s paper in Boston and the Morning Call up in San Francisco. He was a gentleman, not a common laborer. If he didn’t watch himself he was going to end up sick or injured or just plain out of luck, like the palsied ragtag troop he so proudly marched with on Decoration Day each year, banners waving, bands playing, and every other man with his sleeve hanging loose or his leg gone at the knee. You survived the war, Will, she told him, you don’t have to fight another one .

She emerged from her reverie to the sound of voices leaching out of the steady background thrum of the rain: Will’s voice, Ida’s, call and response. It was some trick of the atmosphere — or her own ears — because suddenly she could hear them as clearly as if they were right there in the room with her.

“Everything’s all over mud,” Ida said, complaining, but her tone wasn’t the tone of complaint — it was airy and light, as if she were with Edith and the two of them had their heads together, half a breath from dissolving in giggles. “Just look at this floor. How can anybody expect me to cook in conditions like this?”

There was the sound of a chair shifting, the metallic groan of the hinges on the cabinet door, and then Will’s voice, companionable, intimate: “Oh, I don’t know, you seem to be doing a pretty fair job of it, even if you do have to wear a pair of gum boots under those skirts of yours. But you’re always… what I mean to say is you, you’re a very good”—he faltered, his words dense with whiskey—“really excellent. First-rate. But what’s that, what are you adding to that pot?”